From the wires today:
BERLIN Nov 28, 2005 — The United States has told the European Union it needs more time to respond to media reports that the CIA set up secret jails in some European nations and transported terror suspects by covert flights, the top EU justice official said Monday.
Justice and Home Affairs Commissioner Franco Frattini also warned that that any of the 25 bloc nations found to have operated secret CIA prisons could have their EU voting rights suspended. Interesting that the U.S. seems to be stalling for time on this inquiry, isn't it? Why the delay tactics? To find a way to cover allies, perhaps, or to find a way to cover themselves...? Here's the rub: ... Frattini said suspending EU voting rights would be justified under the EU treaty which stipulates that the bloc is founded on the principles of liberty, democracy, respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms and the rule of law, and that a persistent breach of these principles can be punished.
Clandestine detention centers would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. How is it that the United States finds itself wallowing among the ranks of the world's human rights violators? And why is the right in this country still living outside the bounds of reality (or shame) on this? Maybe ask Laura Ingraham next time you run into her.
Ingraham spent this morning arguing that the president and his team never made the case that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with al-Qaida or 9/11, using the vanishing newsman Charlie Gibson as her wing-man... Yes, Laura, Charlie and other delusionals on the right, President Bush has conceded there's no link, but only after he and his possee spent months building public support for the war on just that basis (here are a few administration statements for your perusal)... to the point where by September of 2003, 70 percent of Americans believed there was a link. (Hell, Stephen Hayes and the other neocons still believe it, despite ample evidence to the contrary...) And yet, the righties have gone whole hog on this new track: pretending that in fact, the administration never made such a case.
Meanwhile, is that Saddam Hussein getting all feisty with the judge at his on-again, off-again trial in Iraq? Oh no he didn't!
Tags: Iraq, Middle East, War, CIA, Foreign Policy, Media |
