Bush Admits Secret Prisons

bush trying to get in front of something bad ..too late!

FACTBOX-Key points on secret CIA prisons
06 Sep 2006 19:29:00 GMT


Sept 6 (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced the transfer of 14 top terrorism suspects from detention by the CIA to Defense Department custody at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Following are some some key facts about secret CIA prisons and the Guantanamo prison:
* Up to now, the Bush administration had not acknowledged a secret CIA detention system for senior al Qaeda members including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the accused mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
* The existence of CIA prisons was revealed last year by the Washington Post, which said prisons had operated in Eastern European countries and elsewhere in the world. The report sparked outrage worldwide and opened the United States to new accusations of torture.
* An investigation by Europe's main human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, said 20 mostly European countries including Poland and Romania colluded in a global spiders web of CIA prisons stretching from Asia to Guantanamo Bay.
* The administration insists interrogation techniques used were lawful, in accordance with the U.S. Constitution and that no one was tortured, but it will not reveal techniques. The International Committee of the Red Cross will be given access to the suspects at Guantanamo Bay.
* Fewer than 100 terrorism suspects have been held in CIA detention, and with the transfer of 14 to Guantanamo Bay none are currently in CIA custody, administration officials say. The others in the program were either sent back to their home countries, to another country, or to Guantanamo Bay.
* CIA interrogators are volunteers chosen for their maturity and judgment with an average age of 43, officials say.
* There are about 450 prisoners held at Guantanamo, which opened at a U.S. naval base on Cuba in January 2002. Three committed suicide and about 315 others have been released or transferred to other governments.
* Ten prisoners have been charged before the U.S. military war crimes tribunals with conspiring with al Qaeda, though none is charged with direct involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks. The U.S. Supreme Court in June ruled the tribunals were illegal.


Bush has hurt this nation, yes with Muslim countries we may not be popular for a long time but under bush he has alienated non-Muslim countries which is so sad ...we used to be seen as good in the eyes of so
many people in the world ..now we are seen as a country that will deceive for political power and cronyism. The good news once this worst President is out of office either through resignation, impeachment, or end of term.

The next President will actually start to repair the damage.

A bush vision is a vision of the edge of fascism and those who are barely closeted coming out in full glory to support it and shove their ideology down peoples throats( make the trains run on time and shut up and sing with the bobble heads}

bush is a baby christian who has lost the war with his flesh more than he has won and has resorted back to his early days as a spoiled frat brat.

I will say it! bush and his family highly dysfunctional and you can blame that on no accountability and a brat mentality slipping through to hurt this nation.

 

This is not a surprise to anyone who keeps us with the news. :sleeping_2:

But I guess the liberals will still use this as an opportunity to express alarm at efforts to protect the United States from another terrorist attack.

Obviously, we need to have limits on what is allowed, but in the run-up to the November elections liberals seem to have gone to the other extreme in their desperation to gain back power.

 

Oh well . . . stale news is better than no news if you have no other options.

 

I believe they were secret for a reason weren't they? What reason was there to make them public? And why should Bush have admitted it?

 

Because the story was made public? It's old news, and who cares? I sure don't.:sleep:

 

I have no problem with secret prisons. It is only the nuts in the Democommunist party that is concerned about the civil rights of terrorists.

Joseph Botwinick

 

I think Gitmo should have been a secret. Look how much grief the liberals, commies, and islamofascists have caused over it.

 

Ditto!:thumbs:

 

Democommunist is a new term to me . . .

But, I guess if you use it enough, it will kinda grow on me.

 

:thumbs:
The Repubs should run on a platform of expanding the secret prison program. Islamofacists in secret prisons around the world. Let the people decide. Those of us who are sane do not care how they capture or hold terrorists and where the prisons are.

 

I'm not a Democrat, and I'm not a liberal. By the time I'm done with this post, I'm probably going to sound like both.

That said, this bothers me greatly.

I've spent the last 18 years active duty Air Force, with an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.

