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Ear to the Ground

U.S. Will Protect Alleged Kidnappers

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Posted on Feb 28, 2007

A State Department official said the U.S. will not extradite 26 suspected CIA agents to Italy, where they are accused of carrying out “extraordinary rendition.” Legal adviser John Bellinger added a veiled threat, saying further legal action in Europe would hamper “intelligence cooperation.”


Reuters:

A Milan judge earlier this month ordered 26 Americans, most of them thought to be CIA agents, to stand trial with Italian spies for kidnapping a Muslim cleric and flying him to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.

“We’ve not got an extradition request from Italy. ... If we got an extradition request from Italy, we would not extradite U.S. officials to Italy,” State Department legal adviser John Bellinger told a news briefing.

Bellinger, in Brussels for meetings with European legal advisers, did not comment on details of the case but said the United States would never hand over a suspect to another country without assurances about their treatment.

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By Outraged, March 3, 2007 at 6:18 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Re: Comment #56293 by Jeff Badura on 3/02 at 7:40 am

“i was all for McCain’s bill to outlaw torture!! 
like electric shock or eye or finger removal and terrible things like that!!! but making a bad guy stay up all night isn’t real “torture” in my book, to libs any kind of corrosion is the act of a “Nazi” so you guys want to ask the bad guys to “pretty please with sugar on top, tell us your next attack plan”??? then when the attack happens you wish have hearing to fix blame (on Bush of coarse)!!!


So sorry, you said torture was “subjective” and well, remember..we threw out the Geneva Convention rules.  Sounds to me like your back-peddling here.  Like I said, you don’t make the rules…they’re “subjective.”  And well, they’re subjective to what I happen to decide “subjectively” of course, and what you think or feel doesn’t matter.  Still sound like fun to you?

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By Jeff Badura, March 2, 2007 at 12:40 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

i was all for McCain’s bill to outlaw torture!! 
like electric shock or eye or finger removal and terrible things like that!!! but making a bad guy stay up all night isn’t real “torture” in my book, to libs any kind of corrosion is the act of a “Nazi” so you guys want to ask the bad guys to “pretty please with sugar on top, tell us your next attack plan”??? then when the attack happens you wish have hearing to fix blame (on Bush of coarse)!!!

so yes torture is a “subjective” word.
illgramaticus knee o’kaun

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By Jeff Badura, March 1, 2007 at 7:00 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

in regards to Mr. August West on Comment #56022 on 2/28 at 5:25 pm

      i don’t get my talking points from Rush, he gets them from me, and the rest of us true “Patriots”  that’s another thing you left wing loonies don’t get?? Rush is popular with some, because he says the things they already know, he is a echo!! Just like most posters in these parts repeat each other, too take comfort in your like minded craziness(like calling America Nazis)!! i for one would rather listen to you guys, be so blatantly wrong!!! Rush to me is boring?? reading this stuff gives me strength to see how lost you guys are!! look have fun loosing election after election for the rest of your life, with your hate America first beliefs and ill have a drink in 08 to toast McCain’s win over what ever loser the Dem’s put up against him !!! blame Rush or say the election was stolen or what ever your delusional logic tells you?? why should you be right about our intentions or motivations anyway?? you wrong about everything else, so don’t change now!!!  we don’t torture as a policy!! if some in our government do? then they are breaking the law !! and deserve to be punished!! just keep believing the enemies lies and not your own government’s truths and that will take you far in the real political world !!  just remember your tax dollars are paying for this war and the wars to come!! ha ha ha ha ha
   
illgramaticus knee o’kaun

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By Jeff Badura, March 1, 2007 at 3:43 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Comment #56064 by Outraged says Jeff Badura, come over to my house and I’ll use “subjective” torture on you. Well, I’m in charge of course, and you only get to “play the part” of the tortured.

sounds fun !!!  I’ll be right there ???

illgramaticus knee o’kaun

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By Druthers, March 1, 2007 at 8:13 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Has anyone noticed?  We are a “special nation”...a “special people” not subject to international law.  Soon we will be dubbed a “special species” related but superior to other homo sapiens.  This superiorty based essentially on our possession of numerious atomic bombs and the means to deliver them.
Law, democracy, freedom, civil rights sounds almost like all that “old Europe” sort of thing.  Now there is a new order, if it can be called that.
All the “lower” beings inhabiting the planet
are invited to tow the line drawh by the B/C WH, otherwise there is no imagining what might happen to them.  We might send aircraft carriers to their coast to prevent them from meddling in our affairs, or a Vice-President to warn them to get their shoes on the right feet…one who when not shooting someone himself is getting bombed  
Just who do they think is running this world?
It is like life on the Titanic, the height of luxury…but there still are not enough life boats and they have all been reserved.

