Dear Log,
«In total, "about three dozen" people may have been wrongly seized, the
paper said. One of them was Khaled Masri - a German national who
shared the same name as a top al-Qaida terrorist.
The CIA kidnapped him in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to
Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After
realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform
"the Germans" of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador
to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.
[...]
"If [EU] member or candidate states actively contributed to, or
connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on
their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary
consequences drawn," Martin Schulz, head of the Socialist Group in the
European Parliament, said yesterday. He added: 'There's active
acceptance, and there's acquiescence. Neither of those are
acceptable.'»--"CIA's secret jails open up new transatlantic rift":
Hundreds of flights landed in Germany over 2 years;
Seizure of innocent people likely to embarrass Rice
But it's okay, right, because the US regime will be totally
cooperative and come clean and everything, right? Because everyone
involved is totally mature and can see both sides of every issue and
everything, right?
Oh wait.
«US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the
transatlantic row over America's alleged torture of terror suspects in
secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other
European officials to 'back off'.
In Britain, human rights group Liberty is to table [=put forward] an
amendment to the Civil Aviation Bill that would oblige the Home
Secretary to force any aircraft travelling through UK airspace
suspected of extraordinary rendition to land and be searched by police
and customs.»--"Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons"
Those funny EU cops! They couldn't even catch Milosevic!
Oh wait.
So here's what'll happen. Everyone in the EU government wants to give
the Eastern European states a big spanking for having collaborated
with the US torture squads in violation of
every law ever. This's so
the nastier governments have to get regime-changed as a precondition
of getting closer to EU membership. And maybe the EU wants this US
prison thing to be like reason eleventy-eight for
Poland to be
disciplined, so that their voting rights will revert to
Aquaman
or
something.
So there'll be a big ol' EU investigation. But then it'll come out
that the UK and French and German governments and
everyone
knew about it all too, but Chancellor (Chancellrix?) Merkel won't care
because
she didn't know, and then there will be STRIFE and
ANGST in the lands.
It will be agreed that
someone will have to be made an
example of, except that it'll just end up being a 1,600-page "compromise accord"
where Turkey will inexplicably be used as the whipping boy, and the
extent of penalties to Poland will be an absurdly low zloty→euro
conversion rate, so that whole country gets bought up by like four
real estate guys in Denmark.
Alternate
future: Turkey's inexplicable (inevitable) shaming will be used
as a reason not for forbidding it from entering the EU, but for
requiring it to enter the EU, since clearly they can't be
allowed to go around on their own, having CIA torturariums all willy-nilly.
Meanwhile, Condoleeza will be like Kissinger -- unable to leave the
US without a whole team of lawyers checking to make sure she won't be extradited
to Chile or whatever, on war crimes accusations. I mention just Condoleeza, because everyone else in the current administration will die of cerebral hemorrhages in the next four years, what with being type A personalities and sickly and all.
And then the Borg will come.
Ya know, I used to think we were trapped in
some Bruce Sterling
novel.
Now I think we're trapped in
all the Bruce Sterling novels.
