America's Gulag Archipelago

A Eugene Robinson Op-Ed, Out of a Bad Spy Novel, in the Washington Post makes me cringe in shame for our government.

It's not 1965, and these men are not Soviet or East German spymasters playing the role of villains in the Cold War. It's 2005, and the spy-novel men are American officials whose un-American treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism has shamed our nation.

As reporter Dana Priest revealed in The Post this week, the Bush administration has held dozens of al Qaeda prisoners in secret prisons, with no regard to due process. It was a "small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials" who approved this archipelago of "black-site" detention centers, The Post reported.

These CIA-run prisons have been operated in eight countries, The Post said -- Afghanistan, Thailand, the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and "several democracies in Eastern Europe." Officials prevailed upon The Post not to disclose the names of the European countries, citing national security concerns. The real reason, no doubt, was that if citizens of those countries knew their governments were hosting secret American prisons, they would surely object.

But, of course, we elected them. At long last, has our country no shame, no sense of decency at all?