Condi to Europe: Trust Me, by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
- From: bromselick@xxxxxxx
- Date: 6 Dec 2005 22:34:16 -0800
Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration --
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Secretary of State Condi Rice is off to Europe to neither confirm nor
to deny that the US government in an operation known as rendition
kidnaps people, often the wrong ones, and flies them to foreign
countries to be tortured.
"Trust me" is her line. According to Reuters, "Irish Foreign Minister
Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to
trust that America does not allow rights abuses."
Who will trust this woman who, as President Bush's National Security
Advisor, said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction
capable of producing a "mushroom cloud" over an American city?
Who will trust this woman who, as National Security Advisor, said
Saddam Hussein sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped
train some in chemical weapons development (CNN report, Sept. 26, 2002,
1:28 PM EDT)?
Who will trust this woman who won't answer a question but says "trust
me"?
On November 14, 2005, Middle East expert Juan Cole reported that the
911 Commission Report revealed that captured al Qaeda members Khalid
Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda informed the US government that Osama
bin Laden prohibited al Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the
secular Arab nationalist Saddam Hussein. In the run-up to the Iraqi
invasion, this critical information was withheld from Congress and the
American people. Instead, the Bush administration worked to create the
belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11
attacks.
The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear that it believes,
with no apologies, that the ends justify the means. Lying is simply a
means to an end. What Condi Rice is telling Europeans is "pay no
attention to our lies; just accept that we are liars for a good and
proper cause."
What other proof do we need of the Bush administration's low esteem for
truth than the fact, revealed by the Los Angeles Times, that the Bush
administration has been caught paying journalists to write favorable
stories about the war in Iraq? First they rigged the "intelligence"
used to start a war; then they rigged the news reports about the war.
And these people think they should be trusted?
Details of specific rendition cases are so much in the news as to make
Condi Rice's stonewalling absurd. On December 4 the Washington Post
reported that in May of last year the US ambassador to Germany was
dispatched by the White House to inform the German Interior Minister
that the CIA had kidnapped a German citizen, Khaled Masri, and flown
him to a CIA prison in Afghanistan where he was held for five months.
The Americans told the Germans that Masri was innocent and would be
released. The Germans were instructed to say nothing about the incident
even if Masri went public, because the US did not want to acknowledge
the rendition program. In other words, the Bush administration expects
any other government that finds out about its wrongful actions to keep
quiet about them even when its own citizens are victimized.
Gentle reader, who could possibly believe Rice's reassurances that the
US respects the sovereignty of other countries when it is established
fact that the US kidnaps other countries' citizens abroad and flies
them off to torture prisons?
To comprehend the importance of due process, a process that the Bush
administration has destroyed for "suspects" be they American citizens
or foreigners, entertain that on the way to work one morning you are
forcefully intercepted and spirited away to Afghanistan or to Egypt or
any of the other locations of US torture prisons. Why are you there,
you wonder. Did a personal enemy or envious colleague report you on a
false charge? Did a tortured suspect somewhere utter a name that
resembled yours?
Nonsense, it can't happen, you say? Alas, it happened to Masri and
perhaps 3,000 others who are estimated to have been "renditioned."
According to the Washington Post, a CIA official said that Masri was
kidnapped and held secretly for five months because the woman in charge
of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit "believed he was
someone else. She didn't really know. She just had a hunch."
Isn't it reassuring that the US government toys with people's lives on
the basis of female intuition?
This is justice in America, a country that is teaching Iraq about
democracy through force of arms.
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Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University
of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The
Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@xxxxxxxxx
.
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