Colcam

In January this year the Army Corps of Engineers awarded Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root a $385 million contract to construct detention centres somewhere in the United States, to deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs”.

Recent developments suggest that the Bush administration may be thinking about what to do with Americans who are deemed insufficiently loyal or who disseminate information that may be considered helpful to the enemy.

During Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Feb. 6, Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a new target for the administration’s domestic operations -- Fifth Columnists, supposedly disloyal Americans who sympathize and collaborate with the enemy, and U.S. officials have cited the need to challenge news that undercuts Bush’s actions as a key front in defeating the terrorists, who are aided by “news informers” in the words of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Little attention has been paid to the phrase “rapid development of new programs” and what kind of programs would require a major expansion of detention centers, each capable of holding 5,000 people.

One commentator says that “detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law.”

Another thinks that because “another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the centers would be used for post-911-type detentions of immigrants rather than a sudden deluge” of immigrants flooding across the border.

And Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg said, “Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters.

I hope Tony Blair doesn't know about this, or he'll be wanting a set of his own concentration camps to keep all those dissenting old-age pensioners who shout "rubbish" at Labour conferences, smokers, rebellious backbenchers, dissident princes, ladies who dare read out names of dead soldiers, and PM-in-waiting Gordon Brown out of the way.


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