It’s the Cut-N-Run and Coddle-R-Torture campaign. Heckuva a referendum to put before the people. Bushattacked the Dems yesterday claiming they were the “party of cut and run.” The other day SpeakerHasterthad this to say after the House passed the torture bill…
“Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists,” Hastert said in a statement. “So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan.
Of course the recent NIE now undercuts anything Bush says on Iraq. As for the coddling of Hastert’s terrorists it appears many may be, as feared, innocent people abducted and sold in the profitable shall we say terrorist-trade. From theAP today:
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan – Amnesty International accused Pakistan on Friday of abducting hundreds of people, alleging they have terrorist ties and holding them in secret locations or handing them to U.S. authorities for money.
Pakistan’s practice of offering rewards running to thousands of dollars for unidentified terror suspects has led to illegal detentions of innocent people, said Claudio Cordone, senior director of research at Amnesty International.
“Bounty hunters — including police officers and local people — have captured individuals of different nationalities, often apparently at random, and sold them into U.S. custody,” he said.
SNIP
The Amnesty allegations come days after the country’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, revealed in his memoir, “In The Line of Fire,” that Pakistan captured 689 al-Qaida terror suspects, and turned over 369 to Washington.
“We have earned bounties totaling millions of dollars,” Musharraf said, without specifying how much was paid.
Cordone said many detainees ended up in secret locations or at the U.S. prisons, including Guantanamo Bay and Bagram, north of Kabul.
“Hundreds of people have been picked up in mass arrests, many have been sold to the U.S.A as ‘terrorists’ simply on the word of their captor, and hundreds have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Bagram Air base or secret detention centers run by the USA.” he said. “The road to Guantanamo very literally starts in Pakistan,” Cordone said. (emphasis mine)
This whole mess reeks of a bygone era. We are paying for people that have been abducted in another land, holding them indefinitely and doing only Bush knows what to them. The term that comes to my mind for it all is Security Slavery without the security unfortunately and regretably another future of shame to overcome.