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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Kristof v. O'Reilly, winner Darfur?


In the Times this weekend, Kristof challenged Bill O'reilly to really defend Christmas values (as opposed to complaining about the imaginary war on Christmas by godless liberals):

...Fox News Channel's crusade against infidels who prefer generic expressions like "Happy Holidays" included 58 separate segments in just a five-day period.

After I suggested in last Sunday's column that a better way to honor the season might be to stand up to genocide in Darfur (a calamity that Mr. O'Reilly has ignored), Mr. O'Reilly denounced me on his show as a "left-wing ideologue."

...So I have a challenge for Mr. O'Reilly: If you really want to defend traditional values, then come with me on a trip to Darfur. I'll introduce you to mothers who have had their babies clubbed to death in front of them, to teenage girls who have been gang-raped and then mutilated - and to the government-armed thugs who do these things.

You'll have to leave your studio, Bill. You'll encounter pure evil. If you're like me, you'll be scared. If you try to bully some of the goons in Darfur, they'll just hack your head off. But you'll also meet some genuine conservative Christians - aid workers who live the Gospel instead of sputtering about it - and you'll finally be using your talents for an important cause.

So, Bill, what'll it be? Will you dare travel to a real war against Christmas values, in which the victims aren't offended shoppers but terrified children thrown on bonfires? I'm waiting to hear.
It's comforting to see more coverage of Darfur, and if the region comes up in a spat between O'Reilly and Kristof, then all the better.

O'Reilly responds (I couldn't find a permalink) to Kristof's op-ed by only addressing the Darfur claim in a single sentence -- by saying that he had not ignored Darfur, without giving any examples -- and spent the rest of his "talking points memo" calling Kristof a dishonest ideologue and character assassin, stating that he doesn't understand America:

Mr. Kristof is a committed secularist who seems to not understand the culture war, or that his team is intent on diminishing the traditions of Christmas and other Judeo-Christian hallmarks, and that is deeply offensive to most Americans.

Kristof lives in The New York Times world--an isolated island of politically correct liberalism with little connection to everyday Americans. But in the spirit of Christmas, I've asked St. Nicholas to bring our pal Nicholas a special gift--the wisdom to see what is really going on and to do some honest analysis.
Of course O'Reilly's comments are so mind-numbingly stupid that it's not even necessary to rebut them (but if you really feel the need to, you can check out Adam Cohen's piece on the so-called war on Christmas). So what's really important to me is that the world is getting a little more exposure to the genocide in Darfur, and if Bill O'Reilly comes off (once again) as a jackass, well that's just icing on the cake.


Otherwise, I've started reading Gérard Prunier's new book on Darfur (available in English as well as in French. So far it's given a very interesting background of Darfur as an independent Sultanate and sparked my interest in the Mahdists. But I'm only about 60 pages in, so I'll hold my comments on it until I'm done.

Sunday, December 04, 2005

Just like the Arab countries


In today's Washington Post, the story of Khaled Masri's wrongful imprisonment, is told. He was apparently on his way to Macedonia after a spat with his wife in Germany, (he is a German citizen of Egyptian origin), when he was abducted at the Macedonian border by the police because he name was similar to an associate of one of the 9/11 hijackers. He was then handed over to the CIA in Skjope.

The local deputy CIA chief (the station chief was on vacation) dealt directly with the Counterterrorism Center (CTC), since the European divison division chief was also on vacation. The Post offers us a little background on CTC, including how they operate:

After the September 2001 attacks, pressure to locate and nab potential terrorists, even in the most obscure parts of the world, bore down hard on one CIA office in particular, the Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, located until recently in the basement of one of the older buildings on the agency's sprawling headquarters compound. With operations officers and analysts sitting side by side, the idea was to act on tips and leads with dramatic speed.

The possibility of missing another attack loomed large. "Their logic was: If one of them gets loose and someone dies, we'll be held responsible," said one CIA officer, who, like others interviewed for this article, would speak only anonymously because of the secretive nature of the subject.

To carry out its mission, the CTC relies on its Rendition Group, made up of case officers, paramilitaries, analysts and psychologists. Their job is to figure out how to snatch someone off a city street, or a remote hillside, or a secluded corner of an airport where local authorities wait.

Members of the Rendition Group follow a simple but standard procedure: Dressed head to toe in black, including masks, they blindfold and cut the clothes off their new captives, then administer an enema and sleeping drugs. They outfit detainees in a diaper and jumpsuit for what can be a day-long trip. Their destinations: either a detention facility operated by cooperative countries in the Middle East and Central Asia, including Afghanistan, or one of the CIA's own covert prisons -- referred to in classified documents as "black sites," which at various times have been operated in eight countries, including several in Eastern Europe.
The decision was taken to send Masri to prison in Afghanistan, where he says he was interrogated and beaten and warned, "You are here in a country where no one knows about you, in a country where there is no law. If you die, we will bury you, and no one will know." Then his passport was analyzed and found to be genuine, at which point the CIA toyed with the idea of just sending him back to Macedonia as if nothing had happened without telling the German authorities. Finally, since Macedonia had refused to accept him, he was sent to Albania and then later flown back to Germany.

In the end, Masri says he was told by his detainer, he had been kidnapped, drugged, beaten and detained because he "had a suspicious name." The lesson he has learned from this horrible ordeal is that the US is "just like in the Arab countries: arresting people, treating them inhumanly and less than that, and with no rights and no laws."