Thought Docket

A friend of mine who is, shall we say, more progressive than I am, posted a link in Facebook to a post from FireDogLake titled The Three Stooges of the Apocalypse. FireDogLake.com is a blog started by Jane Hamsher. Hamsher has connections with Hollywood, the Huffington Post, and Markos Moulitsas.

The post, preserved with original links to various stories, follows.

Cut to: interior.  A poorly lit, dingy office with framed 8 x 10 photos of second-rate comedians, burlesque performers, and the occasional evangelist line the walls. The windows are smudged and dirty.  A desk is piled high with photos, audition videos, and demo tapes.  We see

the soles of a pair of shoes on one corner of the desk. A plume of cigar smoke snakes its way to the stained ceiling. A man, barely visible behind a mound of paper, barks into the telephone.

Ralphie:

Sid! It’s me. . . . Right. It’s your crazy aunt Sheila. No, you schmuck, it’s Ralphie from Bush League Talent. . . No, no you don’t owe me any money . . . Look, just shut up and listen, okay?  I have a comedy act that is guaranteed to fill the seats of movie houses every night for the next four years. . . . Yes, right, until 2012.  Good to see you can still do math. It’s a wonder your company’s in the toilet.  Listen, it’s a trio, two guys and a gal . . . no, it’s a comedy act, no nudity . . . Yeah, well let me explain the premise, okay?  There’s these three idiots — the leader, Bobby, thinks he’s smart, but he’s just got a bigger vocabulary than the other two.  The real doofus is the other guy, Mikey, whose portrayal of a black guy circa 1983 is so frickin’ on the money that you find yourself wondering why you sold your “Thriller” album on eBay. And the babe, Sarah, plays the straight man, but she’s the real brains of the group. Anyway, the fate of the country rests with these three maroons, but they’re so incompetent that they’re always getting into some sort of trouble that ends up with them poking themselves in the eye and falling on banana peels.  Real slapstick kind of stuff.  I know that sounds like it’s been done before, but never with a babelicious woman and two brown-skinned mooks.  Trust me on this, Sid. This is going to be the biggest draw out there since Katie Harris went full frontal. . . . Sid?  Sid, you still there? . . . . Ah, shit.

[Fade out.]

I like how the left are continuing to attack Republicans, nearly 4 months after Obama’s election. It makes me think there is not much good news for them to latch on to. Certainly the stock market has taken a great big Number 2 all over Obama’s stimulus package and subsequent budget proposal. Just today, there was news of another tax cheat nominated by Obama administration (trade envoy designate Ron Kirk). Maybe it would be better if the Washington Post reported as news those instances when someone joins the Obama administration who is not a tax cheat. We have Obama basically carrying out the Bush administrations Iraq policy. We have Hilary Clinton sounding pessimism over outreach to Iran. John McCain is returning to his old cranky self, blasting Obama about breaking his vow to end earmarks. I bet McCain is sorry he ever said that we had nothing to fear from Obama. Obama is taking his sweet time in shuttering GTMO for many reasons. We’re starting to learn that we had a lot of help with interrogations, much of it from the European bed-wetters that Obama wowed in July.

I could go on and on. But here is what really caught my eye in the post above.

…a babelicious woman and two brown-skinned mooks.

Do you know what a mook is? I had to look it up. I knew it wouldn’t be good. Mook: a contemptible, incompetent person. And brown-skinned? I am so proud of this past election, and proud of John McCain and the Republican party that race was not a real issue. Good for us and good for America. Well, race was not much of an issue. For whom was race an issue?

• Race was an issue for that mook from Pennsylvania, Jack Murtha, who accused Pennsylvanians of being redneck and racist. Somehow he got re-elected.
• Race was apparently an issue for some African Americans, who wondered whether Obama was “black enough”.

Race is obviously on the mind of Attorney General Eric Holder, who has called out America as cowards when it comes to discussions on race. I bet that liberals heard Holder say this and immediately thought “good, he’s calling out conservatives”. Sorry folks, but the people that are most hung up on race are liberals, who need race to be an issue to boost their success at the polls. I won’t hold my breath waiting for liberals to denounce “brown-skinned mooks”. What better evidence is there that the Obama shooting star is already starting to [Fade out].

A recent article in the Washington Post, Britain Acknowledges 2 Detainees Are in U.S. Prison in Afghanistan, tells

The British government, after years of denying it had any role in the U.S. policy of “extraordinary rendition,” acknowledged yesterday that two prisoners its military forces turned over to U.S. custody in Iraq five years ago were subsequently sent to a U.S. prison in Afghanistan.

In a statement to Parliament, Defense Secretary John Hutton apologized for what he said was “inaccurate information . . . given to the House by my department” on previous occasions. The transfer, he said, was unknown to his predecessor and came to his attention only in December during an internal investigation in response to parliamentary questions.

Hutton said that the rendition involving two Pakistani men, who have been in custody at Bagram air base in Afghanistan since 2004, violated a U.S.-British memorandum of understanding specifying that “no person captured with assistance” from British forces “will be removed from the territory of Iraq without prior consultation.”

