EU Issues Warrants for 23 CIA Officers, Those Wacky Baptist Child Abductors

David Brooks
Lloyd Grove
Eugene Robinson

"The elderly. They are our future." - David Brooks

"We don't need tea partiers, we need Geritol junkies" - Grumpy Old Man

"What do you do if you’re a rising conservative Internet impresario and the biggest star in your stable has just been accused of attempted tampering with a U.S. senator’s phone lines?
If you’re Andrew Breitbart, you milk it for all it’s worth." - Lloyd Grove

Eugene Robinson writes about the new maverick in town, Massachusett's Scott Brown. Personally, I like quirky people, though they may not be able to get along and play well with others, which seems to be eugene's concern: "But the most troubling passage from the interview was the part about being a "Scott Brown Republican" and intending to "go down there and be accountable, accessible, open and honest . . . to bring good government and fairness back to the equation."


It's impossible to argue with that laundry list of virtues, except to note that he left out motherhood and apple pie. The last thing Washington needs is another politician who refers to himself as his own brand and promises to chart his own lonely path." It seems obvious Mr Brown is trying to live out the perfect country and western song, driving around in his pickup truck in the rain. In tribute, here is part of David Allan Coe commenting on such a song, called "You Never Even Call Me By My Name":

WELL, A FRIEND OF MINE NAMED STEVE GOODMAN WROTE THAT SONG
AND HE TOLD ME IT WAS THE PERFECT COUNTRY & WESTERN SONG
I WROTE HIM BACK A LETTER AND I TOLD HIM IT WAS NOT THE PERFECT COUNTRY & WESTERN SONG BECAUSE HE HADN'T SAID ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT MAMA,
OR TRAINS,
OR TRUCKS,
OR PRISON,
OR GETTING DRUNK

WELL HE SAT DOWN AND WROTE ANOTHER VERSE TO THE SONG
AND HE SENT IT TO ME,
AND AFTER READING IT,
I REALIZED THAT MY FRIEND HAD WRITTEN THE PERFECT
COUNTRY & WESTERN SONG
AND I FELT OBLIGED TO INCLUDE IT ON THIS ALBUM
THE LAST VERSE GOES LIKE THIS HERE:

WELL, I WAS DRUNK THE DAY MY MOM GOT OUT OF PRISON
AND I WENT TO PICK HER UP IN THE RAIN
BUT BEFORE I COULD GET TO THE STATION IN MY PICKUP TRUCK
SHE GOT RUN NED OVER BY A DAMNED OLD TRAIN...

So what US ally is the first to take the CIA to court? Curiously enough, it's Italy.. The decision was given back in November, and it is the first case to deal with the subject of "extraordinary rendition." "Judge Magi convicted a former C.I.A. base chief and 22 other Americans of kidnapping in the abduction of an Egyptian cleric, Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, on Feb. 17, 2003. Prosecutors said the cleric was taken from Milan in broad daylight and flown from an American air base in Italy to a base in Germany and then on to Egypt, where Mr. Nasr asserts he was tortured.


Judge Magi wrote that the fact that the C.I.A. had conducted the operation on Italian soil with such impunity “leads to the presumption that such activity was carried out at least with the knowledge (or maybe with the complicity)” of the Italian secret service." The 23 Americans were tried in absentia, and a warrant for their arrest has been issued by the european Union. I guess those guys are now limited to vacationing in Mexico...

The Egyptian cleric, who lives in Italy, was under the watchful eye of Italian intelligence, thought to be recruiting militants from the mosque he preached at. The CIA abducted him, took him back to Egypt, where they kept him for a year, of course, without charging him of any crime.and probably tortured him. The Italians in the case got off due to national security. This trial may have some bearing on similar cases that will be brought against the US in the future by people who have been held at Bagram, Guantanamo, New York, Romania, Egypt, Iraq, and Uzbekistan... Italy has a bad enough problem with folks who are well off being abducted on a regular basis and being held for ransom by criminal gangs. Picking some small fry off the street makes me wonder about the sanity of the CIA officers involved, much less what they thought they would accomplish. Oh, that's right, they were part of Dick Cheney's rendition squad...

baptist child stealers...
Another group of Americans who are in deep trouble, mainly for being stupid no matter how well intentioned they are, blinded by what they consider to be their faith.

Yes, I'm talking about the 10 Utah dwellers who have created an international incident by trying to cross the border from Haiti into the Dominican Republic with 33 Haitian children. Laura Silsby convinced the others who accompanied her to go to Haiti and try to take 100 children to the Dominican Republic where they would raise them." “God wanted us to come here to help children, we are convinced of that,”

Here is where it gets murky and hasn't quite been defined because of conflicting statements given to authorities. In response to the Haitian earthquake, Laura Silsby and her nanny set up a website claiming to be a non-profit Christian organization dedicated to getting orphans off of the streets of Haiti. She received interest and money from folks, and recruited the people to go with her to Haiti from the Eastside Baptist Church or Central Valley Baptist in Meridian, Idaho, while others came from Texas and Kansas.

When in Haiti, she did not notify any authorities of her plan, contacted a church and obtained children without checking to see if they were orphans, did not get any paperwork to take them out of the country, and got stopped at the border. Again, on her website she claimed to be in partnership with a Christian adoption agency, but told authorities that she didn't plan to let them be adopted, which is the fishy part. Also: "Although Ms. Silsby said the group did not intend to offer the children for adoption, the Web site said they would “strive” to “provide opportunities for adoption through partnership with New Life Adoption Foundation,” which subsidizes adoptions “for loving Christian parents who would otherwise not be able to afford to adopt.”


The status of New Life Adoption Foundation was not immediately clear. The group is not registered as an adoption agency in Idaho and does not appear to be registered as a federal nonprofit. The group also did not appear on a list of accredited international adoption agencies on the Web site of the State Department." Since there is no record of the New Life Foundation, it's probably another group she made up. The real problem I have with Laura is that she has let herself become deluded by her faith so much that she has become divorced from reality, enough that she would make up a bogus rescue group and a bogus adoption agency, and steal children, then lie about her actions. She is charismatic enough to convince others to join her without questioning. Of course, she may have pulled the wool over everyone's eyes and is just another trafficker in human flesh, out for a buck and to take advantage of the chaos in the region, but to give her the benefit of the doubt, she is just a deluded person who doesn't stop to think before  acting rashly. Unfortunately for these folks, they may never get to contribute and act in a charitable way, and may end up in jail because they have certainly pissed off the Haitian authorities,

As the father of Mel Coulter said of them: “They were acting in faith. That may sound trivial, but they were acting not only in faith but God’s faith.” And that is a danger when you act primarily in faith, because most people wouldn't know true religion if it was in their soup... There is no doubt that there are other, more organized criminal groups who are successfully abducting children and won't get caught, because they have bribed all of the right people. They will make profits from what they do while the Laura Silsby's of this world wander innocently into the web and gets caught.

CALIFORNIA CALAMARI!