thank you for flying torture air… where no one is responsible

We don’t, at least for the time being, allow torture on American soil. That doesn’t mean, however, that the U.S. government won’t use torture when it thinks it’s called for (like when we have “reliable evidence” that someone has WMDs). It’s just a logistical hurdle… one that’s been easily overcome. All it takes on our end is a phone call and a Gulfstream jet with enough fuel to get a hooded passenger to Syria, or where ever it is that they don’t have laws against things like hooking car batteries up to testicles.

It’s a great system. We get to eat our cake and have it too. Our suspects get tortured, and we keep our hands clean. (Of course, it doesn’t appear as though torture gets us better information, but I’m sure that will come in time.) We just fly the plane… This is old news… We all knew it was happening… What we didn’t know, however, was that the plane, the Gulfsteam that makes these mysterious trips, isn’t owned and operated by a real person, or even a real department of the government, but by a fictitious employee at a nonexistent company. Now, thanks to an investigation by the Chicago Tribune, we know a little bit more about how our government operates in cases like this, where no one wants to leave a trail. Here’s a clip. (link courtesy of BoingBoing)

PORTLAND, Ore. – The first question is: Where is Leonard T. Bayard? The next question is: Who is Leonard T. Bayard? But the most important question might be: Does Leonard T. Bayard even exist?

The questions arise because the signature of a Leonard Thomas Bayard appears on the annual report of a Portland-based company, Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC, that was filed in August with the Oregon secretary of state.

According to federal records, Bayard Foreign Marketing is the newest owner of a U.S.-registered Gulfstream V executive jet reportedly used since Sept. 11, 2001, to transport suspected al-Qaida operatives to countries such as Egypt and Syria, where some of them claim to have later been tortured…

A search of commercial databases turned up no information on Leonard Thomas Bayard: no residence address, no telephone number, no Social Security number, no credit history, no automobile or property ownership records – in short, none of the information commonly associated with real people.

I imagine it’s difficult to indict people who aren’t real.

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7 Comments

  1. Posted January 12, 2005 at 10:12 pm | Permalink

    Torture builds character. Just look at Jesus.

    Where is John McCain on this issue? I guess I keep asking where he is on this or that issue because I was tricked into believing he had some good ideas about how to improve the political system in this country. As a victim of torture, don’t you think McCain would be outspoken on US involvement in torture of detainees and terrorism suspects?
    From Retired officers challenge Gonzales:
    During the Vietnam War, American prisoners, including Sen. John McCain, received improved treatment after international pressure persuaded the North Vietnamese to abide by the Geneva Conventions, although they had not signed them, Cullen said.
    He ought to step up.

    As for Leonard T. Bayard, I volunteer to be him. Look what taking the fall for the Iran/Contra scandal did for Oliver North. I’ll be having my own talk show and running for the senate in no time–and I’ll be rich! Not only is Bush an idiot puppet and a religious freak, but his administration can’t even come up with a real fall guy–man that’s weak. Seeing how Bush wants to be like Hitler in so many ways, he ought to have a Secretary of Torture (best if he chooses someone with a creepy German name that starts with a “G” and has an umlaut or two in it (monocle is bonus)–hey, Giuliani could just put an umlaut over the “u” and we’d have the perfect man for the job (Giuliani. . . Mussolini, Rudolph. . . Adolf)–come to think of it, if you give Giuliani a monocle, doesn’t he become Colonel Klink? It’s fits so well–it’s like God is trying to tell us something).

  2. Dave Morris
    Posted January 12, 2005 at 11:37 pm | Permalink

    Nice post Jan (sp?). I was not going to post anything after that tour de force, but I decided to do a search on the word Bayard at Wikipedia to see what came up. Here it is:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayard

    The references to banishment and to the romantic notions of the Crusaders ( Charlemagne ) against the Saracens alone is disturbing.

    On the bright side, at least someone over there at the Gestapo is literate.

    The “Marketing” in Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC confuses me though. Are they trying to sell something? The LLC seems appropriate – Limited Liability.

  3. Posted January 13, 2005 at 8:26 pm | Permalink

    Torture Airlines: Based in Portland?
    OK, BlueOregonians, we need your help unraveling a mystery. As reported in the Oregonian today, the mystery involves a secretive Oregon company whose airplane allegedly was used to fly terrorism suspects to Third World countries to be tortured for info…

  4. chris
    Posted January 16, 2005 at 10:32 pm | Permalink

    HFS! Holy Fucking Shit! They can manage to do this but they could not manage to run interference on non-English speaking individuals looking to learn to fly planes but not land them even when reported by the FBI. One or the other is BS. I suspect it is the latter. I truly believed that 9/11 could not be stopped due to the utter incompetence of most over educated white men (hey, I know of what I bitch I’m married to one). I mean, if they’ve operatives that managed this level of multi-tasking they could have at least caught Osama. I am really starting to get paranoid or at least pissed. I mean the absolute stupidity of the reporter and the pay off from the Dept. of Ed, apparently some childrern are left behind (see John Stewart a couple o days ago and the CNN interview). It is so out of control. Speaking of properly placed paranoia, anyone read/see “The Quiet American”. At the end when hottie Brenden Frasier was being chased down the alley I was screaming, “Kill Him!” so loud my neighbors worriedly asked how hubbie was doing the next day.

    So enjoying Weenie Campbell, Mark. Reg. Amazon do I really have to make your suggested purchase? How does this work anyway?

  5. mark
    Posted January 19, 2005 at 10:32 pm | Permalink

    The Quiet American proves that elegant and intelligent filmmaking can be emotionally powerful. Michael Caine plays Thomas Fowler, a British journalist in 1950s Vietnam with a lovely Vietnamese mistress named Phuong (Do Thi Hai Yen) and a jaded view of the political strife teeming around him. He befriends a seemingly innocuous American named Alden Pyle (Brendan Fraser), who falls in love with Phuong–and slowly, Pyle’s real purpose in Vietnam becomes revealed. Fowler finds that, to hold on to the carefully balanced life he’s created for himself, he must make choices he’s long avoided. Caine and Fraser are both superb and give a human face to complicated politics; as a result, The Quiet American manages to be compelling as both history and a story about very specific people embroiled in a very personal conflict. An impressive film from director Philip Noyce

  6. mark
    Posted January 19, 2005 at 10:35 pm | Permalink

    FYI

  7. mark
    Posted January 19, 2005 at 10:41 pm | Permalink

    And I

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