Europe won't pick fight with Rice on CIA tactics

[maddezmom]

~snip~

European officials seem satisfied, for now, that the United States has promised a formal response to press reports the CIA ran secret jails in Eastern Europe and covertly flew terrorist suspects through airports and bases across the continent.

They are loath to pick new quarrels with Washington and risk souring transatlantic ties which are only gradually recovering from a deep rift over the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

They may also be nervous about what further investigation could uncover. Some European Union governments face awkward and persistent suggestions that they may have known and approved of secret U.S. operations taking place on their soil.

"If (EU) member or candidate states actively contributed to, or connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary consequences drawn," said Martin Schulz, head of the Socialist group in the European Parliament.

"There's active acceptance, and there's acquiescence. Neither of those are acceptable," he told Reuters.

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051204/ts_nm/europe_cia_rice_dc

[pinniped]

1. This is what happens when you get involved with the * crime family.

They always got something on you.

[0007]

2. So in other words 'old Europe' is just gonna catch a dummy...

They say she will remind them that they have cooperated in U.S. operations and tell them to do more to win over their publics and deflect criticism directed at the United States.

Highlighting the sensitivities of such cases for European governments, Italy was forced last week to issue a fresh denial that the government knew in advance of CIA plans to abduct a radical Islamic cleric on the streets of Milan in 2003 and fly him via Germany to Egypt, where he later said he was tortured.

"If Ms Rice gives no clarification, then we in parliament will further insist that the governments of the EU provide this clarification themselves."

[ixion]

3. and of course, she gave no clarification

only stone-walling and veiled threats, coupled with a 'suggestion' that they ought to create a BushCo styled PR campaign rather than actually do any serious investigation.

I hope parliament will not be as passively acquiescent as Downing St.

[leveymg]

4. So,why mend fences now? BushCo is a dead duck.

There must be complicity on the part of some European governments on this, and they want to sweep this under the rug so it doesn't damage intra-European relations.

[acmavm]

5. This is the way the European 'officials' think and feel. I wonder how the

European 'man/woman on the street' feels about being drug into this mess?

[arachide]

6. speaking from Dublin,

people are pretty pissed off about the whole thing. We don't even have capital punishment here, and so being implicated in anything related to torture is anathema to most people.

[leveymg]

7. Speaking from Washington . . .

most Americans are also mighty pissed off about this, too. Please forgive us for the mobsters that have taken over our government.

Many of us have been fighting them for decades.

[Kesha]

12. speaking from Germany...

...ppl are pretty fed up to be implicated in torture flights
*against their will*!

All these "private" CIA-Airlines are using Frankfurt & Ramstein as a
hub... just see "Tepper Aviation":

http://www.airliners.net/search/photo.search?airlinesearch=Tepper%20Aviation&distinct_entry=true

[soda]

8. Anatomy of a CIA 'rendition' gone wrong

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10316560/

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
Coats informed the German minister that the CIA had wrongfully imprisoned one of its citizens, Khaled Masri, for five months, and would soon release him, the sources said. There was also a request: that the German government not disclose what it had been told even if Masri went public.

[54anickel]

10. Thanks for posting this Soda - very interesting article. Seems "we"

are up to a whole lot of no good, on *'s order.

Relating back to the OP, I think it would be best for these EU countries to come clean and repent. They are not going to be able to keep their "cooperation" under wraps forever. The cat's outta the bag, thanks to "the bag" (Condi). They should speak up now, or they may be voicing their regrets for something worse down the road - they need look no further than our Dems these days.

[Clutch Cargo]

9. Expose them all

And the U.S. along with all complicit countries should receive the same censure, shame and penalty.

[allemand]

11. BBC: Rice 'to talk tough on CIA claim'

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is expected to go on the offensive over EU concerns that the US has operated secret CIA prisons in Eastern Europe.

According to media reports in both the US and UK, Ms Rice will tell European allies to "back off" over the issue.
(...)

"It's very clear they want European governments to stop pushing on this,'' a European diplomat, who has been speaking to the US officials drafting Ms Rice's response, told the New York Times. "They were stuck on the defensive for weeks, but suddenly the line has toughened up incredibly."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4497006.stm

[soda]

14. Blackmail?

"The key point will be 'We're all in this together and you need to look at yourselves as much as us,' " one official said to the Washington Post, on condition of anonymity. "People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones."

[emad]

13. The torture files

CIA agents have broken ranks to reveal the 'cruel and inhuman' interrogation techniques they are ordered to use at secret prisons around the world, including freezing and near-drowning. By Raymond Whitaker
Published: 04 December 2005


Amid a growing row in the US over torture, a list of "enhanced interrogation techniques" used by CIA agents in secret prisons - including near-drowning, freezing, sleep deprivation, shaking and slapping - has been leaked. In at least one case, a prisoner has died.

The techniques have been authorised for use at CIA "black sites" abroad, at which top terror suspects are held. Last week the US-based organisation Human Rights Watch said "ghost detainees" were held at two military bases, in Poland and Romania. Similar sites in half a dozen other countries, including Afghanistan, Thailand and the Indian Ocean base of Diego Garcia, leased from Britain, are now said to have been closed.

The existence of these detention facilities, and what happens inside them, are the most secret aspect of America's "war on terror". In contrast to military-run camps and prisons such as Guantanamo Bay in Cuba or Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where it was impossible to shield all CIA activity from outside scrutiny, the location of the "black sites" and the identities of those held there are made known only to a handful of senior officials in the US. In the host countries, only the president and top intelligence officials are aware of them.

Details of the secret prisons and the methods used in them have emerged mainly from CIA officers themselves, who said the public needed to know "the direction their agency has chosen". They broke ranks amid a furore in Washington over an amendment to the White House military spending package going through Congress. Senator John McCain (Republican), a former US navy pilot who was captured and tortured in Vietnam, wants an unequivocal ban on all "cruel and inhuman" treatment of prisoners in US custody, including those held by the CIA.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article331070.ece

[daleo]

15. The article seems mostly like spin

The writer says Europe doesn't want to pursue this, but there were no quotes from relevant Europeans to that effect that I read.