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Urban Ranger
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Apolyton Duke of Off-Topic
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The New York Times (hm, the link requires registration, so I attached the whole thing below):
quote:
WASHINGTON, March 5 - The Bush administration's secret program to transfer suspected terrorists to foreign countries for interrogation has been carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency under broad authority that has allowed it to act without case-by-case approval from the White House or the State or Justice Departments, according to current and former government officials.
The unusually expansive authority for the C.I.A. to operate independently was provided by the White House under a still-classified directive signed by President Bush within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the officials said.
The process, known as rendition, has been central in the government's efforts to disrupt terrorism, but has been bitterly criticized by human rights groups on grounds that the practice has violated the Bush administration's public pledge to provide safeguards against torture.
In providing a detailed description of the program, a senior United States official said that it had been aimed only at those suspected of knowing about terrorist operations, and emphasized that the C.I.A. had gone to great lengths to ensure that they were detained under humane conditions and not tortured.
The official would not discuss any legal directive under which the agency operated, but said that the "C.I.A. has existing authorities to lawfully conduct these operations."
The official declined to be named but agreed to discuss the program to rebut the assertions that the United States used the program to secretly send people to other countries for the purpose of torture. The transfers were portrayed as an alternative to what American officials have said is the costly, manpower-intensive process of housing them in the United States or in American-run facilities in other countries.
In recent weeks, several former detainees have described being subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and brutal treatment during months spent in detention under the program in Egypt and other countries. The official would not discuss specific cases, but did not dispute that there had been instances in which prisoners were mistreated. The official said none had died.
The official said the C.I.A.'s inspector general was reviewing the rendition program as one of at least a half-dozen inquiries within the agency of possible misconduct involving the detention, interrogation and rendition of suspected terrorists.
In public, the Bush administration has refused to confirm that the rendition program exists, saying only in response to questions about it that the United States did not hand over people to face torture. The official refused to say how many prisoners had been transferred as part of the program. But former government officials say that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the C.I.A. has flown 100 to 150 suspected terrorists from one foreign country to another, including to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan.
Each of those countries has been identified by the State Department as habitually using torture in its prisons. But the official said that guidelines enforced within the C.I.A. require that no transfer take place before the receiving country provides assurances that the prisoner will be treated humanely, and that United States personnel are assigned to monitor compliance.
"We get assurances, we check on those assurances, and we double-check on these assurances to make sure that people are being handled properly in respect to human rights," the official said. The official said that compliance had been "very high" but added, "Nothing is 100 percent unless we're sitting there staring at them 24 hours a day."
It has long been known that the C.I.A. has held a small group of high-ranking leaders of Al Qaeda in secret sites overseas, and that the United States military continues to detain hundreds of suspected terrorists at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan. The rendition program was intended to augment those operations, according to former government officials, by allowing the United States to gain intelligence from the interrogations of the prisoners, most of whom were sent to their countries of birth or citizenship. |
[emphasis added]
Nice places to send your suspects, Mr Bush.
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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:22
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quote:
If only we were fighting Falun Gong. The PRC is probably way better at torturing people than these amateurs... |
Really, now, you should know better than to think that ad hominem attacks are effective counterarguments.
quote:
Islamic terrorists advocate killing civilians in order to promote the establishment of an authoritarian government. They get caught and sent back to their native authoritarian government. Then, they complain when tortured by their authoritarian government. Sounds like poetic justice to me. |
First, torture is never the answer. If they are guilty, then they should be held responsible, and suffer the full weight of the law (including the death penalty). The only thing that torture does, even torture by extraordinary rendition, is to diminish the legitimacy of US actions. [For instance, we did not ratify the world court because Bush was afraid that American soldiers would be tried for warcrimes for political reasons. Who knew that a couple years later, US troops would be committing war crimes?]
But, leaving aside the issue of whether terrorists should be tortured, how do we know that these people are terrorists. Let's face it, the justice department has been very ineffective at bringing charges against people we claim are terrorists, which leads me to believe that maybe the evidence is less rock-solid then they would have us believe. I would be surprised if everyone we're extraditing is guilty, and the torturing of innocents, no matter what the excuse, is fundamentally wrong.
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Admiral
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of the peace and coexistance movement
Feb 2001
time: 00:22
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quote:
Originally posted by Whaleboy
Why mention this? What is so special about the death penalty that you would mention it, and makes anti-DP but pro-Justice (in the sense of responsibility, weight of the law and trial by evidence) weaker than pro-DP arguments here?  |
I was making two arguments in my post. First, I stated that torture, even of terrorists, is wrong. Second, I stated that we cannot really be certain that the people we torture are, in fact, terrorism, and that even if we allowed that torture is a viable sentence for terrorists, it should not be applied unless we knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, who was a terrorist, and who wasn't. Now, I am not a fan of thea death penalty, but it falls under the second argument. I am against it because it is hard to conclusively prove guilt, and there have been cases where innocent people are put to death. However, if we could conclusively prove that a person is guilty of specific crimes, than I would not be adverse to applying the DP. Hence, by specifically mentioning the DP, I was differentiating people being put to death, and people being tortured (which is an important distinction to make).
I was also trying to forestall the right-wing criticism: you're just weak on terror.
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Ramo
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Austin, Texas, USA
Oct 1999
time: 23:22
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quote:
People against US foreign policy: Stop US imperialism. Stop interfering with the internal operations of other countries.
US: Here are people we suspect of terrorism that are citizens of other countries. We will send them back and let the other countries handle things without our interference.
People against US foreign policy: Stop torture of prisoners. Start interfering with the internal operations of other countries.
US: Hmmm??? |
I don't know who these people you are referring to are, or how your "logic" works, but it's more like:
US: There's a Canadian citizen, born in Syria, who is coming back from a family vacation from Tunisia, stopping at LaGuardia. So based on nebulous suspicions of Islamist terrorism, we naturally we deny him due process, and ship him off to Syria where Islamists are brutally repressed, and militant Islamist suspects are invariably tortured. Freedom. 
People against US foreign policy: 
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Apolyton Time is 00:22. |
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07-03-2005 13:43
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