use Perl

«In total, "about three dozen" people may have been wrongly seized, the paper said. One of them was Khaled Masri - a German national who shared the same name as a top al-Qaida terrorist.

The CIA kidnapped him in Macedonia on Dec 31 2003, and flew him to Afghanistan, where he spent five months in appalling conditions. After realising its mistake, the administration debated whether to inform "the Germans" of the blunder, eventually dispatching the US ambassador to Germany, Daniel Coats, to tell the government, the paper said.
[...]
"If [EU] member or candidate states actively contributed to, or connived in, illegal transports and torture, or illegal prisons on their territory, that must be investigated and the necessary consequences drawn," Martin Schulz, head of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, said yesterday. He added: 'There's active acceptance, and there's acquiescence. Neither of those are acceptable.'»

--"CIA's secret jails open up new transatlantic rift": Hundreds of flights landed in Germany over 2 years; Seizure of innocent people likely to embarrass Rice

But it's okay, right, because the US regime will be totally cooperative and come clean and everything, right? Because everyone involved is totally mature and can see both sides of every issue and everything, right?

Oh wait.

«US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will inflame the transatlantic row over America's alleged torture of terror suspects in secret jails by telling Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other European officials to 'back off'.

In Britain, human rights group Liberty is to table [=put forward] an amendment to the Civil Aviation Bill that would oblige the Home Secretary to force any aircraft travelling through UK airspace suspected of extraordinary rendition to land and be searched by police and customs.»

--"Rice rejects EU protests over secret terror prisons"

Those funny EU cops! They couldn't even catch Milosevic!

Oh wait.

So here's what'll happen. Everyone in the EU government wants to give the Eastern European states a big spanking for having collaborated with the US torture squads in violation of every law ever. This's so the nastier governments have to get regime-changed as a precondition of getting closer to EU membership. And maybe the EU wants this US prison thing to be like reason eleventy-eight for Poland to be disciplined, so that their voting rights will revert to Aquaman or something.

So there'll be a big ol' EU investigation. But then it'll come out that the UK and French and German governments and everyone knew about it all too, but Chancellor (Chancellrix?) Merkel won't care because she didn't know, and then there will be STRIFE and ANGST in the lands.

It will be agreed that someone will have to be made an example of, except that it'll just end up being a 1,600-page "compromise accord" where Turkey will inexplicably be used as the whipping boy, and the extent of penalties to Poland will be an absurdly low zlotyeuro conversion rate, so that whole country gets bought up by like four real estate guys in Denmark.

Alternate future: Turkey's inexplicable (inevitable) shaming will be used as a reason not for forbidding it from entering the EU, but for requiring it to enter the EU, since clearly they can't be allowed to go around on their own, having CIA torturariums all willy-nilly.

Meanwhile, Condoleeza will be like Kissinger -- unable to leave the US without a whole team of lawyers checking to make sure she won't be extradited to Chile or whatever, on war crimes accusations. I mention just Condoleeza, because everyone else in the current administration will die of cerebral hemorrhages in the next four years, what with being type A personalities and sickly and all.

And then the Borg will come.

Ya know, I used to think we were trapped in some Bruce Sterling novel.

Now I think we're trapped in all the Bruce Sterling novels.