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Got my Gitmo workin'... Joe
Apparently amused by the naked political motives of scheduling the September Gitmo hearings so close to the Presidential election, some in the foreign press are charting new developments in our swerve back to the Dark Ages.
Today's Guardian has several stories on the subject of our extra-legal detainees, the main piece about the floating dungeons we've stationed in the Indian Ocean. Remember the Pelelieu and the Bataan? Not the World War II battles - but the prison ships the U.S. admitted had housed battlefield "assets" and redition abductions in 2001-'02. That story surfaced a few years ago, and just sort of faded away, but, it turns out, the operation didn't. In fact, the two vessels mentioned in 2005 have been joined by other ships. Also, Diego Garcia - the mysterious military base near Sri Lanka - has been mentioned as a detainee stopoff, as well.
The Guardian notes: "According to a US Congress report, up to 14,000 people may have been victims of rendition and secret detention since 2001. Some reports estimate there have been twice as many. The US admits to have captured more than 80,000 prisoners in its 'war on terror'."
And a Guardian sidebar also makes the chilling point that out of all those round-ups and midnight dragnets, 39 detainees have simply disappeared. Something makes me doubt they've been given new names and identities, and work as cable installers in Idaho and Wyoming.
It seems the attacks of 9/11 did more than kill people and knock down some buildings. It produced a toxic alchemy that transformed the American strategic and security apparatus into South American police death squads, circa 1975.
Oh, and to top it all off - and to absolutely no one's surprise - the redition program evidently is still going strong.
This is the kind of juicy, real-world coverage you just can't find in America's "biased liberal media." It's at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/02/terrorism.terrorism
Comments (2)
Thanks for bringing this up. It will be yet another talking point for Obama in the months to come.
June 2, 2008 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
I see this story had already been posted by others at TPM - notably cnic - prior to mine. It has made the rounds of the usual blog suspects, including the Huffington Post, but - not so oddly - it didn't make the Associated Press and UPI wires until an hour ago.
The AP story notes:
Apparently official Navy denials are also included in the AP report.
June 2, 2008 6:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
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