ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF BUSH'S MILITARISM - MISSILE DEFENSE IN POLAND

Why does the United States need to put a missile defense system in Poland? This is an utter waste of taxpayer dollars because it is totally unnecessary.

Whom does the U.S. and Bush fear? Iran? That's a joke. Iran has never invaded another country or initiated aggression against another country. Iran has never shot missiles at the U.S or at Israel.

Bush's desire to place a missile defense system in Poland is unreasonable and unnecessary. But all that can be hoped for now is that a new U.S. president in 2009 will put a stop to this Bush profligacy and madness.

PUTIN DESERVES CREDIT FOR RESISTING BUSH'S ATTEMPT TO PUT MISSILES IN POLAND AND CZECH REPUBLIC

Vladimir Putin may be an authoritarian autocrat, but he still deserves credit for standing up to George Bush and Condi Rice on the subject of putting missiles in the Czech Republic and Poland. These missiles are of their very nature destabilizing to surrounding countries. More missiles and armaments are not the answer. Raining down missiles on Iran will solve nothing. So thanks to Putin for objecting and resisting Bush's militaristic push to arm countries in the former Soviet bloc. No missiles in Poland. No missiles in the Czech Republic.

BUSH VISITS THOSE COUNTRIES COOPERATING WITH CIA ON SECRET PRISONS

I suspect the basic reason for George Bush visiting the countries of Poland and Albania on his European trip last week was to reward them with his presence for their cooperation in providing airspace and locations for his secret detention centers, called "black prisons." Certainly Poland provided buildings and cooperated fully with the CIA. We do not yet know the full story about Albania, but from the treatment Albanians gave George Bush a few days ago, in effect hailing him as the "king of the world," it would not surprise me to find out that Albania had a role to play. See the Report on Secret Detention Centers by Dick Marty.

POLAND & ROMANIA ALLOW CIA TO OPERATE "BLACK PRISONS"

In this damning report for the Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly on the CIA's secret detention centers, Rapporteur Dick Marty identifies two countries which allowed the CIA to operate "black prisons" and secret detention centers: Poland and Romania. And these were not just operations whereby the host countries were left in the dark about what was happening. These were "bilateral" arrangements between the CIA and Poland and/or Romania:

"Yet none of these restrictive rules mitigates the fact that Poland and Romania, as host
countries, were knowingly complicit in the CIA’s secret detention programme. When we sought
confirmation from one of our sources in the CIA that these were bilateral (rather than unilateral) arrangements, and that every programme was carried out with the express authorisation of the relevant partner state, we received this emphatic response:

"“One of the great enduring legacies of the Cold War, which has carried into these alliances, is
that NATO countries don’t run unilateral operations in other NATO countries. It’s a tradition
that is almost sacrosanct. We [the CIA] just don’t go trampling on other people’s turf,
especially not in Europe.”" (P. 32).

REPORT ON SECRET DETENTIONS

Here is the link to the Report on Secret Detentions and Illegal Transfers of Detainees by Dick Marty of the Council of Europe. The report has a release date of June 7, 2007. I will have much more to say shortly in a forthcoming post.