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By stonehinge, March 1, 2007 at 6:30 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

I pledge allegiance
To the Due-blighted States of America,
And to the Republicans, for richer stands.
One nation, under guard invisible,
With libertine injustice for all.

Amen

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By Nomand, March 1, 2007 at 3:37 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

>of coarse we will not turn over American Patriots >to a Italian Kangaroo Court!!! give me a break?? >this is a joke!! if any, did anything wrong, it was >the leaders who gave the orders?? not the hero’s >who followed them!! we are at war here?

You do realize that the argument you just used is the Nuremberg defense?
“We are innocent, we were only following orders”

We did not accept that defense then, why should that defense be allowed here?

Perhaps the judge should have them picked up with or without the US government’s permission.

Perhaps “extraordinary rendition is in order here” or use bounty hunters if the Italians don’t want to send their own agents.

Turn about is fair play after all.

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By Outraged, March 1, 2007 at 3:18 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

RE: Comment 56009 Jeff Badura

News Flash: Yes, we are at war here. The problem is it’s an illegal war based upon ficticious information.  As for “growing some testicles” now I know this is hard but try to think with your OTHER HEAD!

You talk about torture being a “subjective” word. That’s as idiotic as when one of my children hits the other one and says “I hardly hit them.”  I’ll tell it to you the same as I’ve told it to them (since you use the same mentality an’ all).  I tell them to come over by me and “I’ll hardly hit them”.  I don’t get any takers.  But here it is, Jeff Badura, come over to my house and I’ll use “subjective” torture on you. Well, I’m in charge of course, and you only get to “play the part” of the tortured.

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By Dan Noel, March 1, 2007 at 2:09 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Human rights abusers, like slave traders and pirates, are slowly but surely getting tracked down beyond borders…Should the Italian authorities move beyond their well-established tradition of corruption, those individuals will have very few countries to go to, and may, in the not-too-distant future, be brought to justice somehow…

20 years ago, who would have thought that Gen. Pinochet would narrowly escape a trial in Spain?

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By August West, February 28, 2007 at 10:25 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

re: Comment #56009 by Jeff Badura

I don’t believe that you are against torture for two reasons.  First, you parse the term by calling the definition “subjective” thus attempting to trivialize the meaning by asserting the word is capable of infinite interpretation, many innocent.  Second, you obviously failed to read the jump page because if you had you would have seen that Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr “says he was tortured with electric shocks, beatings, rape threats and genital abuse.”  These are not fraternity pranks. 
Maybe if you dittoheads knew that Rush Limbaugh never graduated from college (he dropped out after a couple of semesters and lost his student deferment, only to avoid the draft by virtue of a pilonidal cyst) you wouldn’t think that mimicking his talking points makes you sound intelligent.

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By Paul, February 28, 2007 at 10:12 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Is it any wonder that Bush$Co withdrew the USA from the International Criminal Court as one of the first official acts of their regime of lies and deceit of the American people?

We have lost our American Values to the greed of the Repukes and the hubris of Bush$Co. All in the name of oil!

I have to question some of these post here as to what they think the USA would do if Italian spy operatives kidnapped a person in say New York and then flew him out of the country to hold him prisoner for torture? Oh I forgot we do not torture according to the official party line and Lie-thru-her-teeth Condi!

