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July 30, 2005

NeoConned

Italian law enforcement promptly and efficiently tracked down and arrested the one abortive London bombing suspect who managed to flee the country. The latest word is that this suspect is fighting extradition back to the UK. Which obviously means that the Italians are working within the recognized parameters of the relevant laws.

Mind you, this was a terrorist bombing suspect who was on the run and actively avoiding law enforcement.

How do the NeoCons in power deal with something like this? They send the CIA to violate the sovereignty of an ally by kidnapping a cleric who doesn't appear to have been actively hiding from law enforcement and then apparently "rendered" him to Egypt.

That contrast is bad enough. But, the NeoCons went further by using American tax dollars to have the CIA officials live the highlife.

Uruknet reports:

• The CIA agents took rooms in Milan's 5-star hotels, including the Principe di Savoia ("one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels") where they rang up $42,000 in expenses; the Westin Palace, the Milan Hilton, and the Star Hotel Rosa as well as similar places in the seaside resort of La Spezia and in Florence, running up cumulative hotel bills of $144,984.


• They ate in the equivalent of 5-star restaurants in Milan and elsewhere, evidently fancying themselves gourmet undercover agents.


• As a mixed team -- at least 6 women took part in the operation -- men and women on at least two occasions took double rooms together in these hotels. (There is no indication that any of them were married -- to each other at least.)


• After the successful kidnapping was done and the cleric dispatched to sunny Egypt, they evidently decided they deserved a respite from their exertions; so several of them left for a vacation in Venice, while four others headed for the Mediterranean coast north of Tuscany, all on the taxpayer dole.


• They charged up to $500 a day apiece, according to Craig Whitlock of the Washington Post, to "Diners Club accounts created to match their recently forged identities"; wielded Visa cards (assumedly similarly linked to their fake identities); and made sure they got or used frequent flier miles. (The Diner's Club, when queried by Tomdispatch, refused to comment on any aspect of the case.) Our master spies "rarely paid in cash," adds Whitlock, "gave their frequent traveler account numbers to desk clerks and made dozens of calls from unsecure phones in their rooms."


• To move their captive in comfort -- for them -- they summoned up not some grimy cargo plane but a Learjet to take him to Germany and a Gulfstream V to transport him to Egypt, the sorts of spiffy private jets normally used by CEOs and movie stars.

Ironically, having had arrest warrants issued for their arrests, the CIA officials involved are now actively on the run from law enforcement.

Of course Bush partisans such as the Wall Street Journal Editorial Board have tried to claim that Clinton pioneered the practice of rendition. But, those assertions are just that - hollow assertions sans a shred of fact.

With all due respect to our Italian friends... it's a damn shame that the world has to look to Italy rather than to the United States to see the rule of law being respected.

Posted by Kevin at July 30, 2005 06:38 PM