Torture, complicity and other minor matters

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/120205M.shtml

Pressure is mounting on the White House to answer claims that the CIA is using UK airports to fly terrorist suspects for torture in secret prisons in Europe. Elizabeth Wilmshurst, the former Foreign Office lawyer who resigned over the Iraq war, warned Tony Blair last night that he cannot duck the questions crowding in about the flights which could mean Britain has been complicit in torture.

In The Independent, Ms Wilmshurst, now a fellow of Chatham House, said the Prime Minister could not justify breaking the international convention against torture by saying the "rules of the game have changed" because of the war on terrorism.

Britain's European partners stepped up the pressure for details to be disclosed about hundreds of secret flights by CIA-operated jets.

So Blair is finally facing allegations of complicity in torture from various sides, including the European partners. Excuse me, but what about these partners themselves?

Twenty-six planes apparently used by the CIA have made 307 flights in Europe since 9/11. Of these, 94 had stops in Germany and 76 in Britain, at Luton, Glasgow, Prestwick and Northolt. The UK government has denied prisoners are being held on a US-operated base on British-owned Diego Garcia.

Germany, for instance, has had these flights going via the US base at Frankfurt airport and Ramstein Airbase. So all are equally guilty, not one is innocent. Since the occupation after World War II, the US and UK still maintain bases, airfields and military zones within Germany, areas over which the German government has no jurisdiction, control or power. For the UK the question must be whether these flights were going across areas they did not control, or via regular airports. If regular airports, then the government should have known about them. Last time I checked Luton was a civilian airport.

EU leaders are ready to follow up their request to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, to challenge the White House. On Tuesday he wrote to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, calling for details of the secret flights to be revealed. Mr Straw said yesterday he had raised the issue with Ms Rice. She is likely to face direct challenges about flights when she visits Brussels next week.

Nope, can't see it, the UK actually challenging the US? Highly unlikely, not so much a growling bulldog demanding information, more like a lapdog pinching you. And of course he will represent Europe. I am so glad to see that we have leaders who know which country will not ask probing questions, and will get of lightly in the rebuke.

There is a debate in the US about whether torture should be permitted for extracting information. A Bill tabled by Senator John McCain to outlaw torture passed the Senate but is being opposed by Vice President Dick Cheney, who wants special exemption for CIA agents.

Well, we already knew what the US thinks about the Geneva Convention, this merely confirms it. If it can abandon the Convention when it comes to prisoners, then why not to torture. You can just imagine the brainstorming session: "I know, we'll just give the prisoners a funny name, then we can treat them as we like. Not prisoners of war, more like enemy combatants. And while we are at it, lets think of another name for kidnapping someone of the streets and taking him to be tortured, how does extraordinary rendition sound? " If I were an American I would be concerned at the ease with which the current government abandons all these supposedly basic human right principles. If it can do so with ease vis a vis foreigners without the US public protesting, who says they will protest once the same treatment is applied to a US citizen? Silly me, they already do, and the public does not care.

Finally all will die down and the flights, kidnapping and torture will continue as before. Remember Abu Ghraib? Well they slapped some people on the wrist, and now the subject has died down, but as these flights show the torture hasn't. It's been merely shifted to places where people do not ask so many questions and where there are less reporters who might pick up on a story. Next episode, torture ships out at sea.

PS. In the 60's my parents were nearly arrested in Germany while walking close to a US military installation. They are not marked on maps, I was informed by my mother.

PPS Whatever happened to discussions about Echelon? Particularly now that the EU wants to set up one of its own!