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November 02, 2005

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It bothered me then, and it bothers me now. Elections come and go, but this guy has put a hurt on America that will last.

Did anyone miss the symbolism of this?

Saddam was our biggest enemy, so we took over his jail and ran it as badly as he did.

The Soviet Union was our biggest enemy, so we took over their jail, and are running it worse than they did.

What's next? A terrorist jail in Vietnam?

Even as we express our horror, we become habituated to the reality that this is us.

emptywheel: my exact thought. This is slightly different than Abu Ghraib in that it's almost certainly not a prison with much symbolic meaning for the people there and the society from which they come. But geeze, how many ex-dictatorships' infrastructure do we have to use?

It's a good think that Auschwitz is occupied as a museum and Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek, Chelmo and Belzec were destroyed. Lets at least hope that the gate of the prison isn't emblazoned with the phrase "Arbeit Macht Frei."

Perhaps, perhaps not. The prisons I'm most familiar with from the Communist era (the Czech ones) are in urban places. But Poland (which is a much more likely location for this prison anyway, either there or Bulgaria) had some illustrious people imprisoned in fairly remote locations that would be perfect locations for the US' secret dungeon.

I wonder what Dick Durbin thought when he read that article.

I wonder what John McCain thought of what Harry Reid and Dick Durbin did yesterda when he read that article.

Secret prison? Secret session. Easy as pie, John. Just find a friend to second you.

"Some will say that secret prisoners in secret prisons in secret places are better than the alternative that was discussed and discarded: whacking al Qaeda leaders in a campaign of assassination. "

Just what do you think happens when it is decided that someone no longer needs to be detained in a secret prison? I can't see them being released, and I can't see them being allowed to take up space.

"Some will say that secret prisoners in secret prisons in secret places are better than the alternative that was discussed and discarded: whacking al Qaeda leaders in a campaign of assassination."

I don't know that the "secret prisoners" would agree. The conditions in secret prisons are certain to be worse than the conditions in semi-secret prisons such as GITMO. Here is the headline for a recent WAsh. Post story: "Guantanamo Desperation Seen in Suicide Attempts."

When men and women named Bush, Rumsfeld, Rove, Rice, Cheney and Wolfowitz want a prison and you know it will be some ex-wwii ss prison, because is it ever really ex. Is it my imagination or do most of them have german surnames?

Also the Washington Post refused to name the East European countries because the military (US) asked them not too. Again newspapers show us that they do not print for us, John Q.

The neocons think they're Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

One of the saddest aspects of this is the Bush criminalization of our military. Just the thought that if my children were younger, one, or more, of them could be a guard, a torturer, a gestapo in one of these hellholes.

At some point, the rest of the world has to tell the Bush administration -- enough! Smarten up! Not only are you dragging your own country into the mother of all quagmires, but you are dragging your allies into this mess as well.

Follow the aircraft and not the money!
Both the UK Independent and Times are reporting that the secret prisons are most likely located in Poland and Roumania. From the Independent:
The Bush administration has been accused of operating secret detention facilities beyond the reach of the law and outside official oversight at bases in two eastern European countries. The facilities - said to be located in Poland and Romania - are part of a larger "gulag" used by the US to hold prisoners seized in the so-called war on terror.
Using the flight logs of a plane used by the CIA for transporting prisoners and other unspecified information, a leading human rights group said it believed the facilities were located in the two former Soviet bloc countries and first used in 2003.
Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch told The Independent: "These are the areas we are highly confident about, based on the flights logs and other information we have."
The investigation by the New York-based group has focused on the logs of a Boeing 757 jet with the tailgate marker N313P. This plane has been widely identified as being used by the CIA for the transportation and "renditioning" of terror suspects outside the US. Until recently, it was registered to a Massachusetts-based company believed to be a front for the CIA.
Using this data Human Rights Watch discovered that, in September 2003, it flew directly from Kabul to Szymany airport, near the remote Polish town of Szczytno, north of Warsaw, home to a training facility for the Polish intelligence service.
From there, the plane flew directly to Mihail Kogalniceanu air base, close to the Romanian city of Constanta on the Black Sea coast. The Pentagon is involved in negotiations to take over the airbase's operation. Throughout 2004, the plane made a number of other visits to Kogalniceanu, on which the US has spent at least $3m upgrading facilities in preparation for taking it over.

The Independent also has a 'puff piece' about Poland and Roumania entitled "Former Soviet satellites look to US as a role model." The problem is they seem to have adopted some of the worst parts of the model.

The Times site sometimes charges for non-UK users.Also posted in the comments at Kos.

Human Rights Watch says the prisons are probably in Poland and Romania, at a minimum.

Sorry -- hadn't refreshed before commenting, so missed blowback's update.

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