Condi to Europe: “Trust Me”
Paul Craig Roberts
December 6, 2005, 9:00 am
Warning
Oops! Please log in to use this feature.
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. [Wrongful
Imprisonment: Anatomy of a CIA Mistake By Dana
Priest Washington Post December 4, 2005]
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.
COPYRIGHT
CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Paul Craig Roberts is the author with Lawrence M.
Stratton of
here
for Peter Brimelow`s
Forbes Magazine interview with Roberts about the
recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.
