DrewDad
DrewDad wrote:Sergeant at arms! Please take Set and Timber aside for re-education. They seem to have forgotten that the only way out is feet first in a box....
Hold on there. We have not appointed a carpenter to make the cult's take out boxes.
Who has a hammer, saw and some screws.
Gwad, I hope Slappy doo hoo doesn't hear me say "screws" or he will be panting in here in a flash. Oh, oh, I said "flash." Slappy will respond to that, too.
BBB
I'll take that as an "aye."
Motion carries.
The floor will entertain a motion to discuss our chairman's lack of planning in the logo and box departments.
Sergeant-at-arms, please be alert for a bald man in a quasi-futuristic garment. Place him immediately in the banana vault.
US Civil Rights Group to Sue CIA
US Civil Rights Group to Sue CIA
BBC
Saturday 03 December 2005
A US civil rights group says it is taking the CIA to court to stop the transportation of terror suspects to countries outside US legal authority.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says the intelligence agency has broken both US and international law.
It is acting for a man allegedly flown to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she'll comment on recent reports of alleged CIA prisons abroad before starting a visit to Europe on Monday.
Ms. Rice has said she will provide an answer to a EU letter expressing concern over reports last month alleging the US intelligence agency was using secret jails - particularly in eastern Europe.
Extraordinary Rendition
"The lawsuit will charge that CIA officials at the highest level violated US and universal human rights laws when they authorised agents to abduct an innocent man, detain him incommunicado, beat him, drug and transport him to a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan," the ACLU said in a news release.
The release identified the jail as the "Salt Pit".
The group did not provide the name or nationality of the plaintiff, saying only that he would appear at a news conference next week to reveal details of the lawsuit.
The ACLU also wants to name corporations which it accuses of owning and operating the aircraft used to transport detainees secretly from country to country.
The highly secretive process is known as "extraordinary rendition" whereby intelligence agencies move and interrogate terrorism suspects outside the US, where they have no American legal protection.
It has become extremely controversial, the BBC's Adam Brookes in Washington reports.
Some individuals have claimed they were flown by the CIA to countries like Syria and Egypt, where they were tortured.
The US government and its intelligence agencies maintain that all their operations are conducted within the law and they will no doubt fight this case vigorously, our correspondent says.
He says they will not want to see US intelligence officers forced publicly to defend their actions and they will not want to see one of their most secret procedures laid bare in open court.
Now I really have learned something. I had no idea that the ACLU could be considered a cult.
xk8jaguar wrote:Now I really have learned something. I had no idea that the ACLU could be considered a cult.
There will be a test on this on Monday.
Bring a #2 pencil, and a loaf of white bread.
That is all.
LionTamerX, why didn't you ask for peanut butter along with the bread? A little salami or corned beef would have been nice. Maybe pecan pie for dessert? Cheesh, watta we gona do around here when we get the munchies?
German who says US imprisoned him sues CIA
German who says US imprisoned him sues CIA
Tue Dec 6, 2005 11:25 AM ET
By David Morgan
WASHINGTON (Reuters)
A German man sued former CIA Director George Tenet and other U.S. spy agency officials on Tuesday for wrongful imprisonment, mounting a legal challenge against one of the CIA's most prominent tactics in Washington's declared war on terrorism.
The suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Khaled el-Masri claims that in 2003 he became the innocent victim of a CIA tactic known as extraordinary rendition, ACLU and court officials said.
Under this practice, terror suspects are captured and flown to other countries for interrogation, and human rights advocates say suspects often wind up being tortured in countries in the Middle East and other regions.
The suit was filed as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Germany amid a European uproar over CIA detainee practices, fueled by a Washington Post report last month that the agency operates secret prisons in eastern Europe.
Masri spoke at an ACLU news conference in Washington via a satellite video link from Stuttgart, Germany, after he was denied entry to the United States on Saturday night in Atlanta. ACLU officials said he was put on the first available flight back to Germany.
The suit, which the ACLU called the first legal challenge of the CIA's rendition program, charges that Tenet and other CIA officials violated U.S. and universal human rights laws and they authorized agents to kidnap Masri.
"His unlawful abduction and treatment were the direct result of an illegal CIA policy," the ACLU said.
Masri, in a statement released by the ACLU, added: "I am asking the American government to admit its mistakes and to apologize for my treatment."
AIRCRAFT OPERATORS NAMED IN SUIT
The lawsuit also charges that three corporations that owned and operated the airplane used to transport Masri to detention in Afghanistan are legally responsible for assisting in the violation of his civil and human rights.
Masri charges that the CIA and high-ranking agency officials violated his rights under U.S. and international law.
In Berlin, Rice declined to comment on the Masri case but acknowledged that the United States may make mistakes in its battle with militants, while restating her defense of the legality of U.S. tactics in its war on terrorism.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she and Rice spoke about Masri at a private meeting, adding that the U.S. government agreed it had made a mistake.
The CIA declined to comment on the case.
Masri, a prominent face in a clandestine program that has stirred anti-U.S. sentiments across Europe, says he was arrested in Macedonia on December 31, 2003, and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan where he faced interrogation as a terrorism suspect under appalling conditions.
The German national, who told his story to CBS' "60 Minutes" early this year, said he was returned to Europe five months later when the CIA realized it had the wrong man.
Current and former intelligence officials describe rendition as an effective weapon for disrupting and dismantling terrorist operations and say the practice has grown in use since the September 11, 2001, hijacked plane attacks on the United States.
Germany has already said it will investigate a Sunday report by the Washington Post that said former German Interior Minister Otto Schily learned about the Masri case from the U.S. ambassador to Germany in May 2004 but kept quiet at the request of the American diplomat.
The New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch estimated in May that 150 to 200 detainees have been transferred from other countries, including the United States, to Egypt alone since the September 11 attacks.
I've never quite understood how extraordinary rendition could be legal.
It's illegal to go overseas on sex junckets; isn't this covered under the same provision?
