Extraordinary Rendition and Torture: The System Slowly Being Exposed

President Obama may want to "Move On" and "Look Forward" but the British don't seem to have the same tendency.

The Guardian has an interesting article up

British involvement in controversial and clandestine rendition operations provoked an unprecedented row between the UK’s domestic and foreign intelligence services, MI5 and MI6, at the height of the “war on terror”, the Guardian can reveal.

The head of MI5, Eliza Manningham-Buller, was so incensed when she discovered the role played by MI6 in abductions that led to suspected extremists being tortured, she threw out a number of her sister agency’s staff and banned them from working at MI5’s headquarters, Thames House.

According to Whitehall sources, she also wrote to the then prime minister, Tony Blair, to complain about the conduct of MI6 officers, saying their actions had threatened Britain’s intelligence gathering and may have compromised the security and safety of MI5 officers and their informants.

This makes of mockery of all The British and US politicians screaming about how evil Gaddafi was.

The secret role played by MI6 was revealed after the fall of Gaddafi, when documents were found in ransacked offices of his intelligence chief, Moussa Koussa.

One, dated 18 March 2004 was a note from Sir Mark Allen, then head of counter-terrorism at MI6, to Moussa Koussa. It said: “I congratulate you on the safe arrival of Abu Abd Allah Sadiq [Abdul-Hakim Belhaj]. This was the least we could do for you and for Libya to demonstrate the remarkable relationship we have built over the years. I am so glad. I was grateful to you for helping the officer we sent out last week.”

It ends

It raised 27 questions they said would need to be answered if the full truth about the way in which Britain waged its “war on terror” was to be established.

The questions include:

• Did UK intelligence officers turn a blind eye to “specific, inappropriate techniques or threats” used by others and use this to their advantage in interrogations?

• If so, was there “a deliberate or agreed policy” between UK officers and overseas intelligence officers?

• Did the government and its agencies become “inappropriately involved in some renditions”?

• Was there a willingness, “at least at some levels within the agencies, to condone, encourage or take advantage of a rendition operation”?

Without being transparent about the whole sordid affair who can say with hand on heart that it is still not going on?

Without charging those who instigated a series of war crimes who can say that it wont happen again.

Made us safer, my arse.

I suggest reading the article in its entirety.

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The Gibson inquiry published a damning interim report before it folded. It concluded that the British government and its intelligence agencies had been involved in rendition operations, in which detainees were kidnapped and flown around the globe, and had interrogated detainees who they knew were being mistreated.

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I think it will only take one ethical government aggressively pursuing the war crimes over the past 20 years to bring the corrupt system down.

It won't be the USA I am afraid. Maybe the UK someday?

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"The justness of individual land right is not justifiable to those to whom the land by right of first claim collectively belonged"

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snoopydawg's picture

That was trying to bring charges against Bush and Cheney, but it Obama ("we tortured some folks") put pressure on the Spanish government to make him stop.

And it's still happening at baghram air base in Afghanistan and rumored to be happening on navy ships.

The psychopathology of the people who have no trouble sending kids to die so that corporations can make profits and which will see millions of people killed, drop bombs on innocent civilians or be okay with the knowledge that the people they are renditioning to other countries are going to be tortured
is something I can't wrap my mind around.
Hey DiFi, why did you spend $6 million of our taxes on getting the torture report from the CIA and then do nothing about it? Accessory of the crime.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

My arse too! I am sick and tired of my tax dollars being used to kill maime and torture. Exactly how killing and torturing people is making Americans safe is beyond me.

If we want an end to terrorism, we might start by refraining from it ourselves.

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Peace out, tmp.

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Misinterpretation of what they have been saying…

People have been looking at everything they say all wrong and hearing what they wanted to hear.

When they talk about making us safer, they are talking about making rich people safer. Making it safer for corporate business to take place.

When they talk how great things are economically, they don't mean for the country as a whole, they mean for the protected wealth/business classes and the politicians who go along with them and remain loyal so the elected political class can get some craps too.

Making 'US' safer is also about spreading fear to the common people of the country. When they say they are making us safer, they don't mean all of us, the country. They are referring to themselves.

Remember. "It's a big club, but you ain't in it."

Every time they refer to 'us' they mean themselves, the people actually being represented, the wealthy, business/corporate, and political classes. Everyone else is not considered. Look at how they skew us vs. references to 'The American People'.

