Spineless excuses for complicity in rendition flights

SO the Taoiseach and Dermot Ahern are miffed at the ‘bad timing’ of the revelations by the European Parliament’s Temporary Committee that 147 CIA flights landed in Ireland.

‘Sure, don’t they know an election looms!’

When Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern says he accepts US assurances that Ireland is not being involved in rendition/torture flights, we need to put this into context. He is speaking of a White House administration that lied about weapons of mass destruction, lied about Iraq being involved with al-Qaida and September 11, hedged about its surveillance programme on its own citizens and equivocated about the status of Guantánamo detainees so they could be quasi-legally tortured.

In short, he is saying he accepts the assurances of proven liars.

The excuses given by the Government for such spineless hat-tipping are as pathetic as they are transparent. It would damage Ireland’s relations with the US, we are told. It would damage the economy: offended US companies would leave Ireland.

As to the first, we need to distinguish between the US population and the White House.

Recently, the former showed its disapproval of the latter by hammering them at the election polls. Irish ‘peaceniks’ are more in tune with current US popular sentiment than our own Government.

If there is a change of regime in the White House, no doubt our great leaders will manage a complete U-turn without the least sense of shame.

As to the second, what patriotic US companies does our government have in mind? Maybe the ones that are relocating and outsourcing outside the US in droves to avoid high rates of corporate tax — the very reason they are here in the first place?

So ‘patriotic’ are these companies that they kept billions of dollars out of the US economy until such time as George Bush was recently obliged to declare an amnesty of sorts in order to repatriate some of it. In one day, billions of dollars flowed from this country alone.

All this ‘loss of jobs’ guff is the same bogeyman our Government wheels out every time it wants our compliance on some policy — as with both Maastricht and Nice, for instance.

We are told we cannot close Shannon to US military and rendition/torture flights because it would mean a loss of business to the Shannon region. It would be interesting to know by exactly how much Shannon benefits from collusion in Bush’s war of terror — Shannon could probably diversify and wean itself easily off its reliance on the US military.

The Shannon region does not need the shame the Government brings on it with money obtained from war, murder, torture and thousands of Iraqi deaths.

If the Government sees that it can do as it likes in this regard, it will push the boundaries of what’s acceptable with its own citizens as sure as night follows day.

In short, by not caring about our Government’s complicity in these torture and military flights, we are taking a step closer to where it will believe it can treat us the same way.

Nick Folley

36 Ardcarrig

Carrigaline

Co Cork.