As I write this, John Negroponte seems poised to become the United State's first "Intelligence Czar". (And how I loath that phrase, no matter how many times I fantasize about the CIA staging its own October Revolution.) Those interested in who Big John is and/or what he's done are invited to get off their lazy asses and do some damned research. After all, there is this wonderful thing called the Internet...
I'll come right out and say this to all of you who are in the know (the time for bush beating has passed): I fear the death squads. I fear Big John. I fear the very idea of one man pulling the financial strings of all fifteen civilian and military intelligences services. The very idea that our government requires fifteen spy houses just to keep its jaundiced eye on the world gives me a serious case of the heebees.
"Oh, but it can't happen here," you say. And that's a logical knee-jerk reaction (not to mention a great Sinclair Lewis book). But of course it can. This is America, after all. Right? Anything can happen here. Isn't that, like, a law?
Yes. Laws. We have plenty of laws. But no one sits in a better position to circumvent the law then those who make and are sworn to protect it. This is a historical truism from Sparta to Stalin--and the sooner we realize it the safer we'll be.
For example (one a little closer to home than Sparta or Stalin) let's talk about torture.
The New Yorker reports that our government has aquired the bad habit of arresting foreign nationals and shipping them overseas--to places like Syria, Jordan, and our old friend Egypt.
"This program had been devised as a means of extraditing terrorism suspects from one foreign state to another for interrogation and prosecution. Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America?including torture.
"What began" it continues "as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects?people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants?came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms ?illegal enemy combatants.? Many of them have never been publicly charged with any crime. Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates that a hundred and fifty people have been rendered since 2001.
Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that a more precise number was impossible to obtain. ?I?ve asked people at the C.I.A. for numbers,?he said. ?They refuse to answer. All they will say is that they?re in compliance with the law.?
Read it. And weep.
This is the first, major revelation in the Torture story in a long time. Months at least. Oh, sure, they Alberto Gonzales is the new Attorney General. And they sent that jackass from Abu Ghraib up the river, but if he wasn't a sacrificial lamb I'll eat the next house pet I see.
Or maybe I won't. Maybe we don't care. Maybe we, as a nation, have so dehumanized the Arab (or "terrorist") that we honestly don't give a fuck if they are tortured.
I just can't help but be worried about things like this:
"Negroponte supervised the construction of the El Aguacate air base where Nicaraguan Contras were trained by the U.S., and which some critics say was used as a secret detention and torture center during the 1980s. In August 2001, excavations at the base discovered 185 corpses, including two Americans, who are thought to have been killed and buried at the site."
