Our Fallen State

U.S. Declines to Join Accord on Secret Detentions:

Representatives from 57 countries on Tuesday signed a long-negotiated treaty prohibiting governments from holding people in secret detention. The United States declined to endorse the document, saying its text did not meet U.S. expectations.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment, except to say that the United States helped draft the treaty but that the final wording “did not meet our expectations.”

The Associated Press reported that McCormack declined to comment on whether the U.S. stance was influenced by the Bush administration's policy of sending terrorism suspects to CIA-run prisons overseas, which President Bush acknowledged in September.

The convention defines forced disappearance as the arrest, detention or kidnapping of a person by state agents or affiliates and subsequent denials about the detention or location of the individual.

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2 Responses to Our Fallen State

  1. anon says:

    Right-wing koolaid conservatives argue that in many cases (particularly leadership of terror organizations) keeping the arrest/capture/killing of these individuals secret is in some circumstances a tremendous advantage. Various reasons are given, the most obvious that the terror networks will shut down and reorganize upon learning of the arrest, assuming their locations and codes will be given up by the captive. By denying the terrorists this knowledge, they may continue to transmit information and carry on unwittingly, all of which can be intercepted and used against them.

    What rubbish. That stuff only works in the movies. Again the conservatives (who have such a poor understanding of military intelligence compared to us liberals) are in way over their heads. When will they realize that the only thing that will protect us from the terrorists is asking us to take off our shoes at the airport? Norman Minetta was true WARRIOR against terrorists, and Bush canned him. When will they learn?!

  2. Michael says:

    And a reign of terror at home might also lower the crime rate. Just as “we had to kill the village in order to save it” was a lousy Vietnam war strategy, so too “we had to destroy our commitment to justice and the rule of law to preserve our, er, something” is a lousy foreign policy.

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