On February first, the Los Angeles Times reported that renditions will
continue under the Obama administration:
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 programs, President Obama left intact
an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has
authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions
and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United
States.
Not long after the article appeared, it was discredited as a hoax by
Obama supporters Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings and Harper’s Magazine Scott
Horton, an expert on extralegal abuses during the Bush administration,
who wrote:
The Los Angeles Times just got punked… It misses the difference between
the renditions program, which has been around since the Bush 41
Administration at least (and arguably in some form even in the Reagan
Administration) and the extraordinary renditions program which was
introduced by Bush 43 and clearly shut down under an executive order
issued by President Obama in his first week.
There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The
extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term
detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host
government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside
of the criminal justice system and otherwise unaccountable under law for
extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was
rendition to torture, namely that the prisoner was turned over to
cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those
governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration
considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S.
law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.
The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and
removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering
them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of
long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture. There are
legal and policy issues with the renditions program, but they are not in
the same league as those surrounding extraordinary rendition. Moreover,
Obama committed to shut down the extraordinary renditions program, and
continuously made clear that this did not apply to the renditions program.
Horton’s reassurances to the contrary, I for one would not use Bush 41’s
renditions program as a benchmark for human rights.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2009/02/03/rendition-lite/
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