I'm sure the LA Times has this story wrong. I can't believe that after all the huffing and puffing throughout the campaign about the need for HopeandChange in the way we treat terrorist detainees, after all the assurances that an Obama administration would follow a different, more law-abiding, more human-rights-sensitive course than did the Bush administration, after all the caterwauling by the left over the abuses of detainees' dignity by the CIA, after all the fretting and fuming about torture of said detainees, that the Obama administration is, well, here's the LA Times' headline:
OBAMA PRESERVES RENDITIONS AS COUNTER-TERRORISM TOOL
Rendition, for those who are just tuning in, is the practice of sending captured terrorists back to their country of origin rather than holding them in prison ourselves. The practice began, it is often forgotten, under the Clinton administration as a way of inveigling certain intelligence from terrorists who resisted giving it up when questioned by American agents who were able to do little more to elicit information from recalcitrant killers than look at them sternly. Sending them back to countries like Egypt and Pakistan where the Geneva conventions on torture are printed on their bathroom tissue guaranteed that the information would be forthcoming in short order.
Many thought this was a dastardly move by the Bush forces to circumvent the law against torture. They raised a great hew and cry and insisted that this policy would not stand under a Democrat administration, and certainly not under the aegis of an apostle of Human Rights such as Barack Obama. They want to bring Bush to trial even now for this "war crime."
Well, not only is President Obama continuing the practice, according to the article he's actually going to expand it. In fact, he's left himself little choice. Since he has ordered the closing of Guantanamo our options with prisoners taken in the War on Terrorism are either release, rendition, secret military tribunals, or execution. Guantanamo gave us a fifth option, but the left insisted we close it down, for reasons which to me were never very clear and I doubt were clear to anyone else either.
Well, they're getting their wish so now we're left with rendition or secret trials (or execution, if you're a hard-liner), but the left opposes both.
Anyway, perhaps the most amusing line in the Times article was this one:
The decision to preserve the program did not draw major protests, even among human rights groups. Leaders of such organizations attribute that to a sense that nations need certain tools to combat terrorism.
Funny how what's evil when Bush did it becomes a necessary "tool" when Obama does it. It's nice to know that human rights organizations and advocates are politically and ideologically neutral.
RLC