I'm not good with history, but if I recall correctly, one of the reasons our founding fathers created that document was because people in England and here in the colonies were being thrown in prisons for no good cause.

George Orwell's "1984" examined being "held accountable" for your words, even your thoughts.

Folks, I didn't sign on to become a "henchman" in some B-rated science fiction movie. The future is here; we're being told that erosion of freedoms is necessary if we want to be safe.

Well, guess what? You're not safe anyway.

Because if you say the wrong thing over your wire-tapped phone, if you word something a particular way in your monitored e-mails, you're going to be on the receiving end of a knock on the door, with an escorted trip to a jail cell, in one of those "secret prisons" Bush has admitted to.

We've already locked people up without proper due process, only to figure out six months (or more) later they shouldn't have been locked up.

The fourth amendment is supposed to protect us from unreasonable search and seizure; however, in the name of security and feeling safe at night, we're willing to overlook that amendment.

Folks, this isn't the constitution I signed on to protect and defend. A government that is basically disregarding the constitution.

It's like saying, I'm a Christian, but in order to spread the Word, I'll allow them to take my Bible away.

I will never vote for a Democrat, and I believe in the death penalty. But I absolutely refuse to cross the line that says we can spy on our own people, illegally enter their homes, search their property, and seize questionable materials, and/or hold people without due process of the law, all in the so-called name of making people feel more "safe."

I didn't like the movie "V for Vendetta"; but it had a great slogan: "People shouldn't be afraid of their governments."

If you're not afraid of your government today, you're really not seeing what's going on.

 

And the innocent. Bush finally admitted that many of them weren't terrorists at all. This is the danger in denying civil rights to "just the bad people." Inevitably, "Bad people" gets defined as "people the guys in charge don't particularly like."

This is why the founders decreed that all would have civil rights, including criminals.

They knew what many naive people have forgotten; if you can deny rights to anyone, you can deny rights to anyone.

 

Where can that quote be found?

 

Even Bush's secret tribunal cleared a number of detainees origionally claimed by Bush to be terrorists. He let them go.

Three of the seven detainees released were found not to be enemy combatants by a separate Combatant Status Review Tribunal (CSRT), making them part of a relatively small group -- 38 detainees -- whose enemy status has been reviewed at Guantanamo Bay and who have been cleared.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/20/AR2005072002473.html

We were told they were all terrorists, but privately...

 

This story doesnt say they werent terrorists or guilty. It says "they no longer" pose a threat. Big difference.

 

What bush doesn't tell you

Snippet:

During the Cold War we fought the Soviet Union, who were masters at using secret prisons and torture. We won the Cold War in part because we at least knew such behavior is reprehensible. Now, in the midst of a newly declared non-war war, we have met the enemy and surrendered our nation's integrity and honor. Republicans and Democrats need to come together on one critical point--when it comes to fighting terrorists, we cannot and should not act like terrorists. That's a point George Bush still does not grasp.


Link

snippet:
According to Bush, secret prisons and torture have kept America safe. Not entirely true. While fessing up to the secret prisons, one of the critical things Bush failed to tell the American people was that CIA interrogators learned the hard way that torture was not an effective interrogation method. Books written by Jim Risen and Ron Suskind during the past two years provide compelling accounts that torture against people, particularly Khalid Sheikh Mohamad (KSM), was ineffective. Suskind recounts that KSM, one of the masterminds behind the 9-11 attack, was waterboarded--a technique designed to make you feel like you are drowning. Interrogators also threatened to rape and murder his family. KSM reportedly replied, "Do what you will, my family will be with God".

 

Therein lies the key to our disagreement.

My "good cause" and yours may be different. Who's the arbiter?

 

Good post Don, I agree. Let's just call those people that refuse to see what is going on the "not see's". Their rhetoric today sounds alot like another group from history with a similar sounding title. They had secret prisons then also, which today's "not see's" have condemned repeatedly for the abuses inflicted in them. I think that's called a double standard. Secret prisons and arrests are about as un American as it gets.