San Diego Housing Bubble News and Analysis

You might want to read the article again.
They are not likely to serve:

The top guy has retired.

I see what you mean I was looking at the sentences and missed that part. Our convictees will likely just avoid Italy and I doubt the Govt. would track them down and turn them it.

Italian justice is a joke.

Italian state did not want to press extradition, but the prosecutors went on ahead for 'show'(make it look like they are doing something while not dealing with needed prosecutions within Italy)

The Italian 'co-conspirators' were not tried because "all evidence of coordination between the Italian secret services and the C.I.A. violated state secrecy rules and was therefore inadmissible in the trial".

Cardiff: I just saw this. What a joke. Its a show trial, pure and simple, and for no other reason than to gin up some publicity.

Forget about how endemically corrupt Italy is, or that the Mafia/organized crime effectively run that country. Forget Berlusconi's shenanigans. Forget the fact that Italy's intelligence and security apparatus is essentially a wholly owned subsidiary of the CIA.

If the Italians were to make any sort of move on any of those Americans, Uncle Sugar would bust a size 12 GI boot off in their asses and take all their toys away.

Substitute the word "French" for "Italian" and you get the general idea of how scared we should be.

As Allan put it, Italy is clearly a "vassal" state to America.

Given that reality, it was pretty courageous of the Italian judiciary to prosecute the case. It was symbolic but, symbols are important. It's the first country (a close American ally) that put Americans agents on trial.

Who knows what the future will bring? 20 to 30 years later, public opinion may change and the reality may change. See what happened to Polanski?

It was courageous of the judge to convict the Americans and send a message that kidnapping by foreign agents operating outside of the law is simply not acceptable.

The Berlusconi government implied that it will not handle any extradition requests, and the US government will likely not honor any such requests, so the convicted Americans are safe.

However, the victim and his family are pursuing civil lawsuits so there maybe civil judgments to follow.

If anything, the convicted Americans won't be able ever travel to Italy again. They likely have served in Italy for years and may have developed a certain affinity for the country and formed friendships with Italians. Not being able to return the country, even as tourists, in their old age would be unpleasant.

The former C.I.A. official said that if Italian prosecutors were successful in getting an international arrest warrant, the convicted spies would probably face the threat of arrest anywhere outside the United States for the rest of their lives.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/world/...

Allan,

You are correct. We should forget about all of the above. Because it is totally irrelevant to the issue.

The only issue here is this: Did these agents break the law? If so, they should be held accountable. A crime committed in a nation that has a corrupt government is no less of a crime.

Pri: No disagreement here. My point, using the references about Italy, was that this was a show trial and conducted as same.

We obviously don't have the time or space to really delve into this, but Italy, like France, Germany, the UK and others (including Poland), have not only supported the rendition policy, but are actively involved with it as well (for instance, there are numerous "black" sites in Poland used for interrogations).

This goes well beyond disingenuous, in that the government of Italy is well aware of their internal policies regarding security and intelligence procedures, and this "trial" was nothing other than a craven attempt to curry favor with the leftist elements.

I don't see how this is disingenuous on the part of the Italians.

The judiciary is independent of the executive and illegal acts condoned by the executive don't preclude the judiciary from prosecuting crimes.

Prosecutors don't prosecute all crimes equally. They exercise good judgment in selecting the cases they bring to court.

I'm sure that there was a lot of political pressure on the prosecutor and the judge. The fact that they pressed with the case shows at least some degree of independence.

Allan,

Good points. I don't know many facts about this but I suspect that your claims about the involvement of other countries, including Italy.

However I am concerned that many in this country are twisting the war on terror into an opportunity to operate above the law. We have declared a war where almost anyone can be categorized an enemy, while at the same time abandoning international law (Geneva Convention, et. al.) All because this war is "different."

It's a dangerous situation, and at this point I'm in favor of just about anything that may provide more accountability to those that prosecute this "war."

