Change We Can Believe In: Obama to Expand CIA Rendition Program
February 2nd, 2009I guess there’s no need for the secret prisons if the victims just happen to die during “rendention.”
Via: Chicago Tribune:
The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.
But even while dismantling these discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.
Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism—aside from Predator missile strikes—for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.
The European Parliament condemned renditions as an “illegal instrument used by the United States.” Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on dozens of rendition flights.
But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.
The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.
“Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad guys,” said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. “The legal advisers working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice.”
One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA’s ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA’s secret prison sites “do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis.”
Research Credit: cptmarginal
All this promise of wonderful CHANGE from the Obama Administration just makes me want to break into song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVADPQtvST4
Either your facts are incomplete, or you’ve slanted them to fit your narrative. Read hilzoy or A. Sullivan. For those willing to recognize it, this is significant change.
That certainly makes sense from a PR perspective: Let little countries with an alternative philosophy of detainee-management such as Egypt and Syria do the dirty-work. That way, they get to be the bad guys, and the good ol’ USA can go back to being The Most Awesome Country Ever in the Whole Wide World! Also, think of the good-cop-and-bad-cop possibilities for making those terrorists spill their beans!
@montysano: Reagan moved the country 10 steps to the Right, Bush I a bit further, and then Clinton made us all feel better by “feeling our pain”. Now BushII/Cheney have moved us 20 steps to the Right, and Obama seems to be moving us a few steps back to the “center”. The net is still that we a very far right, as is evidenced by the “Left”‘s passionate defense of Obama’s rendition policy. It’s still rendition, which still means ” the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.” If you are comfortable with “secret abductions”, then perhaps it is you who have slanted the facts to fit your implicit acceptance of something so sinister.
…As the country continues, in fits and starts, its movement toward the Right.
This bit from Harper’s Magazine clarifies the matter a lot more succinctly.
@Loveandlight: that Harper’s article would have been more compelling if it offered ANY documentation to support its claims. But I guess I should just trust it; it was, after all, published in a really cool magazine.
But I’ll concede this: on the books, at least, Obama is saying that torture will not be tolerated. On the other hand, it wasn’t officially tolerated before Bush II. I recommend this: http://nafeez.blogspot.com/2009/01/obama-regime-rotation.html
which does document its claims.