Startling Revelations

When the atrocities of September 11, 2001 occurred, it was not only the United States that was shocked to its very foundation in disbelief that such an unbelievable and wretchedly evil attack could take place on their soil.  The world, watching in fascinated horror, reeled in disbelief along with the United States. The suffering of those three thousand people realizing just how close death came licking at their heels, and their final moments of understanding that these were their last seconds of life, transfixed television viewers, unable to take their eyes away from the unfolding horrors.

It was a drama of unspeakable proportions. One that shocked the world. Most of the world. There were reports of dancing in the streets in some Arab countries, of sweets being handed out to jubilant children, of men with rifles shooting them into the air as an expression of their deep satisfaction that the fabled, powerful United States had been brought to its knees. And it was, it had been, the trauma that was inflicted that day will never be diminished by time. The sheer scope and scale of the attack was breathlessly audacious and horribly successful.

And then the United States collected itself. After the blame and self-recrimination, the mourning of the tragedy and the resolve that the country would do everything in its power to ensure that another such tragedy would never be mounted on them again, it called upon its friends to help it defend itself. The responses were as expected. And with the sympathy and offers, came a tightening of security for other countries as well, fully realizing that they too were in the cross-hairs of the violent jihadists who had wrought such dreadful misery.

And here is a newly released report that 54 countries, including Canada, aided the CIA in facilitating secret detention, rendition and interrogation programs in the years following September 11, 2001. This is a report issued by the Open Society Justice Initiative. This rights advocacy group has produced a detailed external accounting of the assistance that countries offered to the United States. Such as allowing the CIA to operate secret interrogation prisons on their foreign soil. Permitting the CIA the use of their airports for refuelling while transferring prisoners around the world.

Amazing, shocking, and simply not to be believed, let alone countenanced. This is what one could rightfully assume to be moral righteousness.  There were many in the socialist-left living in North America, in Europe, who somehow garnered their own levels of satisfaction over the plight that America found itself in on that fateful day and the slow, pain-filled days following those attacks. It was moral justice, it was the response of the underdog to the oppression of the super-powerful. It was a lesson in humiliation and blow-back.

And the socialist left is still blowing back. Amrit Singh, author of the Open Society report, Globalizing Torture, must have a profound feeling of satisfaction having discovered the evidence she sought, that 25 countries in Europe, 14 in Asia and 13 in Africa saw fit to give some level of aid to the CIA, along with allies Canada and Australia. Those countries complicit in aiding the CIA include Thailand, Romania, Poland and Lithuania, where prisoners were held, and Denmark, which facilitated CIA air operations, and Gambia which arrested and turned over a prisoner to the agency.

"The moral cost of these programs was borne not just by the U.S. but by the 54 other countries it recruited to help. Canada also allowed use of its airspace and airports for flights associated with CIA extraordinary renditions. After September 11, 2001, about 20 aircraft linked to the CIA made 74 flights to Canada." Shame, dreadful shame on us.

Flight logs in the possession of Reprieve, a British human rights group, obtained from the U.S. Federal Aviation Agency, who without doubt felt there was nothing to hide or to be fragile about sharing, indicated that in 2004, a chartered plane suspected of transferring detainees for the CIA extraordinary renditions program departed from Washington, stopped in Guantanamo Bay, then Gander, Newfoundland, on to Bagram Air Base, and eventually landed in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Guilty!

Former CA director Michael Hayden, in a panel discussion that took place at the American Enterprise Institute last week noted that few called for restraint after 9-11: "We are often put in a situation where we are bitterly accused of not doing enough to defend America when people feel endangered. And then as soon as we've made people feel safe again, we're accused of doing too much."