Over the weekend, former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell decided to open his lying mouth in an interview with the BBC and has added fuel to the raging fire that is this story:

Ex-US Secretary of State Colin Powell has indicated that Europeans are being disingenuous when they deny knowledge of the rendition of terror suspects.

Mr Powell said the recently highlighted practice of moving people to places where they are not covered by US law was neither "new or unknown" to Europe.

A number of countries where flights allegedly stopped have said they were unaware of their land being used.

He was speaking after his successor, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, faced tough questioning about the use of rendition during a recent trip to Europe.

She admitted that terror suspects were flown abroad for interrogation, but said this was "a lawful weapon", and denied the prisoners were tortured.

She refused to address claims that the CIA runs secret prisons abroad where suspects are interrogated without reference to international law.

But Gen Powell was dismissive of the furore in Europe.

"There's a little bit of the movie Casablanca in this, where, you know, the inspector says 'I'm shocked, shocked that this kind of thing takes place'.

"Well, most of our European friends cannot be shocked that this kind of thing takes place... The fact that we have, over the years, had procedures in place that would deal with people who are responsible for terrorist activities, or suspected of terrorist activities, and so the thing that is called rendition is not something that is new or unknown to my European friends."

Not something "new or unknown" to his European buddies? I don't think they're shocked by the transfer of people through their territory, I think it's the big "T" that's gotten people upset. You know, torture. And in the past, whether it was renditions of Carlos the Jackal or others, those who were rendered were tried in a court of law. Something the United States seems to have forgotten all about.

So dear old Colin has put his foot in his mouth again. Maybe his European amigos are also still a little miffed because he outright lied to them in front of the United Nations a couple of years ago. You remember, the ghost weapons in Iraq. And now he's speaking about the ghost prisoners and the phantom prisons, which still do not "exist" at least as far as any government has so far admitted.

Meanwhile one of Colin's non-European hombres, the dictator of Pakistan, spoke to a Saudi paper over the weekend (you know the Saudi press is a paragon of journalistic integrity and all...):

In answer to allegations by European countries and human rights groups that the Central Intelligence Agency set up secret detention facilities in Pakistan to interrogate or "torture" terrorists, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf categorically denied that the United States had set up secret jails in Pakistan. Musharraf made the remarks in an interview on Friday with the Saudi newspaper Al-Watan.

"There is no presence of US soldiers nor any secret jails on our soil. [No] agreement has been signed to set up secret jails in collaboration with the US in the country," Musharraf said.

Musharraf might be right.. but a whole bunch of people were "extraordinarily rendered" from Pakistani soil, and that's the next best thing isn't it? Of course Musharraf has to deny any Americans operating on Pak soil because otherwise he'd be in hot water domestically.

Some of Powell's European compadres displayed their outrage over the weekend in Scotland:

SCORES of demonstrators yesterday protested at three Scottish airports allegedly used for refuelling stops during the CIA's secret "torture flights".

About 150 protesters from groups such as the Stop the War coalition joined opposition MSPs to hand out leaflets at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Prestwick airports.

The protesters claim the UK has breached international law by allowing the extraordinary rendition flights, which some claim carry terror suspects to be tortured by US-friendly regimes, to land on Scottish soil.

At Edinburgh airport, the Scottish Socialist Party leader, Colin Fox, said: "Our government admits and the CIA admits that these flights stopped at this airport. They say they were normal and routine but we don't believe them.

"The onus is on them to prove to us that these flights did not contain people kidnapped from one country and taken to another because it has a regime that allows torture."

He added: "People here are going away for Christmas to escape the cold weather and they would be horrified at the prospect of their planes parked on the tarmac next to a 'CIA tours' jet with passengers in orange jumpsuits and manacles on their way to Bagram prison or Guantanamo Bay."

I note that this issue has largely died in the American press, but then again a large segment of Americans are supporters of torture.

Not so in neighboring Canada, where the issue is very much alive:

A plane owned by an alleged front for the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency recently flew from Newfoundland to a Scottish airport that's under scrutiny as an apparent destination for numerous covert flights.

Records obtained by The Canadian Press show the Hercules aircraft landed at Gander, Nfld., on Nov. 28 before heading the next day to Prestwick Airport near Glasgow, Scotland.

The C-130 plane, with tail number N4557C, is registered to Rapid Air Transport Inc. of Beltsville, Md., identified by the New York Times as one of several shell companies controlled by the CIA.

There's that mysterious C-130, a huge cargo plane, mentioned once again. You might remember that German citizen Khaled Al-Masri said he was strapped into a large cargo plane when the CIA kidnapped him (uhh.. excuse me, "rendered" him) out of Macedonia and brutally interrogated him for 5 months.

Speaking of poor old Masri, there's a new development:

A German intelligence officer gave a CIA counterpart a file about a German citizen the United States was holding as a terrorist suspect in Afghanistan in early 2004, a German magazine said on Saturday.

The report, if true, could undermine the government's assertion that Germany played no role in and knew nothing about the abduction of Khaled el-Masri, who is suing the former CIA chief and others for wrongful imprisonment and torture.

Focus magazine said a German working in the Bavarian state intelligence office gave the dossier on Masri to a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) liaison officer in April 2004, when Masri says he was being held.

A Bavarian interior ministry spokesman said on Saturday it was not true. "The state office gave no information about Khaled el-Masri to the CIA," the spokesman quoted the office's deputy chief Franz Gruber as saying.

Focus reported that the CIA officer contacted the Munich-based German officer a few days before the two met, saying: "We have el-Masri", asking for information on him.

Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on Wednesday he was "nauseated" by reports suggesting that Germany may have facilitated Masri's abduction at the end of 2003 by feeding information on him to the United States.

"Let me make it clear: the government and (security services) did not aid and abet the abduction of German citizen el-Masri," Steinmeier told parliament.

Yikes! And Focus Magazine is clearly on this case like a hawk on a mouse, because they've published lots of photographs and information connecting the different planes used in flying people all around Europe.

Yet here's the most damning paragraph of them all:

Separately, German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble confirmed for the first time his predecessor was briefed on the affair in 2004 by then U.S. ambassador to Berlin, Daniel Coats.

"(The ambassador) said they had apologised to him (Masri), had agreed to keep quiet about it and had paid him money," Schaeuble told parliament.

Well there you go, a government cabinet minister confirming that the United States had both apologized and tried to pay hush money to cover up the story. And the Bush administration wonders why the free world mistrusts any and all statements on this issue?

Dan Coats is a veteran conservative, some saying he might've had a chance to be the SecDef for Bush. He also is quite close to former VP Quayle, and more recently, a super amigo of Harriet Miers, the intellectual heavyweight who couldn't make the grade when she was nominated by Bush to sit on the Supreme Court.

As always, the investigation continues...

Peace