Ignoring the tortured elephant in the room

kc — Wed, 06 Sep 2006 14:38:53 -0700

There are a lot of unanswered questions in this story about Bush admitting that the CIA kept terror suspects in secret prisons:

President Bush on Wednesday for the first time acknowledged the use of secret CIA prisons outside U.S. borders to hold top suspects captured in the war on terrorism.

In a speech at the White House, Bush said captured terror suspects have been the best intelligence source in efforts to stop new attacks and listed attacks blocked because of this intelligence.

The CIA program has "saved innocent lives," the president said.

Bush said torture was not part of the program and he had not authorized any form of torture, saying American law forbids it.

It begs the question, why did the government have to keep these suspects in secret prisons? Was Guantanamo not secure enough? That doesn't wash. Why would the CIA need to move these suspects all over the world? Could they not be interrogated in this hemisphere?

There really is only one logical answer for why they needed secret prisons. There is a clue later on in this story:

Bush said Wednesday he would ask Congress for explicit rules so U.S. personnel are protected from abuse charges as they fight the war on terror.

Why would U.S. personnel have to worry about abuse charges if there was no torture?

The Supreme Court ruling on detainees forced Bush's hand here, and now everyone is trying to ignore the elephant in the room, the fact that these people were tortured.

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Ignoring the tortured elephant in the room