THIS, dear readers, is what the Democrats were beating the Republicans over the head with in the closed session, along with this blockbuster by Murray Waas that we posted last week, which Jay Rockefeller actually cited in his victory speech.
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
THIS IS AN ABSOLUTELY SHOCKING STORY AND WILL HAVE REVERBERATIONS AROUND THE WORLD
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA’s internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA’s approved “Enhanced Interrogation Techniques,” some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by U.S. military law. They include tactics such as “waterboarding,” in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
I think that the Democrats, who are supposed to be informed of these black operations, were kept in the dark by the Senate leadership (which is unprecedented for example all during the cold war) and just found out. I think they took this knowledge into the closed session and forced the GOP without any concessions to give in to their demands to finish the WMD investigation, the White House phase.
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