Cruising to Hell

A story in the Guardian has renewed my disgust in my country today. It appears that, according to a human rights group, that not only are we continuing to abuse innocent people at Guantanamo and other secret prisons around the world but we also operating prison ships to continue our assault on human rights on the high seas.

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained [...]

Ships that are understood to have held prisoners include the USS Bataan and USS Peleliu. A further 15 ships are suspected of having operated around the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, which has been used as a military base by the UK and the Americans.

Reprieve will raise particular concerns over the activities of the USS Ashland and the time it spent off Somalia in early 2007 conducting maritime security operations in an effort to capture al-Qaida terrorists [...]

The Reprieve study includes the account of a prisoner released from Guantánamo Bay, who described a fellow inmate's story of detention on an amphibious assault ship. "One of my fellow prisoners in Guantánamo was at sea on an American ship with about 50 others before coming to Guantánamo ... he was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other people on the ship. They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV. The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantánamo."

Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve's legal director, said: "They choose ships to try to keep their misconduct as far as possible from the prying eyes of the media and lawyers. We will eventually reunite these ghost prisoners with their legal rights.

Why am I not surprised? I continually think that Bush/Cheney can't lower the bar on a civilized society any further but they disappoint on a regular basis. It looks like Darth and Shrub have taken a lesson from their corporate owners. It shouldn't be surprising that they're using the same practices as their corporate overlords like offshoring, outsourcing, etc., to avoid American law and taxes. That's why Guantanamo has been put into service and that's the point of these ghost ships. Operating in secrecy and outside the auspices of the law is the hallmark of this administration.
One should note the irony of using a ship named 'Bataan' to pursue these nefarious goals. How many Japanese did the Americans prosecute for war crimes for the abuses suffered on Bataan by American and Phillipine POW's?
January 2009 is way too far away for my sensibilities.