Mr President, Close Down those Gulags!


According to the AP and the Washington Post, since 9-11, the CIA has been operating secret prisons in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and certain countries in the Far East, notably Thailand.

The Post story, written by Dana Priest, says that the secret prisons were set up more or less on the spur of the moment, as a temporary fix for dealing with POWs caught around the beginnings of the Afghan campaign.

They’re known as “black sites” and their existence has been a well-kept secret.

Until now.

According to the Post, some functionary by the name of Mary McCarthy, (who has since been fired and now is facing prosecution) leaked information about these sites to Priest.

The way things are going, Priest may face prosecution, or at least be hauled before the local grand jury.

McCarthy’s guilt or innocence (if any) will be decided by the courts.

But the real question on most people's minds, is why, exactly, are such prisons allowed to exist in the first place?

One can understand the necessity for keeping POWs at makeshift prisons in the beginning, of 9-11, but the Afghan campaign has been going on now, since 9-11, and there’s been more than enough time to place any prisoners in ordinary POW camps or allied prisons.

So why the black sites?

And exactly how is the war against terrorism advanced by keeping POWs in secret prisons, cut off from even ordinary contacts? Hidden even, from humanitarian organizations.

The answer’s pretty simple.

Black sites make the use of torture much easier.

The use of torture, becomes much more viable at a secret location, than it would at an ordinary more or less open POW camp. Based on what happen in Iraq at the Abu Ghraib prison and what has been alleged to have happened at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, the strong possibility exists that the black sites are being used to commit the same kind of acts depicted in the photos taken at the Abu Ghraib prison a while back.

The legality of the whole rotten business is supposed to be contained in the CIA’s covert action authority, given it by a presidential finding. According to the Post article, six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world. Supposedly this also gave the CIA permission to set up secret prisons.

The reaction to the exposure of the black sites has taken a predictable turn.

CIA Director Porter J. Goss fulminated away before a Senate committee the other day in his own clumsy and mendacious way, by saying that unauthorized leaks of classified information about agency activities have caused “severe damage” to the CIA’s operations and that journalists who report leaks should be questioned by a grand jury.
 

   “It is my aim and it is my hope that we will witness a grand jury investigation with reporters present being asked to reveal who is leaking this information. I believe the safety of this nation and the people of this country deserves nothing less.”
 

Various right-wingers in the blogosphere are putting their two cents in too, some are arguing that Mary McCarthy was a Democrat “mole” because she apparently contributed a few thousand dollars to democrats. [Of course, had she contributed to the GOP, all you’d get is a lot of blank-faced silence from the bloggers. ]

The right wing press chimed in too. The NRO’s Mark Levin tried to show that somehow or another the whole leak business was Bill Clinton’s fault. This, despite the fact that the leaks occurred under Bush II.

And of course don’t forget Hugh Hewitt. According to Hewitt, Mary McCarthy was a thief, like say, someone who stole a computer loaded with good stuff belonging to someone else, and I guess he also thinks Dana Priest was somehow an accessory to the crime.

Most of what you read in the far right blogs and in the right-wing press is just paranoia and partisan clap trap. Easy to ignore and easy to understand;--the right thinks they have a winning issue which will lift up the sagging popularity of the GOP in general and Mr Bush in particular.

Already the right-wing blogospherians have started using the McCarthy affair as a way of branding the Democrats the party of "treason." It’s a pretty damned outrageous charge, but there’s s nothing new in it,  such nonsense goes back to the 1950s.  

Some of these crazies are trying to pin 9-11 on McCarthy. Not to mention the whole MSM. Don’t forget Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame, they’re part of the conspiracy too.

Again, nothing but paranoid, partisan clap-trap.

No one’s denying that it is clearly unlawful to reveal state secrets.

But a free society needs to provide a way to expose  government policy which is clearly wrong and in violation of American ideals,  notwithstanding any laws against the revealing of classified information.

Of course, those who chose to violate the law, must be (very rightly) prosecuted.

Maybe its true that a democracy most have some secrets, but it is hard to see how anyone benefits by having the US maintain secret prisons outside the US and therefore outside the supervision of other governmental organizations, like (say) courts.

Seriously, there’s no reason for the US to maintain GULAGS; it goes against US traditions and undermines the wa5 on terror.

Information obtained under torture is of no help to anyone and in any event should not be tolerated in a free society.

War on terror or no.

Close ‘em down Mr President, you set 'em up in the first place. 

Punditwalla--