An Admission-But Still In Denial

From CNN:

Bush: CIA kept terror suspects in secret prisons

President Bush on Wednesday for the first time acknowledged the use of secret CIA prisons outside U.S. borders to hold top suspects captured in the war on terrorism.

The CIA program has "saved innocent lives," the president said.

Bush said torture was not part of the program and he had not authorized any form of torture, saying American law forbids it.

Bush said locations of the prisons will remain secret.

While he admits the existence of the prisons, he conveniently avoids the subject of their legality (or illegality) under international law. Remember that we invaded Iraq because the refused to comply with UN declarations. We feel somehow that it is acceptable to hold others to international obligations, and yet ignore them ourselves.

He says torture is not used, but we've seen the pictures of torture in prisons in Iraq. How much confidence can we have regarding the secret locations?

He says the locations will remain secret, which I read as saying that "We're transferring some people out, but the facilities remain in place." The secret prison system is not closed.

President Bush somehow felt proud enough of this program to discuss it in a speech as we near mid-term elections.

The existence of these programs is not a matter of pride, but a national embarrassment- and another example of self-defeating policies. We cannot hold others to a higher standard than we will live up to. We cannot claim moral high-ground when we are hiding prisoners from our justice system, the world, and any possible opportunity to evaluate whether torture was in fact used. We cannot win the fight against terrorism when we fail to live to the basic standards of justice that we claim to represent to the world.

This admission by the President is appalling.

GP