Several people have sent me links to both the BBC and AP articles on those maddeningly difficult to pin down secret US prisons hidden throughout Europe. Natesnake likes this bit best, from Swiss Senator Dick Marty:
“Even if proof, in the classical meaning of the term, is not as yet available, a number of coherent and converging elements indicate that such secret detention centers did indeed exist in Europe,” he wrote, saying this warranted further investigation.
Or, to put it more succinctly, “give us enough time and we’ll come up with something.”
For his part, TPeters likes this curious verbiage:
“The most serious charges are levelled at Poland and Romania, where Mr Marty says there is enough evidence to support suspicions that CIA secret prisons were established.”
Well now. How absolutely Mulderean! Not to mention a perfectly foolproof formulation for the justifcation of official inquiries and investigations: “We have our suspicions, and we offer as evidence of our suspicions…well, our suspicions!”
Personally, I’m not convinced that we didn’t have temporary detention facilities in other countries. But I’m also not much bothered by the fact, because I don’t believe the facilities, even if they did exist, were used in the nefarious way suggested by the subtext ubiquitously teased out by the anti-war crowd—namely, that the US was using these prisons to torture detainees. Probably by having them dress up like Liza Minnelli or Joel Grey in Cabaret.
Maybe it’s a function of my growing up in the US, but this idea that simply wishing something to be the case is enough to justify official inquiries just rubs me the wrong way. For instance, I believe Dick Marty’s statements provide enough evidence (though not in the “classical meaning” of the word, I admit) to justify my suspicions that he’s on crank—but I certainly can’t prove that alllegation, and I don’t think Mr Marty should have to prove to me that he isn’t on crank. Though he quite clearly is. On crank.
Your mileage may vary.
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More, at Fausta’s Blog.
It’s sounds like these secret prisons might be the WMD of the left. But God forbid should any terrorists actually have been mistreated. If so, why don’t we give them all light water reactors to make up for it?
I have my suspicions that Andrew Sullivan and Juan Cole are having a menage a troiswith acthole.
I demand that the US Senate and the EU investigate – afterall, there is the underlying suspicion.
Not to mention that other old favorite, “the seriousness of the charge”!
Whether you are correct or not, Sullivan and Cole will be tainted forever after by “the appearance of impropriety.”
(As well as whatever cooties they picked up from our dear friend…)
I suspect specious suspicions specifically.
Ed Wood is alive and well, and living in Europe.
SB: book
outta here
Well, if it wasn’t important we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
I think the fact that Al Gore, John Kerry, and Jimmy Carter are wandering around free are proof these prisons don’t exist.
Because Karl Rove would be waterboarding them for the sheer joy of it if they did.
And I have my concerns over the welfare of a certain beagle whose innocence and virtue may at this very moment be in serious jeopardy or god forbid may have already been cruelly stolen away.
Therefore, I too demand full congressional investigations into these serious allogations. After all, if not congress, who will protect the childr.er.beagles.
We should call Washington to investigate. He’ll get at the truth, or hold Teresa Kerry’s hand in acid at a party. See if he doesn’t.
But what if the purported leaders of the reality-based community are actually imposters, and the real Al Gore, John Kerry and Jimmy Carter are being brutalized by Lyndie Englund’s lingerie somewhere in Moldova, while Rove relaxes with a single-malt and a Havana behind the one-way mirror?
Come to think it, that would explain a lot.
Aha! The old “doppelganger’s dilemma.”
Well, I doubt the armadillo is proud about what happened that night, but…
“But what if the purported leaders of the reality-based community are actually imposters, and the real Al Gore, John Kerry and Jimmy Carter are being brutalized by Lyndie Englund’s lingerie somewhere in Moldova, while Rove relaxes with a single-malt and a Havana behind the one-way mirror?”
Al Gore, John Kerry, and Jimmy Carter could only get so lucky to have Darth Rove acknowledge them as sufficiently relevant to spend time torturing them.
Yeh….Oh yeh…. Well while you’re over there in redneckville, prancing in your platforms among the boulders, up in Mapleleafland, they’re going nutz with investigations now of possible Anthrax laced documents in the Canadian Parliament….you you….. PLATFORMIST!!!!!
Heh…. “Nancy Graces eyebrows flying off her forehead”…. gotta love it…
(so I’m a little slow sometimes…. whats in your wallet?)
We’re back to, “ It’s the seriousness of the charge, not the nature of the evidence!”?
Can’t someone on the left think of a new tactic?
Pretty please?
DICK PARTY!!! WE’RE HAVING A DICK PARTY! Oh, It’s Dick Marty. Never mind.
Thanks for the link!
The coherent and convergent elements went south at this morning’s BBCA tv newscast, when they had a banner that said “No solid evidence of secret prisons has been found” while interviewing some Amnesty International guy about the “secret prisions”.
Still looking for that flying piggie, are they?
“Two people can keep a secret – if one of ‘em is dead.”
If they existed, there would be some evidence. There is none. Q.E.D.
You been HAD, baby.
I heard it, attributed to Ben Franklin, “Three may keep a secrt – if two are dead”. Boils down to just one remaining either way.
Another favorite of mine by Franklin, “Bigamy is having one wife too many – monogamy is the same.”