Pri: I'll tell you, I'm torn on this subject. As a former soldier, I oppose torture and I know from first-hand experience that it doesn't work as an intelligence gathering tool (interrogation is far more effective, although its also far more time consuming).

However, that being said, torture is highly effective when it comes to sending a message. I worked for three years doing counterinsurgency work and I will tell you that there are definitely times when torture is called upon. Is it right? Probably not. Is it legal (as defined by UCMJ, Army Field Manual(s) and Geneva)? Nope. Which calls to mind that line in "Apocalypse Now" about trying to hand out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.

Its a slippery slope and I don't have the answers. I know that privacy in this country is now largely a lost reality and due to the encroachment of government on our civil liberties in the name/guise of "security" (and we all know the saying about trading liberty for security: You wind up with neither).

During my time in Salvador, I worked with guys that had done time with MACV-SOG and the Phoenix Program in Vietnam. Both of those programs pretty much threw the rule book out the window, but were hugely effective. We duplicated certain aspects of those programs and I know the danger that comes with winning a "different" kind of war. But finding that right balance, to me at least, seems damn near impossible.

Allan,

Yeah, it's not so easy. I'd like to believe that we can be ideal in our methods and never resort to torture or other unsavory means, but I know the world isn't that simple. I just hope the folks in charge understand both sides of the dilemma as well as you articulated them.

Apocalypse Now has some pretty terrifying wisdom:

We went back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried... I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought:
My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were
stronger than we. Because they could understand that these were not monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten
divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to
utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion... without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that defeats us.

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ambassador-c...

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

snip

Murray asserts that the primary motivation for US and British military involvement in central Asia has to do with large natural gas deposits in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. As evidence, he points to the plans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan that would allow Western oil companies to avoid Russia and Iran when transporting natural gas out of the region.

Murray alleged that in the late 1990s the Uzbek ambassador to the US met with then-Texas Governor George W. Bush to discuss a pipeline for the region, and out of that meeting came agreements that would see Texas-based Enron gain the rights to Uzbekistan's natural gas deposits, while oil company Unocal worked on developing the Trans-Afghanistan pipeline.

"The consultant who was organizing this for Unocal was a certain Mr. Karzai, who is now president of Afghanistan," Murray noted.

Murray said part of the motive in hyping up the threat of Islamic terrorism in Uzbekistan through forced confessions was to ensure the country remained on-side in the war on terror, so that the pipeline could be built.

If we had any character, the trial would have taken place on American soil. If we had any sense, we wouldn't have done it in the first place.

Bush / Cheney effort against AQ was ineffective. Made for TV bullshit.

Gandalf: If the Bush/Cheney effort was ineffective, why is Obama continuing/following their policies?

Gitmo remains open. Rendition continues. Drone strikes continue. Patriot I/II remain in effect. Large scale commitment in Iraq continues. Supposed "thorough investigations of intelligence practices during the Bush Administration" by Eric Holder and the DOJ have either been tabled or significantly watered down.

I'm sorry, but Obama, for all the rhetoric and promises, has done little to change his predecessor's policies and, in point of fact, is continuing them or expanding them.

Obama has no choice but to continue policies for national security reason before extricating us from the mess in an honorable fashion.

If you buy a house with Chinese drywall, you're stuck with it. It becomes an albatross but you still have to keep on making the payments while you find some way to repair and sell it without dumping the toxic mess on someone else's lap.

The wise thing would have been not to buy that house to begin with.

Turning the ship of state is slow process.

Policies implemented by previous administrations have lives of their own (bureaucracy, entrenched interests, subordinates who implemented the policies and will fight reversal, etc...) and it takes time to reverse course.

"Gitmo remains open. Rendition continues. Drone strikes continue. Patriot I/II remain in effect. Large scale commitment in Iraq continues. Supposed "thorough investigations of intelligence practices during the Bush Administration" by Eric Holder and the DOJ have either been tabled or significantly watered down."

GOOD!!!!!