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William Fisher has managed economic development programs in the Middle East and in many other parts of the world for the US State Department and USAID for the past thirty years. He began his work life as a journalist for newspapers and for the Associated Press in Florida. Go to The World According to Bill Fisher for more. In Truthout schrijft hij: 'Defending the Indefensible. After years of ignoring the United Nations panel charged with oversight of the Convention Against Torture (CAT) - a centerpiece of international human rights law - the US government turned up at a meeting of the group in Geneva with a delegation of more than two dozen lawyers and other officials to affirm that the US is "absolutely committed to uphold its national and international obligations to eradicate torture" and that "there are no exceptions to this prohibition." That's what I call chutzpah! The government's theory must be that the more lawyers you bring to Geneva, the easier it will be to bob and weave your way around those pesky questions people keep asking about Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Guantanamo, renditions and secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Especially if your delegation doesn't include anyone from the CIA. Heading this delegation of representatives from the departments of State, Defense, Justice and Homeland Security, is State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III. With an absolutely straight face, Bellinger told the Committee Against Torture that despite instances of abuse in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the US has not systematically mistreated prisoners and remained committed to a global ban on torture. But members of the panel referred to a report by investigators for the European Parliament who said last month they had evidence that the CIA had flown 1,000 undeclared flights over Europe since 2001, in some cases transporting terrorist suspects abducted within the European Union to countries known to use torture. Bellinger said he could not answer questions about intelligence-related activities, but asserted that the allegation that those planes carried terror suspects was an "absurd insinuation." He added that in cases where the government has "rendered" prisoners to countries with poor human rights records, it has sought assurances that they will not be tortured.' Lees verder: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050906Z.shtml