To many wealthy Lithuanians, it was just a fancy horseback riding academy. But horses aren't the only things kept in the barn: the CIA had built a secret prison there, where they interrogated (or tortured, your choice of word) suspected al-Qaeda terrorists.
ABC News has the story:
The CIA constructed the prison over the next several months, apparently flying in prefabricated elements from outside Lithuania. The prison opened in Sept. 2004.
According to sources who saw the facility, the riding academy originally consisted of an indoor riding area with a red metallic roof, a stable and a cafe. The CIA built a thick concrete wall inside the riding area. Behind the wall, it built what one Lithuanian source called a "building within a building."
On a series of thick concrete pads, it installed what a source called "prefabricated pods" to house prisoners, each separated from the other by five or six feet. Each pod included a shower, a bed and a toilet. Separate cells were constructed for interrogations.
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2002-11/a-2002-11-22-33-Bush.cfm?moddate=2002-11-22
That's right, generalise a whole country under one category, goes to show how great a person you are.
You are saying that on an American blog.
What a tool.
Just like the government officials like plausible deniability when it comes to most unpleasant stuff; we the public like plausible deniability when it comes to our goverment's goings on.
We, the people, could very easily insist on real transparency, and our idea of proper behavior, if even 1/2 of us were so inclined.
Spare me, friend. Pick any country, any leader, any timeframe, and you'll find exactly the same practices. But generally far more brutal, far more politically driven, and far less effective. War is a messy business.
The reason why you're reading about an American secret prison instead of a similar facility operated by countries like France or Italy or Qatar is because nobody much gets off on hating France or Italy or Qatar. Well, that and the fact that America doesn't have a habit of assassinating or disappearing pesky journalists who write articles about secret prisons. Unlike, say, Russia or China.
"we're going to be stepping in these Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld droppings for the next 30 years..."
Wow. Clever. Never seen someone put down the previous administration before. I hate to break it to you and all of your friends, but your Almighty Obama isn't doing much of anything these days. I would rather have the residual effects of the previous administration actually accomplishing something by getting sensitive information out of terrorists than the current administration attempting to get everyone to hold hands.
Wake up my friend, the world is an ugly place.
"You are saying that on an American blog"
Is this really an American blog? Or is the internet international? Seriously, you Americans can be so self-centred sometimes. I'm sure thousands of people from other countries (such as myself) read this blog.
I'm not okay with that being a matter of opinion. Words have meanings and if I were to be tortured, I wouldn't want my case thrown out of court because someone could just as easily say I was only interrogated. In a court of law, it matters what word you use. I mean, oh my goodness, has no one read 1984?
Either they were tortured or they were interrogated and we all have to live with that.
Of course, that's always the assumption of the cowardly and the naive.
Yes, we could do it, but it wouldn't be easy. We would need (over the course of 6 years) to oust every member of congress, and elect people who are intelligent, far-sighted, honest, and able to stand up to tremendous lobbying pressure. We would need the cooperation of a very large, ignorant fraction of the population to get a whole lot smarter and more interested in the wider world.
It should be easy, but so should solving most of the rest of our problems (poverty; global warming; access to education, water and food; and whatnot). All the legal, technological, and scientific solutions exist, but people are irrational (in ways sometimes good, sometimes bad) and fallible, and that holds everything up.