CIA paid Liverpool buyout tycoon millions...to use his jet for 'torture' flights

[kpete]

Source: Daily News

By Sharon Churcher and Chris Hastings

A jet owned by a senior executive in the US firm which has bought Liverpool Football Club was chartered by the CIA and used in flights allegedly linked to the rendition of terror suspects.

The plane is owned by Phillip Morse, 69, the vice-chairman of New England Sports Ventures, which bought the club on Friday for £300million.

An investigation has established that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA chartered the plane from Mr Morse for millions of pounds and made extensive use of it.

Inquiries by the European Parliament and human rights groups have linked the plane to alleged extraordinary rendition operations which took place during the same period.





Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1321244/CIA-paid-Liverpool-buyout-tycoons-millions--use-jet-torture-flights.html

[Ghost Dog]

1. A reminder: This refers to high crimes

under both your (US & most countries' domestic) law, and International Law.

Officers of the law who do not act accordingly could be considered to be complicit.

...

If you despise the concept (Rule of Law), then say so clearly, and explain your reasons why.

[aquart]

6. Is torture still a high crime?

I thought the DOJ had reduced it to 'no biggie'.

[Ghost Dog]

7. You tell me, aquart. (I'm a foreigner,

perhaps ill-informed (no excuse, apparently)).

(-cut-)

Agh. ...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1GsWEFlvhs

{edit: I think i referred to the 'crime' of high treason, actually (look it up if you don't understand). But then I was born a Brit, and that sticks with one, and around these waters we and all the neighbors tend to take that kind of thing rather seriously, don't you know. So watch out.}

[CoffeeCat]

9. Bush and Gonzales made torture legal...

Under the Bush Administration--the definition of torture was changed.

Bush repeatedly said, "We don't torture. America doesn't torture." This is
how he was able to utter those words---and not be a liar.

Alberto Gonzales crafted a new legal definition of torture. This became the
new law of the land. Someone cannot be accused of torture, if the interrogation
techniques they are doing, are used for the purpose of information extraction.
Technically, if you are trying to obtain information--you are not torturing.
So--whatever you do to the person, if you are doing it to gain information, your
actions (no matter how heinous) cannot be considered torture. "We're not torturing
to torture! We're trying to find out stuff, not expressly torturing!" (crazy, I know).

Technically, you can pretty much do anything. However, the way Gonzales and the
Bush Administration re-defined torture--you can do any action (to obtain information)
EXCEPT actions that would directly cause death or organ failure. So, you can't
blow someone's head off with a gun. However, you can hang someone upside down
indefinitely with no food or water. If they die--well, you weren't technically
setting out to murder them--it just sorta happened as a consequence of the
interrogation techniques. Which, by the way, were used to get information. So,
it's all good (again more crazy).

So, anything is on the table--when you are trying to obtain information--anything
except purposely killing someone or deliberately causing organ failure.

Basically, we can do just about anything to anyone now. And legally--those actions
are not torture.

And that horrible definition of torture has remained since the Bush Administration.

[Solly Mack]

2. more

Jet's Travels Cloaked in Mystery - 2005
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0320-04.htm

CIA Kidnapping Trial Begins Today -2007

http://crooksandliars.com/2007/06/08/cia-kidnapping-trial-begins-today

CIA uses jet, Red Sox partner confirms - 2005

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/03/21/cia_uses_jet_red_sox_partner_confirms/

[EFerrari]

3. K&R

[The Uncola]

4. Still...

.. not a single prosecution.

Disturbing, VERY disturbing.

:grr:

Oh, that's right... the worthless asshole Eric Holder is busy figuring out how "save us" from pot smokers.

Never mind.

[scentopine]

8. pot smokers and peace activists - apprarently they are enemy number 1 -nt

[Ghost Dog]

12. sORRY, what?

whereb the f*uck did i hide thge stash, this morning (or is it still night, sorry, nite9, STILL. fuck saraere'sit Al GFore fucked me up what yeah up i need a shave,sarah, my clit is sticking out.um if only i cood tell yuy..

kitchen table rools ok.

now g8imme. blsack hed on plete.

[starroute]

5. How do the Bushes fit into all this?

The linked article includes a picture of Philip Morse yukking it up with George H.W. Bush.

But the previous owner of the Liverpool club was Tom Hicks -- who was deeply entangled with George W. Bush on the Texas Rangers deal and questionable financial arrangements involving the University of Texas's management fund.

Given the amount of bad blood involved in the current sale, it seems safe to say that the two groups are not exactly friends -- which is why it seems particularly strange that both would point back to the Bushes.


http://www.utwatch.org/utimco/hicks.html

Hicks gave $146,000 to Bush in both of his gubernatorial campaigns. In return for the gratitude, Bush approved legislation to form UTIMCO in 1995. Hicks had used a full-court press strategy, spending between $50,000 to $110,000 in lobbying and using with the powerful lobbying team Vinson and Elkins, who represents several Texas business interests, to achieve this dream.

Conveniently for both men, Bush appointed Hicks as the first chair to UTIMCO, which began the tradition of tit-for-tat management and good-ol' boy favoritism that has defined the relationship between UTIMCO and Texas politics since. In 1998, Hicks would make Bush a multi-millionaire by purchasing the Texas Rangers. . . .

For several years, UTIMCO acted in secrecy under the protection of the Texas Attorney General, which facilitated the process of questionable investments in return for political favors. UTIMCO invested some $525 million in assets run by Hicks associates and other major GOP donors. After the Houston Chronicle exposed such insider dealings in a 1999 article, Tom Hicks resigned from the board.

[Uncle Joe]

10. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[OnyxCollie]

11. K&R. nt

[Supersedeas]

13. Tax payer dollars in action--we have money for this but not for schools?