How can you tell we are in deep s...?

...perhaps when we cannot pay the tips for the miscellaneous costs of flying prisoners.

EIGHTY-NINE QUESTIONS: WHAT DID LIBYA DO FOR THE C.I.A.?

by Amy Davidson

How many more ways can evidence of America’s rendition and torture practices come to light? Earlier this week, it was thanks to a dispute over who would pay for muffins, airphone calls, and a plane to fly prisoners to secret prisons. Now, it’s with papers in a binder marked “C.I.A.” found in one of Qaddafi’s offices in Tripoli. (Jon Lee Anderson was on the scene for The New Yorker.) What next—an Eastern European military officer’s divorce trial, an election campaign in Asia, an iPhone prototype left in a bar? (That’s another story.) A program that involved hiding people from our country’s laws and courts, and outsourcing their interrogation to willing torturers—including, according to the documents, Qaddafi—left traces scattered around the world, waiting to be stumbled upon. A way they haven’t been cataloged, though, is the way they should have been: through a true reckoning by our own government. Instead, President Obama decided, in effect, that what was done was done. But it isn’t.

The “C.I.A.” binder was accompanied by two marked “MI6,” and the office they were in belonged to a man the Times described as “Libya’s former spymaster.” The paper also noted that, in the circumstances, their authenticity was hard to verify. (The C.I.A.’s response was not exactly a denial: “It can’t come as a surprise that the Central Intelligence Agency works with foreign governments to help protect our country from terrorism and other deadly threats.”) Peter Bouckaert, the emergencies director of Human Rights Watch, sat down and read through the binders. There were talking points for Qaddafi, logistical details for flights, and what seems to have been the bartering of Qaddafi’s opponents, some of whom had ties to Islamist groups, for his cooperation. One of them is now a rebel leader.

All in all, there were “thousands of pieces of correspondence from US and UK officials,” according to the BBC, which then quoted Bouckaert:

It wasn’t just abducting suspected Islamic militants and handing them over to the Libyan intelligence…The CIA also sent the questions they wanted Libyan intelligence to ask and, from the files, it’s very clear they were present in some of the interrogations themselves.

Its dealings in Libya are not the C.I.A.’s only problem; nor is the C.I.A. the only problem. The Washington Post has two new pieces in its “Top Secret America” series that one should read. The first, by Julie Tate and Greg Miller, is on the C.I.A.’s shift away from learning things and toward killing people considered dangerous (and who makes that call?), with analysts becoming “targeters.” The other, by Dana Priest and William Arkin, is about the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which has held some thousand prisoners “in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.” (“We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a SEAL told the Post.) The “C.I.A.” binder in Tripoli included “a list of 89 questions for the Libyans to ask a suspect,” the Times said. We should have at least that many—many more—for our own government.

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In democracies it is really easy. Economic power buys military power and military power buys political power. As one former US president so eloquently put it; "Its the economy, stupid"
by henkers




"(“We’re the dark matter. We’re the force that orders the universe but can’t be seen,” a SEAL told the Post.)" This may come across to many as simply a grandiose brag by one of the US Navy commando troops very proud of his groups' "accomplishments". However when put in general everyday language, the above statement is saying, "We enforcers turn all the words that make up orders/mandate/regulations/laws/edicts/directives/etc. issued by government legislators, executives (including the President), judges and bureaucrats into physical force upon the intended victim(s)." The point the SEAL was making - though I am certain he intended it to mean none other than for his particular military group - is that enforcers are *key* to all the words issued by their bosses in government. He's correct! And it is true for all government enforcers, including the domestic ("law enforcement officers") variety that without these initiators of physical force all those numerous official commanding words would be nothing but soundwaves and/or scribbles. Want to see these wars end?! Encourage and promote non enlistments in the military. No high ranking military or politicians are going to get out in the field - or even push the necessary buttons to launch weapons - and get their own hands dirty and/or bloody. No, rulers (and their adjutants) will always depend on underlings who have not yet been sufficiently persuaded by others that it is not in their own and anyone's longterm best interest to be a party to these actions. With far fewer troops available to each government, foreign wars will not be possible and only defense actions against invaders will be considered. This is not simply idealistic dreaming. It is a call to all individuals who want to see wars end to take personal responsibility for not approving with their continued voluntary association those among them who choose to continue to participate in wars, despite reasoned persuasion to get truly productive jobs.
 by KittyAntonikWakfer




Time for Obama to plan his own exit ... From office.
by sloper




It beggars the definition of word 'hypocrite' to contemplate that our government, which for decades, has excoriated Libya and Gadaffi as brutal barbarians, but at the same time, in secret, hires them to carry out the very worst barbarities on prisoners (kidnappees) in American charge. Americans who engage in this kind of activity are worthy only of death. They should be exposed, tried and executed as a warning to others who seem to feel being in the government is a free pass on morality and accountability.
by cythara




In simple terms, the USA, the great champion of moral authority in the world (as it sees itself) is by that definition the more guilty of the torture and murder it conducts (directly or by proxy) than the Gadaffi's,Hussein's Assad's and Khameni's - those over whom the US claims moral superiority. Obama is to my knowledge the only US President to have imposed a death sentence on a US citizen without the benefit of any legal process for presumed treason - putting him on a par with those same Gadaffi's,Hussein's Assad's and Khameni's. Time for Ms. Davidson to begin calling spades - well - shovels might be a start.
by JohnGilmore