At the same time, they include themselves for credit in doing things when it is not their sacrifices or losses. Case in point "We're gonna fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here."

We? Are you kidding? What wealthy elite is going to risk themselves or their family? It will almost never happen unless it's an upstart youth insisting on being an individual and bucking family tradition, but that is an outlier situation. You do not see the children of the extreme wealth class rushing to sign up for military service.

When we hear the speeches though, 'we're fighting them over there' - actually is translatable to 'We're creating a conflict over there to which the poor sons and daughters of the American People will fight for us.

And the us at the end of that sentence, means them - the wealthy and elite. That conflict isn't to secure freedom or safety for America. It is to secure wealth and resources and control/power for the few.

It's about parsing language and understanding what they mean when they use language.

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Keep it coming!

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snoopydawg's picture

The US has been trying torturing people for decades if not longer. The CIA and the military would take Vietnam soldiers up in helicopters and throw them out of them alive.

And the US says that it has to spread freedom and democracy all over the globe. Bullshit! How many governments has the US overthrown and then installed brutal, puppet dictators who commit human rights violations while the US looks on as long as they let US interests rape their resources? Only when they change the rules does the US say that they are tyrants and have to be removed.
I'm sure that the remaining Iraqis are enjoying their 'liberation' from Saddam. Especially the people who are living in fallujah.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

Damnit Janet's picture

Looking forward... what a backstab that was. I had high hopes for Obama but was quickly shaken out of my daydream of hope and woke to a new nightmare. War Criminal Apologists.

When good men do nothing. Is when they are just as bad as the evil ones.

Not that we could ever get on our high horse and tell other countries how to run... but our history has always been about bloodshed and torture. We at least used to pretend we didn't do so in wars.

No how to stop terrorism? It's really easy.
First you build schools and universities. Job creation!
You provide a free education to the masses.
You feed the hungry. The war on hunger could be achieved today, right now, if Americans weren't so greedy and ignorant.
You shelter the the people on the street.
You provide health and mental care for all your citizens.

And then you go and do that in countries that ask for your same help.

You don't bomb your enemy. You make your enemies want the same safety net your citizens have. They don't hate us cuz our freedoms. It's WE who are doing all the hating and killing.

This country would be so much more peaceful and healthy if it's citizens weren't hungry, sick, scared and and if they were only educated. Free education instead of creating scholars instead of "warriors".

PEACE is profitable. Schools and children prosper. Our earth prospers. Masses prosper. It's only war that is profitable for some. Peace is profitable for ALL.

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"Love One Another" ~ George Harrison

ngant17's picture

it soon must come to decide, which prospective serial killer would make the best POTUS?

the more experienced one, or a wannabe with a penchant for the loud mouth and whipping up his audiences into violent frenzies?

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Alex Ocana's picture

King of the Towels: The Torture and Murder of Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican Nationalist

"Nearly 40 years after Albizu Campos’s death, his FBI files (carpetas) were declassified, and a veil of secrecy was finally lifted. These files show that Pedro Albizu Campos was one of those 16,000 people subjected to a radiation experiment…

…except that in Albizu’s case, it was no mere experiment. It was a deliberate, slow-motion, atomic lynching."

http://www.latinorebels.com/2015/03/10/king-of-the-towels-the-torture-an...

Albizo.jpg

http://www.amazon.com/War-Against-All-Puerto-Ricans/dp/1568585616/ref=sr...

Also see:

The Plutonium Files: America's Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War

http://www.amazon.com/The-Plutonium-Files-Americas-Experiments/dp/038531...

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From the Light House.

M1K3L's picture

My partner (soon to be husband) is Puerto Rican, so I just sent him the link to "War Against All Puerto Ricans." I'm sure we'll both read it. He loves and often is nostalgic for home (especially during our northeast-Ohio winters), and I know he has an interest in the island's history. Thank you!

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"There’s nothing revolutionary about a movement that retreats into an endorsement of the lesser of two evils." Scott McLarty @ CounterPunch

"Look forward, not backward." (Thank God he wasn't around during the Nuremberg trials.)

"Reach across the aisle and rub nosies with our torturing, Republican friends!"

No wonder the Dems got creamed in 2010. Wait, is that a drone I hear overhead? Ahhh---

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