BUSH HAS A DIRTY SECRET
Now President Bush has admitted publicly that the CIA has run a network of secret prisons and rendition flights to move prisoners around the world, there's a growing anger in European nations about just where these prisons are, and who has lied to them.
Because the leaders of many European countries, like Poland, like Romania, directly asked Bush, "Do you run a secret prison in our country? Do you have secret CIA fights going through our airports?" And Bush clearly told them all, "No, of course not."
But now, apparently without informing anyone such a disclosure was coming, Bush has announced that one of the biggest conspiracies of the 'War On Terror' is true. The CIA runs secret prisons. The CIA, and it's freelancers, abduct terror suspects and fly them around in CIA-hired planes.
It's a truly startling admission, regardless of the US-related politics, or theories that Bush only confirmed these conspiracy theories so he could get his way with the military tribunal trials.
Did President Bush decide to get the facts down on record, before he was pinned with the bad news? Some extraordinary events are taking in Washington, DC, at this time.
Is Bush about to get dumped with the very worst crimes and accusations of the past five years? From authorising torture to somehow being complicit in advance knowledge of the 9/11 terror attacks?
It's certainly starting to sound like it.
There's already been plenty of fallout over the CIA Secret Prisons disclosures, and there's much more to come.
From the UK Guardian :
Not many people will have been taken aback by George Bush's admission that the CIA has been secretly holding suspected terrorists at "black sites" across the world.And President Bush's Grand Plan to try terror suspects in military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay is now facing a revolt in the US Senate...from his fellow Republicans. Amazing stuff. They know Bush is poison and they're rushing to save their own skins, before the November mid-term elections.
Nor will many feel that it represents a fundamental change of heart about the morality, legality and political wisdom of aspects of the US "war on terror."
The methods used in these facilities, were "tough but lawful", the president asserted, even as the Pentagon was announcing that methods such as hooding, electric shocks and "waterboarding" - torture by any definition - are to be outlawed in future.
And these prisons, reported to be in Romania and Poland as well as Arab allies such as Morocco and Egypt, have not been closed.
It would now be useful to know, as Euro MPs insisted yesterday, just who has been telling lies about this and the related issue of extraordinary renditions.
This, also, from the UK Guardian :
President George Bush yesterday faced growing opposition from his fellow Republicans to a pillar of his war on terror: his plans to prosecute detainees at Guantánamo at military commissions.Mr Bush had hoped to use the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Monday to shift the focus of November's congressional elections away from the war on Iraq to national security.
But the strategy misfired with key Republicans balking at a White House proposal for legislation on military tribunals that would deny Guantánamo detainees the right to see classified evidence against them.
Under the White House plan the fate of Guantánamo defendants would be decided by a jury of five military officers - 12 if the charges carry the death penalty. As well as the use of classified evidence off limits to the defendant, the prosecution could use hearsay and evidence obtained through coercion.The Key Quote :
"It would be up to the judge to determine, based on an argument by the accused, whether he believed something was torture and needed to be prohibited..."
"I am not aware of any situation in the world where there is a system of jurisprudence that is recognised by civilised people where an individual can be tried and convicted without seeing the evidence against him..."Try looking at what's happening with the terror trials in Australia.
