BANGKOK - Months before the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington, the US and Thailand established the Counterterrorism Intelligence Center (CTIC), a secretive unit presciently which joined the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Thai intelligence officials to gather information about regional terror groups.
Now the unit and its associated staff and directors could one day find themselves on trial for war crimes over recent revelations first reported in the Washington Post and later confirmed during a congressional hearing, that the CIA ran a secret interrogation
facility at a Thai military base where at least two terror suspects from Pakistan and Afghanistan were transported and later tortured.
The revelations, made in the context of the CIA's destruction of tapes made of their torture sessions, represent the latest bombshell to explode over the US's prosecution of the so-called "war on terror" and the first to drag in directly a Southeast Asian ally.
Political analysts and diplomats in Thailand suspect that the prison was, and perhaps still is, situated at a military base in the northeastern province of Udon Thani from where the US launched its bombers during the Vietnam War and is currently believed to monitor regional radio communications, including inside China.
And dammit... I've forgotten about Burma...
Stupid stupid!
2 comments:
Kraant,
Saw that you posted on my blog about a post voicing my displeasure about someone who said "Fuck military families" on the PFF. Couldn't find your email anywhere, so I'll leave a comment on the most recent post on your blog. Here is my response to you:
Thanks for stopping in. I have made a couple of posts on PFF, but I realized that the site was geared towards a bit too much confrontation for my taste. I think people have some interesting points on the site, but it is best that I don't go trying to start trouble, since being active duty in the military, it's inappropriate, as one commenter on PFF mentioned to me. My opinions are my own, however I think some felt like it was a full-on assault by the military-industrial complex, as one user on PFF questioned my "motivation". Obviously, it wasn't an attack by the military conspiracy complex, just one guy's opinions who happens to be in the military. I keep PFF on my reader because I always enjoy the insight. I made this post quite some time ago, and if you find the post I made highly offensive, I apologize and I realize I'm in the military, public servant, and I can take it down by your request. Honestly, I kind of forgot about it. Let me know. Thanks!
BTW just to stay on topic with the post I've been to thailand with the US military and there wasn't any torture involved to my knowledge, as far as I could tell. Take care!
Eh? Find your post offensive? Not at all. I found it very interesting actually. I'm an ozzie anyway so you don't have to worry about the whole public servantly duties thing.
Now that you mention it I think I remember seeing your posts over at PFF... Heh... I'd forgotten about that.
The whole topic is an interesting one for me since if I hadn't slept in on recruiting day when I was 17 I'd probably be a soldier now. Makes it a bit hard for me to condemn people who choose that course in life.
Thing is though, the coalition of the willings invasion of Iraq, up till that time signing up had always been a back up option for me. Nothing wrong with signing up to defend your country right?
Now with the invasion of Iraq, we're the bad guys. It's like we're all Italy under Mussolini invading and occupying Ethiopia, I'd bet there and then too after the invasion things would have fallen apart a bit if the Italian troops had packed up and left, but the Italy it shouldn't have invaded in the first place and it had no right to be there...
Anyway, where was I. Oh yeah... Anyway I'm pretty pissed off about all this because if history had been slightly different and I'd woken up on time that day when I was 17 one day I'd be helping invade Iraq, and that would have broken the unspoken promise that made me willing to consider signing up in the first place...
That we're the good guys, we don't do things like that.
(Yeah yeah, Vietnam, I know... But I thought we'd all learned from that and that it wasn't going to happen again...)
It pisses me off thoroughly, it also pisses me off on a more selfish level because my life is in a ditch right now and if it wasn't for Iraq and that lost trust that we're the good guys I'd probably seriously consider signing up.
But, now I can't because it would go against my conscience.
So I've got a lot of sympathy for folks who were in the military before the invasion and got dragged into it, because, well heck that poor sod could have been me, but I'm really really suss on people who signed up just to go to Iraq. I just don't see how someone could do that with a clear conscience.
So yeah, I don't think your post was offensive at all, but then I didn't think fairlefts original post was either. After a while of reading PFF you get blogger ironhide and nothing looks offensive anymore y'know...
Anyway, I'm just as happy chatting in comments but just for the record my email's kraant (at) gmail (dot) com. I should have put that somewhere on the blog ages ago, but I never got around to it.
Aaaand... just to stay on topic I don't think there's any military involvement in torture in thailand, from the sounds of it it seems like a buncha spooks are the ones pulling the crap.
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