trust me

[Guest guest]

December 6, 2005

 

Rendition Unto Caesar

Condi to Europe: Trust Me

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

 

Secretary of State Condi Rice is off to Europe to neither confirm nor

to deny that the US government in an operation known as rendition

kidnaps people, often the wrong ones, and flies them to foreign

countries to be tortured.

 

" Trust me " is her line. According to Reuters, " Irish Foreign Minister

Dermot Ahern said Rice told him in Washington she expected allies to

trust that America does not allow rights abuses. "

 

Who will trust this woman who, as President Bush's National Security

Advisor, said that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction

capable of producing a " mushroom cloud " over an American city?

 

Who will trust this woman who, as National Security Advisor, said

Saddam Hussein sheltered al Qaeda terrorists in Baghdad and helped

train some in chemical weapons development (CNN report, Sept. 26, 2002,

1:28 PM EDT)?

 

Who will trust this woman who won't answer a question but says " trust

me " ?

 

On November 14, 2005, Middle East expert Juan Cole reported that the

911 Commission Report revealed that captured al Qaeda members Khalid

Shaykh Muhammad and Abu Zubayda informed the US government that Osama

bin Laden prohibited al Qaeda operatives from cooperating with the

secular Arab nationalist Saddam Hussein. In the run-up to the Iraqi

invasion, this critical information was withheld from Congress and the

American people. Instead, the Bush administration worked to create the

belief that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the September 11

attacks.

 

The Bush administration has made it abundantly clear that it believes,

with no apologies, that the ends justify the means. Lying is simply a

means to an end. What Condi Rice is telling Europeans is " pay no

attention to our lies; just accept that we are liars for a good and

proper cause. "

 

What other proof do we need of the Bush administration's low esteem for

truth than the fact, revealed by the Los Angeles Times, that the Bush

administration has been caught paying journalists to write favorable

stories about the war in Iraq? First they rigged the " intelligence "

used to start a war; then they rigged the news reports about the war.

 

And these people think they should be trusted?

 

Details of specific rendition cases are so much in the news as to make

Condi Rice's stonewalling absurd. On December 4 the Washington Post

reported that in May of last year the US ambassador to Germany was

dispatched by the White House to inform the German Interior Minister

that the CIA had kidnapped a German citizen, Khaled Masri, and flown

him to a CIA prison in Afghanistan where he was held for five months.

 

The Americans told the Germans that Masri was innocent and would be

released. The Germans were instructed to say nothing about the incident

even if Masri went public, because the US did not want to acknowledge

the rendition program. In other words, the Bush administration expects

any other government that finds out about its wrongful actions to keep

quiet about them even when its own citizens are victimized.

 

Gentle reader, who could possibly believe Rice's reassurances that the

US respects the sovereignty of other countries when it is established

fact that the US kidnaps other countries' citizens abroad and flies

them off to torture prisons?

 

To comprehend the importance of due process, a process that the Bush

administration has destroyed for " suspects " be they American citizens

or foreigners, entertain that on the way to work one morning you are

forcefully intercepted and spirited away to Afghanistan or to Egypt or

any of the other locations of US torture prisons. Why are you there,

you wonder. Did a personal enemy or envious colleague report you on a

false charge? Did a tortured suspect somewhere utter a name that

resembled yours?

 

Nonsense, it can't happen, you say? Alas, it happened to Masri and

perhaps 3,000 others who are estimated to have been " renditioned. "

According to the Washington Post, a CIA official said that Masri was

kidnapped and held secretly for five months because the woman in charge

of the CIA's Counterterrorist Center's al Qaeda unit " believed he was

someone else. She didn't really know. She just had a hunch. "

 

Isn't it reassuring that the US government toys with people's lives on

the basis of female intuition?

 

This is justice in America, a country that is teaching Iraq about

democracy through force of arms.

 

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has

contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant

Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate

economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University

of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of The

Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:

paulcraigroberts

 

 

 

 

Being a pacifist between wars is as easy as being a vegetarian

between meals. " --Ammon Hennacy