Just my two pennies worth, PEACE

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By Chris, February 28, 2007 at 9:42 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

This reminds me of the time, also in Italy, some years ago, when some American fighter pilots were flying at a too low altitude, and wound up cutting the lines to a sky lift, causing 20 people riding in a ski lift car to plunge to their deaths. The American soldiers were immediately hustled back to the U.S. Although the tragedy was obviously not intentional, it took place in Italy, deaths were involved, and the country in which it happened wanted to examine all relevant details, and have it handled under their jurisdiction. Of course the U.S. Government couldn’t handle the idea of their servicemen being judged in a foreign country, even though they were at fault, so the men were brought back here, and…wonder of wonders…the American military found them all to be innocent! Who would have thought it. I’m sure that’s comforting to all the fiends and relatives of those who perished…

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By Jeff Badura, February 28, 2007 at 9:38 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

of coarse we will not turn over American Patriots to a Italian Kangaroo Court!!! give me a break?? this is a joke!! if any, did anything wrong, it was the leaders who gave the orders?? not the hero’s who followed them!! we are at war here?? i predict this whole matter will just go away quietly!! as if the Italian government was not involved??  come on?? by the way in the al-Qeada hand book recovered in Afghanistan in 2002 is stated that all captured members when released should say they were tortured regardless of whether they were, or not?? and the nut-roots in blog-la-land eat up the terrorist propaganda like it was magic mushrooms!!  now, your not going to get me to say i support overt brutal torture, because i do not!! but the word is subjective ??? and if we are talking about putting panties on some guys head or having a dog bark at you??? then lets get over it!! i am a vet, and a lot of what the libs call torture? i went threw in basic training!! so lets grow some testicles and remember we are at war here!! you cant win a war fighting it PC!!......i salute the CIA hero’s

illgramaticus knee o’kaun

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By porcupine, February 28, 2007 at 9:23 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

No surprise there, eh? just more scripted, pre-dictable spewing by the hubris-ridden hegemons in babu [sic] condi-the-Katrina-shoe-shopper’s showcase fiefdom. It’s a stance mirrored stateside by Alberto “Karl Koch” Gonzalez’s Operation Falcon, the Wackenhut-CCR-Haliburton debt-prison complex, database mining for “risk scoring”, the mandatory Real ID, etc.

Consumer sheeplings of the new US inert, impotent demos take note: an illicit criminal syndicate backed by massive and elitist corporate power, has committed massive voting fraud, annulled the US Constitution and stolen the franchise; ie, our political existence, laughing as it pisses in our faces.

Thus do we get an inkling of the long and ongoing FBI cointelpro-enhanced ordeal of US Blacks (indeed, recall the Mississippi Freedom Democrats and Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO) described by S.Carmichael and C.Hamilton in Black Power) and ongoing zionist dispossession and slaughter of “sub-human” Palestinians.

Nothing new here, really. Same old crap isn’t it? It’s just a lot deeper and the stench is getting to be too much. We are seeing racism, denigration, erasure of the common man, hi-tech social control and torture lauded as virtue, normative; it has been expanded, foisted upon all of us, the new US slave class, helots of the third estate.

Achtung! Hail PNAC and US state terror. Achtung!

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By SadButTrue, February 28, 2007 at 6:36 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

The definitive question to be asked by the next House UnAmerican Activities Commission, “are you now, or have you ever been a member of the Republican Party?”

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By hans denee, February 28, 2007 at 4:20 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Bullying, threatening, murdering, torturing and renditioning is what we do best; justice?, to hell with it.The greatest “DEMOCRACY” in the world, or a Fascist state in the making? Time will tell, but I think it is already too late, the die is cast.

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By vet240, February 28, 2007 at 4:04 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

We’ve come a long way under the bu$h administration.

We’ve accomplished something I never thought I’d live to see

My country tis of thee, of thee I sing, AMERICA A ROGUE NATION!

America, an international criminal enterprise-SHAME!

You who have supported aan continue to support the Republican party are complicent in this enterprise.

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By kent, February 28, 2007 at 2:50 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Sounds like it’s time for some extraordinary extraordinry rendition. The shoe seems to be on the other foot. Not the same when you’re on the receiving end, is it, fellas…

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By This Old Brit, February 28, 2007 at 2:18 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Well, whether it’s more or not it’s usually a lot more reliable.

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By Christopher Robin, February 28, 2007 at 12:51 pm #
(Unregistered commenter)

Since Europe seems to have more intelligence then we’ve shown to date. It might be wise not to throw stones into glass houses?

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