Posted on 12/05/2005 5:49:12 PM PST by neverdem
BERLIN, Dec. 5 - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised European leaders on Monday, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped "save European lives."
Her remarks were the Bush administration's official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers in at least eight European nations, said to house dozens of terror suspects.
At the same time, she denied that the United States has moved suspects to these prisons to allow interrogators to use torture. "The United States," she said, "does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances." At another point, she said, "The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture."
Intelligence gathered from these interrogations, she said, "has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe as well as the United States." But she declined to offer examples or provide any specific information to support her assertions. She said any information related to the prisons was classified. Ms. Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detention centers, first described in news reports early last month. But acknowledgment of them was implicit in her remarks. Without the debate over the covert jails, there would have been no reason for her statement.
"We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible," she said, "but there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option."
"In those cases," she added, "the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in" the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Oh, the Euroweenies want us to DO this, they just also want to COMPLAIN about it.
This story is in the news because of traitors in the CIA. I do not use the word lightly. These are anti-Americans, working against us. They should be shot.
Great response from Dr. Rice to the European cowards.
The leaders and the populace of these countries would,no doubt,welcome them with open arms.
I watched her careful, clear, an unambiguous statement. The news coverage is awful and very misleading. Too bad the media is too stupid to understand what she said, but wants to playu gotcha, anyway. It was something like countries have prisons and run them according to their own laws.
Looks to me that we are just setting ourselves up again.
It’s clear that we have passed suspects along to counties where we have reason to suppose that it’s very likely they will be tortured, that accounts of our actions have already made into the domestic and international media, and that more likely will.
Either this is a defensible policy – in which case we defend it - or it’s not, in which case we ought to disown it.
But what's the point of trying to finesse it by transparent evasions and legal hairsplitting?
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