So, after literally years of denying it, Bush finally admits that there were secret prisons, and that they are being shut down with the 14 people left in them transferred to Gitmo.
The AP has a slightly different story, with 14,000 people in the U.S. remote gulags.
In the few short years since the first shackled Afghan shuffled off to Guantanamo, the U.S. military has created a global network of overseas prisons, its islands of high security keeping 14,000 detainees beyond the reach of established law.
That whole “rule of Law” thing wasn’t serious anyway, right? Besides, it’s not like these guys didn’t deserve it. Take the people detained in Iraq, for example:
Every U.S. detainee in Iraq “is detained because he poses a security threat to the government of Iraq, the people of Iraq or coalition forces,” said U.S. Army Lt. Col. Keir-Kevin Curry, a spokesman for U.S.-led military detainee operations in Iraq.
Oh, except for this:
Many say they were caught up in U.S. military sweeps, often interrogated around the clock, then released months or years later without apology, compensation or any word on why they were taken. Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were “mistakes,” U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross.
The story goes on, talking about the experiences of these captives, of how they have no legal recourse or way to clear their names, and about how they are treated. It’s got to be pretty hard to read that and still feel like the people running these prisons are the good guys.
Of course, since a number of the prisons, and prisoners, are in Afghanistan, I can’t get too morally high here since our troops are functioning nicely as enablers for this kind of stuff.
I am sickened.
