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Bush and Blair's secret island

The NewsLog of Flemming Funch
 Bush and Blair's secret island2004-06-23 10:52
6 comments
picture by Flemming Funch

If you wanted to hand over a set of nuclear missiles to a volatile middle-eastern government, where would you do it in suitable secrecy? The answer is the remote island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. If you remember, that's where the Bush administration equipped Israel's submarines with nuclear armed harpoon missiles last year. story.

So, what if you wanted a place to quietly store top terrorists you had captured, being free to use any methods you can think of to squeeze information out of them? Including torture, drugs and hypnosis. Diego Garcia is again a good answer. Article here at Globe Intel.

What is convenient is for one thing that the island is very remote, and that its previous inhabitants have been forcefully removed, so there's nobody there to complain. But secondly it is that the island is a British colony. Apparently a key U.S. legal ruling states that violations of American statutes that prohibit torture, degrading treatment or violations of the Geneva Convention will not apply "if it can be argued that the detainees are formally in the custody of another country". Convenient, eh. So if these guys are housed by the British, the Americans don't have to play nice any longer.

A problem is of course that the British laws certainly don't either allow for using torture against bad people. Distribution of nuclear weapons is probably not particularly kosher either. Anyway, it is Tony Blair's problem, not George Bush's, as it is done on British soil. Could be an embarrassing situation if it got a lot of publicity. But so far they're getting away with it.


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6 comments

23 Jun 2004 @ 15:17 by b : Conjecture and Supposition
"Israeli and American officials have admitted collaborating to deploy US-supplied Harpoon cruise missiles armed with nuclear warheads in Israel's fleet of Dolphin-class submarines, giving the Middle East's only nuclear power the ability to strike at any of its Arab neighbours."
No facts or names in the article support this story that USA gave Israel nukes. No major news services posted this story because of the untruths. In fact, it is common knowledge that Israel makes its own nukes.
Re the torture hoopla: War is a real bitch, ain't it?  



23 Jun 2004 @ 15:44 by ming : Nuclear weapons
Yeah, war is never fun. Anyway, on the harpoon missile thing, it was actually covered by most major media, even though few people noticed for some reason. Like {link:http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1061399,00.html|Guardian} and {link:http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iznukes12oct12.story|LA Times}. From how I read those stories, the Bush administration confirmed it.  


19 Dec 2014 @ 23:55 by Hem @117.169.1.71 : vyJhgDAiqyWgnN
I'm sure lots of folks will try and make it OK by saying "look how it will make a good atrfiicial reef" and so forth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's still damned sad to see history go down like that. I wish they would take more of the old ships and planes and turn them into places people could go and visit them. I often went to see the U.s.s. Batfish submarine at Fort Gibson Damn in Oklahoma at least that's where I recall it being at. That has been many, many years ago and I'm a bit fuzzy on the memory, but that submarine being in land-locked Oklahoma was always one of the high-points of summer vacations in Muskogee, Oklahoma with my grandparents. I'd certainly get more of a kick visiting these old ships at a dock somewhere than on a dive especially since I cannot scuba dive!Sadly I understand how much maintenance costs are involved to keep these old planes and ships in some sort of decent care. It's not cheap. It makes me feel pretty bad for the people that used to work and live on the things.  


23 Dec 2014 @ 18:40 by Harieth @186.89.88.193 : odywaXRaTJr
MartinAn excellent idea. Of cousre, there is already Toryradio as one might expect. THese days, with the ability to drop in You tube mpegs perhaps also LibDem TV might be coupled in but as usual it's a question of someone or some people having the time and energy to do it.All the bes  


28 Apr 2016 @ 13:45 by Jahlin @188.143.232.32 : jspgerSBCq
AFAIC th'tas the best answer so far!  


28 Apr 2016 @ 19:50 by Arjay @188.143.232.32 : nBHhZGyoKp
dis&bntp;:Have you given any consideration at all with converting your blog in to French? I know a couple of translaters right here which would help you do it for no cost if you wanna make contact with me.  


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