“Leaning too close to the U.S. is detrimental.”

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Imitating the Soviets’ Gulags
Allegations of secret CIA prisons force some nations to question their allegiance to the U.S. and its policies.
11/11/2005

No one can miss the irony, said the Berlin Tagesspiegel in an editorial. The CIA, the world learned last week, is operating secret prisons for al Qaida suspects around the globe—some in former Soviet bloc nations in Eastern Europe. These KGB-style interrogation centers are an embarrassment to the Bush administration, which set them up as part of its ostensible campaign to make the world freer and more democratic. But the question that Europe is now asking is, “What could drive young democracies, whose new elites suffered under the communists, to join in such a project?” It’s understandable that these East Europeans, recently liberated from decades of Soviet totalitarianism, would idolize America. But the E.U. “must not allow its new members” to participate in American crimes.

Back up a minute, said Bartosz Weglarczyk and Pawel Wronski in Warsaw’s Gazeta Wyborcza. These are just allegations. Human Rights Watch named Poland and Romania as the Eastern European countries allegedly cooperating with the CIA, yet the group presented no evidence that such prisons exist here. We have heard many rumors of secret prisons “being set up in places where journalists don’t have access,” such as on board aircraft carriers, or in countries that have no free press, like Thailand. But it “wouldn’t make sense” to put such a site in Poland, where investigative reporters would sniff it out in no time. It is not fair that Poland is being portrayed as “a country that performs illegal and amoral deeds at the bidding of the U.S.”

It’s worse for Thailand, said Suwaphong Chanfangphet in Bangkok’s Matichon. Even if it isn’t true that Thailand is hosting secret prisons, everyone will believe it anyway, because we’re already widely seen “as a U.S. sidekick.” The Washington Post, the U.S. paper that broke the story, said it wouldn’t name the Eastern European countries that are supposedly prison sites because that might “disrupt counterterrorism efforts there”—but it showed Thailand no such courtesy. When describing the Thai prisons, the Post “gave every last detail,” right down to the names of the top al Qaida members allegedly being held here—Abu Zubaydah and Ramzi Binalshibh. The U.S. government was no help, either. The denials it gave were so vague as to increase, rather than decrease, suspicions. Now every terrorist in the world will come after us, thinking that Thailand “is a U.S. instrument” that uses “uncivilized” methods. Let this be a lesson to us: “Leaning too close to the U.S. is detrimental.”

http://www.theweekmagazine.com/article.aspx?id=1205