US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, seen in a meeting with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, will make a statement on the row over reported secret CIA prisons when she visits Europe next week, Ahern said. If US leaders want to look resolute, then the last place they should table information that could aid the enemies of America is: off American soil. No matter what Condi reveals, the Euro-snots will call it: grovelling. The Anglicism "row" connotes a diplomatic dispute, that will inevitably draw fire from upwardly mobile Euro-Socs. Condi shouldn't set herself up for media-political pillorization.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will make a statement on the row over reported secret CIA prisons when she visits Europe next week, Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said. Ahern also said after talks with Rice here that she gave him categoric assurances that Ireland's Shannon airport had not been used for "untoward" purposes as a transit point for terror suspects.
The Irishman said Rice, due to make a four-nation swing of Europe next week, told him she would answer a formal query from the European Union on reports of clandestine interrogation centers in Europe.
Condi: just say, "I'll get back to you on that," and let it hang for a year.
"She will be answering the (EU) letter. She made that quite clear," Ahern said. "She will also be making a statement when she goes to Europe." He said the top US envoy would make it "quite clear that as far as Americans are concerned, they have not infringed any international human rights laws in relation to this."
The United States has been under mounting pressure to come clean about reports of the "black site" prisons in Europe as Rice prepared to leave Monday on a trip to Germany, Romania, Ukraine and Brussels for a NATO meeting. The State Department on Thursday released the letter from Britain asking, as acting EU president, for clarification of media reports "suggesting violations of international law" in the detention or transport of terror suspects.
Condi: just say, "I will leave all speculation to consumers of that type of pseudo information."
Ahern said he was satisfied with Rice's explanation concerning Shannon, a refueling stop for the US military where some 270,000 servicemen transited between January and October of this year. "As a friendly nation, I totally accept the categoric assurances that they have given us," he told reporters after meeting with Rice. He said Ireland would not open any investigation of the matter.
Belgium announced earlier Thursday that it had launched a probe last week to see if any of its military or civilian airports had been used as transit points for US planes transporting Islamic militants.
Belgium: first, you stop sending Islamonazi convert-skanks to Iraq for blow-up terror.
The inquiry found that no military airport had been used but Belgian authorities were still looking at the more heavily frequented civilian facilities, Foreign Minister Karel De Gucht said.
Ahern was asked about the possibility Shannon might have been used by CIA planes that were not carrying any prisoners on board but were en route to a third country to pick up some. He said press reports were unconfirmed. "If anyone has any evidence of any of these flights please give me a call and I will have it immediately investigated," the Irish envoy said. "Nobody has come forward."
Once when the Ranger carrier group docked off San Francisco, the Mayor asked the Admiral if the Ranger carried nuclear weapons, and she was told: "We neither confirm nor deny anything concerning the armament status of our ship." That's all anyone out of the loop needed to know.
| Ahern hits it on the head and the MSM ignores it. All we have in this 'affair' are allegations. There are not facts, no breathless Seymour Hersh articles in the New Yorker, nothing that anyone can say, "Aha!" to. Nothing except inneundo. |