MacBigot Cached Glances

Imagine that you are a detainee at the now-infamous Gitmo prison, where a handful of people deemed to be dangerous to Western Civilization have been in cold storage while they take turns at occasional interrogations by U.S. federal specialists, mostly of the C.I.A. stripe. Life may not be your brand of perfect; but at least you haven’t been shot execution-style, there are medical provisions, and you are allowed to keep alive the idea that eventually, you will probably be released.

In order to ‘protect’ you, the American Left have taken it upon themselves to save you from these horrible conditions, and send you into the American court system to be vetted, and presumably, released in more expedient fashion.

Good for you.

Not good for those who would have arrived at Gitmo after you.

You see, the behavior of the guards at Gitmo wasn’t the worst fate you could have experienced. Though we didn’t make a practice of beheading our enemy combatants and posting the video on YouTube, and we aren’t in the habit of lining up our captures against a wall and shooting them in the back of the head while they all pray one last prayer on their knees — there are a few countries friendly to the U.S. that are still comfy with techniques that far outside any ‘unalienable human rights’ that our Lefties pretend are only infringed upon by our own government.

Those who follow in your footsteps will now be taken in the night, sent to nondescript foreign lands where there is no Katie Couric, and their whereabouts will not be recorded or reported by the agency to the national news networks. They will simply disappear. They will not be killed quietly, though — simply out of earshot.

Congratulations, Lefties — this is what you voted for. You who refused to face what dealing with real threats is like, or who refuse outright to admit that there is an actual threat — now you can refuse to believe that these enemy combatants ever even existed; because there will be no Red Cross monitoring of their eventual destinations.

You make me so proud to be an American.

From The L.A. Times:

CIA veterans involved in renditions characterized the program as important but of limited intelligence-gathering use. It is used mainly for terrorism suspects not considered valuable enough for the CIA to keep, they said.

“The reason we did interrogations [ourselves] is because renditions for the most part weren’t very productive,” said a former senior CIA official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject.

The most valuable intelligence on Al Qaeda came from prisoners who were in CIA custody and questioned by agency experts, the official said. Once prisoners were turned over to Egypt, Jordan or elsewhere, the agency had limited influence over how much intelligence was shared, how prisoners were treated and whether they were later released.

“In some ways, [rendition] is the worst option,” the former official said. “If they are in U.S. hands, you have a lot of checks and balances, medics and lawyers. Once you turn them over to another service, you lose control.”

From the Whitehouse.gov web site:

Section 1. Revocation. Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007, is revoked. All executive directives, orders, and regulations inconsistent with this order, including but not limited to those issued to or by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from September 11, 2001, to January 20, 2009, concerning detention or the interrogation of detained individuals, are revoked to the extent of their inconsistency with this order. Heads of departments and agencies shall take all necessary steps to ensure that all directives, orders, and regulations of their respective departments or agencies are consistent with this order. Upon request, the Attorney General shall provide guidance about which directives, orders, and regulations are inconsistent with this order.
…..
Sec. 4. Prohibition of Certain Detention Facilities, and Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals.

(a) CIA Detention. The CIA shall close as expeditiously as possible any detention facilities that it currently operates and shall not operate any such detention facility in the future.

(b) International Committee of the Red Cross Access to Detained Individuals. All departments and agencies of the Federal Government shall provide the International Committee of the Red Cross with notification of, and timely access to, any individual detained in any armed conflict in the custody or under the effective control of an officer, employee, or other agent of the United States Government or detained within a facility owned, operated, or controlled by a department or agency of the United States Government, consistent with Department of Defense regulations and policies.
…..
Sec. 5. Special Interagency Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies.
…..
(e) Mission. The mission of the Special Task Force shall be:

(i) to study and evaluate whether the interrogation practices and techniques in Army Field Manual 2 22.3, when employed by departments or agencies outside the military, provide an appropriate means of acquiring the intelligence necessary to protect the Nation, and, if warranted, to recommend any additional or different guidance for other departments or agencies; and

(ii) to study and evaluate the practices of transferring individuals to other nations in order to ensure that such practices comply with the domestic laws, international obligations, and policies of the United States and do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture or otherwise for the purpose, or with the effect, of undermining or circumventing the commitments or obligations of the United States to ensure the humane treatment of individuals in its custody or control.

H/t to HotAir.com, MoeLane.com, and most of all RedState.com.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 2nd, 2009 at 1:17 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Tweet this.