Tag: black sites

Aug 11 2008

Ghost Islands: Diego Garcia

WANTED: Extraterritorial location for indefinite detentions, torture of prisoners, and gigantic secret military installation.  Island preferred, remoteness a plus; must be cleared of troublesome natives and provide for completely restricted access.  Ideal landlord would consist of a compliant allied government willing to eat up the obvious bullshit that we’re going to spew trying to explain the patently illegal actions we carry out on their territory.

Contact:  D. Vader, US Naval Observatory.  Seriously corrupt inquiries only.

Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where our old ally Great Britain will answer the above ad – by cravenly permitting the United States to reverse-colonize Her Majesty’s empire on the island of Diego Garcia.  Upon (and in the waters near to) this speck of coral in the Indian Ocean, the British and Americans have established a base/prison/human rights deprivation facility that has played a larger role in the Global War of Terror than even Guantanamo Bay – a fact to which the Brits, at least, are finally growing wise.

Feb 18 2008

Outsourcing Torture? It Depends.

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

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Torture At Abu Ghraib

It depends on what you mean by “outsourcing.”  If, like me, you’ve been assuming that “interrogations” of detainees prisoners at Guantanamo and the “black sites” were all being conducted only by CIA employees or uniformed armed forces personnel or at the very least US government employees, you’re probably making a mistake.  The facts seem to be that “interrogations” have frequently been conducted by “contractors” and not by government employees.  That’s right.  Arguments about what the CIA’s employees can and cannot do don’t directly address what contractors can do any more than US law determines how prisoners are to be interrogated after they are extraordinarily renditioned illegally extradited to other countries.

Follow me behind the facade.

Oct 19 2007

Brits to investigate possible complicity in U.S. war crimes

The story, out of England, is pretty straight-forward, but the implications are stunning; or, they would be stunning, if the repeated crimes and inhumanity of the Bush Administration had not fried whatever synapses allow us to feel stunned.

The Guardian reports:

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called “black site” prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.