Confirmed: UK Accepted US Torture Planes

Via The Independent:

CIA jets suspected of flying terrorist suspects to secret prisons for torture have landed at commercial British airports and received help from UK air traffic control, the authorities have admitted for the first time.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) confirmed that three planes with CIA tail numbers have travelled through Britain "on a number of occasions".

MPs last night seized on the letter as the first formal acknowledgement that British authorities were aware that CIA flights associated with "extraordinary rendition" have travelled through UK airspace.

So much for all of those denials when you said that you didn't help your buddy Bush send people to be tortured, hey Tony Blair?

It said the flights may also have used airspace controlled by the Ministry of Defence. Defence ministers have been criticised for refusing to answer questions put down by Sir Menzies about how often the CIA jets have landed at military air bases. Defence minister Adam Ingram said "the information is not recorded centrally".

That's the British version of RumsfeldSpeak which basically translates into: "F*ck you! It's all the media's fault".

Let's stop calling this practice "extraordinary rendition". They're torture flights. Period. They take helpless suspects overseas to be tortured.

Demand that Rumsfeld resign. Now. Today. Contact your congressperson and get it done. Protest at the Pentagon. Do something! Anything. This barbarism has got to stop. Don't be guilty of complicity by sitting back and doing nothing. You could be the next one sent to who knows where to be "rendered".

Update: According to the Washington Post, the Pentagon was forewarned that perpetrating torture could cause serious problems:

The Navy's former general counsel warned Pentagon officials two years before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that circumventing international agreements on torture and detainees' treatment would invite abuse, according to a published report.

Legal theories granting the president the right to authorize abuse in spite of the Geneva Conventions were unlawful, dangerous and erroneous, Alberto J. Mora advised officials in a secret memo. The 22-page document was obtained by The New Yorker for a story in its Feb. 27 issue.

Be sure to check out The New Yorker story once it's published.

There's more: These torture flights have been criss-crossing Europe using a bogus Canadian call sign.

(Sidebar: Interesting...just after I made this post, I had a visit from a company that monitors "internet risks". Read about Cyveillance's suspicious activities here. Are they monitoring your site too? If so, why? I'd sure like to know.)