The Pentagon quickly took responsibility for the lapse. “There was a level of formal coordination that should have taken place with respect to a transfer of this nature,” spokesman Bryan Whitman said. “Unfortunately, that did not occur in this case. It was an error.”

I have a little difficulty in interpreting just what Britain is acknowledging. The article UK concedes involvement in rendition in Deutsche Welle makes things a little bit more explicit

Britain’s government has for the first time admitted direct involvement in the controversial US program of extraordinary rendition. Defence Secretary John Hutton told lawmakers that two men, captured in Iraq in 2004, were handed over to US agents who moved them to Afghanistan. Hutton said the men were members of a Pakistani terrorist organisation and that the US told Britain at the time that it lacked the necessary linguists in Iraq to interrogate the men. The minister acknowledged that the admission contradicted earlier government assurances that no prisoners had been handed over for transfer to third countries and apologised for the error. Human rights groups and some lawmakers have demanded a complete government inquiry into the transfer of prisoners. Previous concerns have focussed on the remote British outpost of Diego Garcia to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects.

This article states concerns that Diego Garcia, which is British dependent territory, was used “to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects”, as if Diego Garcia was a destination for CIA extraordinary renditions. According to this article in the Middle East Times, there were concerns over refueling of CIA flights at Diego Garcia

Foreign Secretary David Miliband last year admitted that two rendition flights landed on British territory in 2002, when US planes refuelled on the British dependent territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

Rendition, interrogation, refueling? Diego Garcia may be all of the above.

Getting back to the British acknowledgement, it seems likely that Britain was informed that the detainees would be transferred from Iraq at the time that they were turned over. Did Britain knowingly turn detainees over to the CIA? The articles are a little bit vague, because they use terms like “US custody” and “US agents”, almost as if they are trying to avoid using a simpler, more common term (or acronym).

I’m not troubled when the US takes Pakistanis captured on the battlefield in Iraq to Afghanistan. In fact, I would not be troubled if they took them to Diego Garcia. But recently, we have learned that holier-than-thou countries have both participated in detainee transfers and have been observers and participants in interrogations. The next time the bed-wetters take to the streets of a European capital to protest the United States - for interrogation techniques, GTMO, and rendition - some introspection will be in order. For, lacking such introspection, our proper response should be STFU.

An article In this past Friday’s Washington Post, Interviews Of Terror Suspects Challenged, tells us a little something about the scope of international participation at Guantanamo. According to the article

The U.S. military has allowed intelligence and law enforcement agents from at least 18 countries to interrogate Guantanamo inmates since the detention center opened in 2002, according to the Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York-based group that provides legal representation to many Guantanamo prisoners.

According to the group, interrogators from Tunisia, Libya, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Jordan verbally threatened citizens of their countries held at Guantanamo, warning them that they would be abused at home if they didn’t cooperate. Other countries that have sent interrogators to Guantanamo include Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Morocco, the center says.

I know, there is a big debate going right now over whether there was any good intelligence obtained from detainees. So, the takeaway is that Tunisia, Libya, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Jordan, Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain and Morocco - and at least six more countries - all felt that it was worthwhile sending interrogators to GTMO. Why? Because the perceived benefits outweighed the costs. And aren’t many of these countries the same bed-wetters that have blasted the United States for torture? Pot, meet kettle.

Surely, France would not participate in interrogations. I mean, France would never be so base as to commit torture or violate human rights, would they. Opps, sorry. Quel horror! I forgot about the Algerian War of Independence. Never mind.

According to Finnish diplomat and the U.N. special investigator for human rights Martin Scheinin

…foreign agents visiting Guantanamo or secret U.S. jails overseas committed “an internationally wrongful act” even if they merely observed interrogations.

“They were acting in breach of their legal obligations in regard to the prohibition on torture and arbitrary detention,” Scheinin, who is also a law professor at the European University Institute in Florence, said in a telephone interview.

Later in the article, Scheinin is quoted

“We have had a witch hunt for alleged terrorists for the past 7 1/2 years,” he said. “Now I think the witch hunt is over and it is time for the law to step in.”

Scheinin does not appear to have any axe to grind, does he? “Alleged terrorists”? Let’s see, according to this, a total of 218 detainees were from Afghanistan, and 8 were from Iraq (!). The other 70% were from 50 other countries. The leading contributors behind Afghanistan are Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Pakistan, Algeria, China, Morocco, Libya, Kuwait, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Sudan, Syria, and Russia. All of these countries contributed more detainees than Iraq. Are any of these countries known for terrorism or islamic jihadists? What might the citizens of these countries been doing when they were rounded up? Selling Girl Scout cookies?

The United Kingdom has the same number of citizens in GTMO as Iraq. Why might Britain be interested in supplying questions and interrogating the UK detainees? Does Scheinin not recall July 7, 2005? Come on Martin, I don’t expect you bed-wetters to remember 9/11, but isn’t London part of Europe? I’d expect you to remember that. Maybe you are too busy conducting your own witch hunt?