by Jayne Lyn Stahl
The CIA is certainly getting its fifteen minutes of fame lately what with the Scooter Libby trial, and trying to figure out who first leaked the identity of Valerie Plame, a "covert" CIA operative. And now, just yesterday, comes word that a German court has issued arrest warrants to more than a dozen CIA agents who are believed to be involved in the kidnapping, and beating of a German citizen of Lebanese descent, Khaled el-Masri. While the Libby trial and leak-gate are crucially important not just for the future of a journalist's right to ensure confidentiality to sources, or for citizens to believe that they haven't beenvictims of a marketing campaign on the part of their government,the trial must not be allowed to deflect attention away from the astonishing fact that Germany wants to arrestthese agents.
While he is a Muslim, and Lebanese by descent, Mr. Masri is a German citizen, and his claims that he was "drugged, beaten, then flown by the CIA to a detention center in Afghanistan where he was held for five months before the U.S. government flew him to Albania and left him there" (International Herald Tribune) have ostensibly attracted enough attention to enable Munich prosecutors to attempt to secure these warrants.
Though the extradition of these agents, from the U.S., is far from certain, the fact that the German government has taken the covert, extraordinary rendition of Khaled el-Masri to the lengths it has attests to the extent to which the European community, in general, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in particular, deplore the Bush Doctrine of military preemption, its ongoing violation of Geneva, and international law. Arguably, these arrests are also in response to the report presented to the European Parliament, in January, that show that many member nations of the European Union cooperated with the CIA, and enabled them to use their air space to transport terror suspects to secret detention cells incountries where torture is permissible.
To borrow a term the CIA often employs, the attempt to hold these agents accountable to German law may be seen as blowback, or retaliation for covert and illicit CIA overseas operations that have been hidden fromthe American public, a government that has compromised its citizens' privacy more than any country to date appears to be more accomplished at hiding its tracks than any other in recent memory.
What a cruel irony that we claim to be exporting democracy and
human rights when the European Union, and the U.N.,are speaking out
against our egregious transgressions, as well as monitoring the practices
of our intelligence operatives while we, in the U.S.,don't seem to be
paying a whole lot of attention to it. This is even more troubling in
light of revelations, shortly after 9/11, that under a "secret finding"
of Bush's anti-terror legislation, the CIA now has the power to hunt
down, and kill any American citizens deemed to be an "enemy combatant,"
or member of Al Qaeda, anywhere in the world.(CBS News)
Back
in December, 2002, an anonymous U.S. government official suggested that,
while capturing Al Qaeda would be "preferable" to killing them,
murder would be okay, too.Importantly, American citizens are not exempt
from being hunted, and murdered.There has already been one reported
American victim of this new-found power invested in the CIA. In Yemen,in
2002, a car filled with what were believed to be Al Qaeda members was
riddled with bullets, taking the life of aYemeni who was an American
citizen, Kamal Derwish,who was in the car.It was never determined
ifDerwish was, in fact, an Al Qaeda member. A legal analyst, at the
time, said, in effect, that empowering the CIA with the capacity to
take the lives of anyone it deems to be an enemy of the U.S. is legal
"because the President and his lawyers say so--it's not much more
complicated than that."(CBS) Yet,more than four years after this
startling report aired which revealed that a wartime president can order
the murder of enemies, without regard to due process,whether or not
they happen to be U.S. citizens, on or off American soil,we haven't
heard a peep about this from Congress.
What is the
administration's argument for ordering the killing of an American
citizen anywhere in the world? It says that when someone becomes an
"enemy combatant," a term of its own devising, and takes up weapons on
the side of our adversaries, "his constitutional rights are nullified
and he can be killed outright." This is nothing new. Previous presidents
have given the green light to kill Americans who take up arms on the
side of the enemy in Latin America, but this is the first time questions
have arisen as to whether or not it might be legal to take the life of
an American citizen on our own soil. Lots of grey area exists in this
war of abstractions where abstractions have become the weapon of mass
distraction.
When questioned about their new authority following 9/11,not surprisingly,the CIA declined to comment.
Let's
stop a moment, catch our breath, and think. What kind of government is
it when intelligence is in bed with the military, and the military is
in the president's pocket? It is incumbent upon Congress and the
Supreme Court to ask this question, and to mitigate against this kind
of abuse of power, and authoritarianism that may not be unprecedented in
world history, but which has yet to surface in these United States.
Something
is seriously awry when a prominent Western European nation is actively
attempts to arrest members of the CIA on charges of kidnapping, and
torturing a citizen of their country during one of our now infamous
clandestine operations. Something is terribly wrong when, by a simple
turn of phrase, a person can be stripped of their constitutional rights,
hunted down like a wild animal, and shot, or locked up in secret terror
cells throughout the world , and methodically damaged in
custody,routinely robbed of due process, or an adequate defense.
Now
that the European Parliament has completed an investigation into
practices of our CIA, and vowed never to allow extraordinary rendition
to recur on their continent, it's time that the Democrats in Congress,
as well as the justices on the Supreme Court stand up to this
president, and an administration which has not only attempted to bully
the globe, but has scrupulously managed to pull the wool over our eyes
for the past six years.
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