That monster is now rearing its head.
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Evidence that a foreign power was allowed to conduct illicit activities on Polish soil has deeply shaken many Poles' faith in the United States and in Poland's sense of itself as a successful democracy born from the ashes of the Cold War.
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The prosecutors' investigation centers on a Polish military garrison that allegedly hosted a CIA "black site" where foreign detainees were subjected to internationally condemned interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, during 2002 and 2003. The suspects — including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks — had either been arrested or snatched under the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program and questioned abroad to avoid American legal standards for interrogations, prosecutors say.
The allegations have already damaged the reputation of the country that Poles thank for helping them to cast off communist oppression. Many now angrily believe the U.S. took advantage of their gratitude, loyalty and eagerness to please by setting up a torture site that it would never have allowed within its own borders.
"It's the kind of thing we expect from Soviet Russia. We remember the Soviet occupation; we remember the German occupation," said attorney Mikolaj Pietrzak, who represents one of the Islamist men allegedly held and questioned in Poland. "The fact that this beacon of liberty which is America would allow this — it's a great disappointment in the United States as the land of the free."
Poland is not the only country in Europe where the U.S. allegedly operated a secret detention facility with at least tacit permission from somewhere within the host government. Black sites are also thought to have existed in Romania and Lithuania, two other developing democracies, as well as in countries in North Africa and Asia.
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YMix, above says you guys have torture chambers too
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