Blogswarm - Online Political News Magazine

The Gulfstream 5 and a Boeing 737 are both leased from Premier Executive Transport Services in Massachusetts.  They have been spotted at airports abroad, taking on hooded, drugged suspects who are bundled onto the planes by masked US agents.  

The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.

Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out "torture by proxy" -- a charge denied by the American government.

The logs record flights originating in Washington and going to Afghanistan, Iraq and Indonesia to pick up suspects, then travelling to Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Uzbekistan and Guantanamo to drop off their human cargo.  Witnesses have also seen the Gulfstream take on prisoners in Sweden, Pakistan and Gambia.  The foreign state governments imprison and torture the suspects on our behalf to provide information to our intelligence services.

The most chilling paragraph is near the end of the article, describing the heirarchy of choices open to the CIA:

Bob Baer, a former CIA operative in the Middle East, said: "If you want a serious interrogation you send a prisoner to Jordan.  If you want them to be tortured you send them to Syria.  If you want someone to disappear . . . you send them to Egypt."

Among the countries where prisoners have been sent by America is Uzbekistan, a close ally and a dictatorship whose secret police are notorious for their interrogation methods, including the alleged boiling of prisoners.  The Gulfstream made at least seven trips to the Uzbek capital.

Rentogen points out that Seymour Hersh referred to this scandal when he spoke in Berkeley back in October. He said that:

My government has a secret unit that since December of 2001 has been disappearing people just like the Brazilians and the Argentineans did. Rumsfeld decided after 9/11 that he could not wait. The president signed a secret document...There's a team of people, they fly in unmarked planes, they fly in Gulfstreams, they have their own choppers, they don't carry American passports, and they just grab people. And maybe in the beginning I can understand there was some rationale. Right after 9/11 we were frightened, we didn't know what to do ...

Oh, but not to worry because Bushco says none of this is true:

The American government, however, denies it is in any way complicit in torture and says it is actively working to stamp out the practice.

The perception of the United States among civilised nations is becoming more and more like a banana republic rogue state.  Substantiation of US torture tactics and abuse of international laws and conventions will reinforce a prejudice against and distrust of the US government.  It is worth remembering that the 370 million people of Europe's 25 nations have banned the death penalty, torture, racial discrimination, religious persecution and abuse of human rights.   Many lived under Soviet or Nazi occupations and know the implications which follow from a government placing itself above the interests of its people and above laws ensuring protection of due process.  They take these principles very seriously indeed, and cannot understand how Americans can be blind to them, or even support their erosion.