Reasonable people

Reasonable people may disagree on our government's foreign policy. Some may even feel that indefinite detention without trial of people accused of terrorism (though probably not for American citizens). Fewer still may think that the stakes are so high that it is permissible to detain them without abiding by the terms of the Geneva Convention and treating them as POWs. I have my doubts about the the net effectiveness (let alone morality) of such policies given how it undermine our moral authority and plays into the hands of radicals. Despite my doubts I can accept that reasonable people may disagree.

But our government feels the need to be underhanded about even the rules it makes up on the fly. Instead of declaring who is being held in what facility (or, heaven forbid, what they've been charged with) they've maintained a network of undocumented facilities in foreign countries with Guantanamo being the public face. "But they are needed for the War on Terror!" Fine, for today only I will grant that reasonable people could disagree on this matter.

But why do these detainees have to be shuttled between these facilities in planes marked only by their tail numbers whose tail markings point back to CIA front companies? If these guys are a military threat why not transport them on military planes? Or since outsourcing is all the rage these days why doesn't an actual contractor like Haliburton or Blackwater do it and take their cut? Instead these "companies" are nothing little more than a PO Box. How is it appropriate that such a plane gets clearance to land in Guantanamo no less than three times? (We know this because people have been recording the tail markings of flights in and out. And plane registrations are public.) How can a reasonable person say that there is nothing wrong with that picture?

I suppose some die hard Bush Administration supporters may still see nothing wrong. But when this same plane later crash lands in Mexico carrying over three tons of cocaine while chased by (Mexican) military helicopters I hope that people of all stripes can agree this is unacceptable. How can the government justify that the same plane that ferries detainees to Guantanamo also ferries cocaine to Florida? Is this another Iran-contra type scheme where we are doing naughty things to finance other naughty things that we'd rather not show up as a line item in the federal budget? Has Bush decided that something is too sensitive for our democratically elected Congress to know about? In the current poisonous political climate we'll never know. I must be soft on terror and hate America for even asking.

Here's an article (with video) about the CIA drug plane that crashed. And another.