I reacted to the announcement by President Bush that the CIA had Al Qaeda prisoners in secret prisons being interrogated the same way a 10 year old reacts to being told something obvious: Duh. Even before the Washington Post revealed that big secret last year, did anyone really not know? Of course they had secret places where they interrogated such prisoners. Would you want them not to? When they capture someone like Khalid Sheik Mohammed, they have to interrogate them (they are probably the most important sources of intelligence we can have other than an infiltrator) and they have to do so somewhere secret (or they risk having that place blown up or attacked to free him).
Watching the reaction around the blogosphere, I have to confess to being baffled by it. Some are treating this as some startling admission, while others are treating it as a stroke of political genius to now demand that Congress pass a law detailing how they will be handled in military tribunals. That's all quite absurd. The President could have had such a law anytime he wanted; after all, his party controls both houses. And Congress was going to have to pass one eventually to establish the structure and standards to be used by the military tribunals they've set up. It all strikes me as a rather non-eventful big event.
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Err, isnt the point that theyre not secret-from-the-general-public, but secret-from-the-country-that-theyre-in. If China had secret prisons in the US to interrogate people everyone here would go nuts.
Secret prisoners in secret prisons in secret countries secretly interrogated for a secret length of time before they are secretly... What?
No, I guess I don't particularly want my country being part of that.
I suspect if they put everything they've got into it, they can secure a single prison. I'd even be willing to have it here in Wisconsin. Even in my own town.
Hell, they could put it in New Orelans. Even the United States government doesn't seem to be able to get in there and do anything.
zwa:
What makes you think those countries don't know what's going on, at least the intelligence services?
"If China had secret prisons in the US to interrogate people everyone here would go nuts."
Or they'd make a movie about it with Brad Pitt and Robert Redford.
I would say there's another point in that they're hiding the location so they can disregard the rules of interrogation and human dignity. Secret torture camps without any oversight? That's a big deal. At least, to me.
Things such as http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1103AP_Bush_World_View.html
"European lawmakers condemned the existence of secret prisons and demanded to know their locations."
This suggests that the prisons are secret from the countries themselves.
Ok, further reading of that article shows that it is suggests the contrary.
Um, they could... you know... interrogate them in existing legally-defined prisons? As per, you know... the law? And no, I don't want my government having secret prisons. Especially not secret prisons in other countries.
I have a big problem with this country running secret prisons with no oversight. I'm fine with it not being public knowledge but someone outside of the military and the CIA needs to be aware what is going on.
I would agree with that, there has to be some oversight. All interrogations should be videotaped, for example, and submitted to some sort of oversight outside of the CIA, perhaps even a FISA judge (this is the court that oversees foreign intelligence gathering, after all). But I think it's unrealistic to think that such prisons (safehouses is probably a more accurate description) are necessary in situations like this. When they capture someone like Khalid Sheik Muhammed, time is absolutely of the essence. You want to get as much information from him as you can before anyone knows he's gone because so much of that information loses its usefulness once his partners know he's gone and that he might give up. They would quickly change locations, meeting places, access codes, means of communication, and so forth. Most of our intelligence gathering is going to come from covert spying and from interrogating people like this, and that requires secret locations out of which to operate. If they put out a sign in front of a safehouse in Karachi that said "CIA Headquarters", it would certainly undermine their ability to do their job. And make no mistake about the fact that their job is absolutely necessary in this situation.
And by the way, this is entirely different from a situation like Abu Ghraib, which did not house high value intelligence targets but rather housed mostly run of the mill criminals and Hussein supporters (which is what makes what happened at Abu Ghraib infinitely more disgusting and pointless).
Ed, I think some of the shock of the blogosphere has been because suddenly the Bush administration is doing exactly what it has described as "Treason" before - revealing the existence of the secret prisons. When that news first broke in the media, the administration acted like the newspapers had published the whereabouts of every military division in Iraq. They claimed, IIRC, at the time that even revealing the existence of these prisons was a violation of national security. Apparently something changed and they have not explained what.
The other issue I have with this story is the likelihood that those interrogations actually included torture, as at Gitmo and in Iraqi prisons. If that is the case, it is very possible the government has destroyed the ability to prosecute these men, because any/all evidence is now tainted.
I think the admission that we do this, when it was deliberately denied to our faces, and that we torture and want to legitimize torture, is a pretty big deal. I'm not sure it's absolutely wrong, but its certainly a HUGE whirlwind of worms that we might want to spend some time thinking about before we jump into it.
Really? If they don't mind putting run-of-the-mill criminals and Hussein supporters there and claiming they're terrorists, I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to do so with secret prisons.
It's all a ruse to throw us off of "double secret" prisons.