Editorial: CIA Flights Stress America's Allies

Is that meant to be reassuring? Given the CIA's covert nature, would we expect it to leave huge footprints? More curiosity seems in order. Many Canadians are sympathetic to U.S. efforts to prevent another 9/11 attack. As the plight of the Christian Peacemakers in Iraq shows, terrorists spare not even the innocent. Canada is as vulnerable to attack as the U.S., Britain, Spain, Indonesia, Jordan and other states. That's why Canada sent troops to help the U.S. topple Afghanistan's Taliban regime for harbouring Al Qaeda after 9/11, and why Ottawa continues to co-operate with the United States on security issues. But even so, U.S. President George Bush's post-9/11 terror policy is so dismissive of international law and human rights that it has squandered the world's goodwill and strained relations with close allies. Washington's attitude toward torture is but one example. When U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told Europeans this week that the U.S. "does not permit, tolerate or condone torture," she might have added that Bush opposes a Senate bid to bar the CIA from inflicting cruel and degrading treatment on prisoners. Human Rights Watch reports prisoners have faced "vicious beatings" in U.S. custody, sexual degradation, near drowning and near asphyxiation, sleep deprivation and other abuses. Indeed, Washington contends the Geneva Conventions do not apply to terror suspects. U.S. troops at Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq took that to heart. http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_PrintFriendly&c=Article&cid=1133995813983&call_pageid=968256290204

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