Of course they can’t find the secret prisons! Those have to be well-hidden. After all, that’s where Fitzgerald is hiding Rove’s double-secret sealed grand jury indictment.
(OK, OK, so my Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory still needs some work…)
Martin – Maybe there’s a “hint” in the signifier “secret”. If there were any risable evidence they actually exist, then they would be “non-secret prisons”. Someone should call the NYT and let them know. This could be a breakthrough!
So…..you’re breaking the story, eh? Rove will definitely be frog marched when the secret prisons are found?
Well… I may be out ahead of the news cycle just a little bit.
Maybe a day or two.
Or a week.
Or a couple of weeks.
Could be a month…
Or maybe it will all be suppressed. Yeah, that’s it!
“Fake but accurate” has jumped the shark. Why bother to create a forgery when the accusation will suffice as proof.
Turing Word: language, as in, well, you know.
The question of secret detention centers can be answered by the European governemnts themselves. Journalists here will certainly pursue the story, if only to punish politicians for helping the US.
If there was involvment it will come out. If true (as I suspect) there is no way to keep the lid on it. The exact extent of help the Euros provided will be harder to nail down.
First we’ll do the hangin’, then we’ll have a nice leisurely trial, at the end of which we’ll decide what atrocity the convicted was hanged for in the first place.
Here in Redneckia we jest do these thangs right from the get-go.
OK
So the CIA gets ahold of a terrorist wanted by multiple nations. Flys him out of country. Needs a safe secure facility to hold the guy while it is decided which nation with charges against the guy gets first crack.
Or are we supposed to just fly the guy around and refuel in midair?
Ask the torture conspiracy theorists why not just torture inflight… who needs to land in order to use a cordless drill? I mean someone on board has to be able to work up enough pee to whiz on a Koran… bring a dog (unclean) to lick his face… and have a topless woman serve him a ham sandwich while brandishing a box of tampons.
People are acting like Alberto Gonzalez and John Yoo personally show up to put out their cigars in eyes.
We argue about what is the definition of torture so we can set rules of interrogation… the Afghan’s used to bugger captured Soviet soldiers and then torure them to death… slowly… videotape the whole thing and mail it to the soldiers family… and would have no idea why everyone else wouldn’t do the same.
Is it possible that Natalie Holloway is in one of these prisons?
SteveG- exactly.
Is there a reason the CIA (and other countries’ intelligence agencies) wouldn’t be flying terrorism suspects somewhere?
What are they supposed to do? Stick them with a poison umbrella tip? Give them an exploding cigar?
There are advantages in the humor to be had from the slight deafness that accompanies growing older. The first two times I heard about this report, I heard the guy’s name as “Dick Smarty” which seemed eminently appropriate.
Of course, I had to hear a radio commercial about a dozen time before I realized I wasn’t being warned about ‘a reptile dysfunction.’ I was trying to figure out what problems a reptile could have.
Anyone remember when the lefty pukes in Europe challenged us to provide proof of aggressive Soviet intentions?
Other than the Shock Armies in East Germany pointed at the Fulda Gap.
And all those SS-20s.
And now they can’t even scare up a photograph of a chain link fence around a nefarious looking cinderblock building somehwere in the former Eastern Bloc? I mean, there’s one of those on every friggin’ street corner in Romania, right?
Is that guy still hanging from ropes on that big red rock, over at Vodkapundit? Was that guy a terrorist? VP sure has kept him hanging there a long time. He’s tough, that VP.
SO let me get this straight…
…we arrest, capture or kidnap suspected terrorists, terrorist sympathizers, and people Dick Cheney doesn’t like very much…
…we lock them up in secret hidden prisons where we abuse them to our black malformed hearts’ content…
…and then we let them go to tell everyone about our secret prisons…
Wouldn’t this whole secret prison thing blow over if we just printed up some nifty little “Detention Center” signs to hang on that chainlink around the dingy cinder block building when high value, no state, terrorists are in transit there?
I’m sure we’d have to send John Yoo to haggle with the left over background color, font and type size… is English OK and all that
JAYSUS
And WTF is nonclassical proof?
Is it kinda like those NSA datamining hysterics who want the dots discovered only through crystal balls and ouija boards?
I haven’t followed this story very closely since it turned out to be another installment of “fake but accurate”, but IIRC, the wasn’t the allegation that people were brought to this prison from prisons where they were previously held.
(As the story goes) they may have been in Romania, but they were led to believe they had been flown to, say, Israel or Egypt or Pakistan, etc. Places where prisoners can’t assume the interrogators play by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.
The ruse included having guards dressed in the uniforms of the “bad cop” country, and speaking the appropriate language.
In effect, it was the CIA equivalent of a Phishing scam.
If true, that suggests several things:
People wouldn’t be held there for very long
The staff would not be jailers, but rather intelligence officers.
If the con was convincing, some prisoners may have been there without knowing it.
That would be some made up shit, now with more jumping to conclusions.
That would be “fake, but accurate.”
I hope there is a string of foreign prisons where terrorists are dragged to and beaten with scorpions every day until they tell the world everything they know. For the life of me I can’t figure out how the same people who watch 24 and cheer when Jack Bauer tortures a confession out of someone – or any of a host of action flicks where this happens – then are shocked, shocked, to find that we turn the A/C off in Guantanamo bay.