This link went to a strange place.
Of course, if we knew that there were secret prisons, then there wouldn't be secret prisons, because secret prisons are by definition secret, and if we knew about them, then by definition they wouldn't be secret.
Egad. My head is spinning.
"Egad. My head is spinning."
Not surprising. 
"No American will be allowed to torture any human being anywhere on earth."
--George W. Bush, Jan. 26, 2006.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
wp...6012600853.html
The truth is out there.
Don't say I didn't warn you not to play with definitions, Kevin. Dangerous stuff.
What Mr. Marty really means is that, "even though we may have jumped to conclusions or simply been full of crap, we're not going to let that stop us from making another unsubstantiated allegation."
Doubting Thomas -
you can google "proof C.I.A. jails ny times". I think it's the first one that comes back.
The link may not work because of how the NY Times limits online access to members.
Interestingly enough, I googled:
"ny times CIA secret prisons" and came back with this:
"DISPLAYING FIRST 50 OF 871 WORDS -The Central Intelligence Agency has asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation to determine the source of a Washington Post article that said the agency had set up a covert prison network in Eastern Europe and other countries to hold important terrorism suspects, government officials said on..."
If Rich's other "unsubstantiated allegation" is the rendition program, then he's in for a much more difficult fight. Renditions have been reported by some of the CIA's own retired officers, by prisoners who claim to have been rendered to 3rd countries and tortured, and by foreign governments (notably Italy) who are pissed that we have snatched their own citizens off the streets of their countries and taken them to other countries without notifying any local authorities.
I'm glad to see that the secret prisons may not exist. The renditions, alas, are considerably better documented, Bush's mendacious denials notwithstanding.
I haven't turned up any evidence that Mr. X beats his wife or starves his children, but there are enough "indications" to justify continuing the investigation.
Earl -
"indications" may just be comments by anti-Bush administration types. Or they may be real.
Mr. X May be a good guy, targeted by someone who decides he doesn't like him. Or he may not be.
That's why we're waiting before we jump to any conclusions.
The rendition program may have started under Clinton:
==================================
The AFP is reporting that the CIA's "rendition" program was started under the Clinton Administration.
The US Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) controversial "rendition" program was launched under US president Bill Clinton, a former US counter-terrorism agent has told a German newspaper.
Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, has told Die Zeit that the US administration had been looking in the mid-1990s for a way to combat the terrorist threat and circumvent the cumbersome US legal system.
"President Clinton, his national security adviser Sandy Berger and his terrorism adviser Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al Qaeda," Mr Scheuer said.
"We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said 'That's up to you'."
Mr Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, says he developed and led the "renditions" program.
He says the program includes moving prisoners without due legal process to countries without strict human rights protections.
=============================
Hopefully we'll soon have more info about if Bush made changes.
I really don't know. This is a serious question.
Are these persons renditioned to their home country, or to other countries?
Translation:
We have no proof the US did anything wrong nor operated any prisons, but we know they did bad stuff anyway. Probably. Just believe us until we find the proof.
CIA prisons sounds like cold fusion.
Rendition sounds like a horrendous idea. Torture is definitely a bad thing.
But, for the life of me, I can't find any reason to oppose keeping the location where al-Quaeda members are held secret. Surely this isn't against the moral law, is it?
Psst. The Bush regime has opened up a network of secret poultry brothels in scary places in Eastern Europe. You don't know about them because they're secret. Hang on, I'm gonna look for a passage in the Catechism that says that it's wrong for human beings to have sex with poultry and then we can have a heated debate about why some Catholics still support the Bush regime even though this regime is promoting such heinous activities.
Ok.
He cited my research on rendition. He cited only a tiny fraction of what he could have. It is solid, solid, solid.
And yes, it did start under Clinton. Though under Clinton they tended to do it to high level suspects, and now they do it on the flimsiest evidence, to innocents and scrubs. Most of the high level suspects are sent elsewhere.
I am convinced Human Rights Watch's charges about the prisons are true, because I personally know their staff, I know how careful they are, and I know they cannot always reveal their sources, even to the point of revealing that they have sources. If they say it's true...I understand that not everyone will feel that way about them.
But the fact that Marty turned up no new evidence is not surprising. He doesn't have secret sources. He doesn't have subpoena power. He doesn't have access to the relevant government records. He's had to ask for these things. I think they've finally given him some flight records, but it happened after the interim report.
Oh, a few more things:
1) Dana Priest, that Washington Post reporter? Also incredibly trustworthy.
I wish her editors would let her publish the locations of the prisons--now that they've apparently been relocated to North Africa I don't really see the national security threat.
2) Some prisoners are rendered to their home country. Some are dual citizens of say, Syria and Canada, and Egypt and Australia, and are sent back to the country that they left decades ago, of which they only remain citizens because that country will not recognize renunciation of citizenship. Some are just taken somewhere else.
3) As for why secret prisons are bad: if you can "disappear" people, you can torture them. You can also detain people forever without trial--not something that might upset you for say, KSM, but there have been innocent people sent to CIA secret prisons. Khaled el-Masri, for one--German used car salesmen, name similar to a terrorist.
Human rights groups say that there is no higher risk factor for torture than incommunicado detention. Governments do bad things in the dark--even our own, it is more and more clear. They've authorized "waterboarding" at these sites, probably also mock burial. Detainees have been chained naked to a floor and died of hypothermia. It's bad stuff.
Too bad I was a week late to the party on this thread.
Katherine,
But what about the chickens?
charming.
Groundless accusations against our military are far less charming than childish posts about poultry prostitution. And, just for the record, I do not condone poultry prositution or any other form of poultry sexual abuse.
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