Bad apples

Billmon gives a sigh of partial relief as he realizes the majority of Americans are not, in fact, raving fascists.

Well, Sen. Inhofe, notwithstanding.

But, as this story points out, what the Int'l Red Cross points to as "systemic abuse" in Abu Ghraib could very well be occurring throughout the world in the vast but secret network of military and CIA prisons and holding pens.

"The number of people who have been detained in the Arab world for the sake of America is much more than in Guantanamo Bay. Really, thousands," said Najeeb Nuaimi, a former justice minister of Qatar who is representing the families of dozens of prisoners.

The largely hidden array includes three systems that only rarely overlap: the Pentagon-run network of prisons, jails and holding facilities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and elsewhere; small and secret CIA-run facilities where top al Qaeda and other figures are kept; and interrogation rooms of foreign intelligence services -- some with documented records of torture -- to which the U.S. government delivers or "renders" mid- or low-level terrorism suspects for questioning.

All told, more than 9,000 people are held by U.S. authorities overseas, according to Pentagon figures and estimates by intelligence experts, the vast majority under military control. The detainees have no conventional legal rights: no access to a lawyer; no chance for an impartial hearing; and, at least in the case of prisoners held in cellblock 1A at Abu Ghraib, no apparent guarantee of humane treatment accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions or civilians in U.S. jails.

That doesn't even include the over one thousand Muslim and arab men in this country detained for up to a year following Sept. 11 2001 who were then, in many cases, deported for minor infractions or visa problems.

The Bush administration, using the Justice Dept., the military, and the CIA seems hell bent on turning the world into a Petri dish of ideal conditions for incubating hatred of the U.S.

Feeling safer?