Thanks to Our President, Rendition is the New Black
Some of you might have heard of “rendition”, the practice of sending captured suspected Islamist murderers back to their home countries even though we were pretty sure that they’d be tortured for real when they got there. President Bush was criticized for it by hyperventilating left-wing bloggers, Democratic members of Congress, the MSM, and Presidential candidate Barack Obama. It was thought so barbaric by the left that Hollywood committed a war crime of its own by subjecting us to Jake Gyllenhaal in a sanctimonious movie that wouldn’t even have outdrawn “Howard the Duck 2: The Duckening”.
Yeah, well, apparently it’s not all that bad after all. President Barack Obama has OKed the practice and his intelligence people are even calling it…well…read for yourself.
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 Boeing Co. subsidiary 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 United States 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 the legal reasoning. “The legal advisors 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.”
Despite concern about rendition, Obama’s prohibition of many other counter-terrorism tools could prompt intelligence officers to resort more frequently to the “transitory” technique.
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.
“Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “What I heard loud and clear from the president’s order was that they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured — but that designing that system is going to take some time.”
Malinowski said he had urged the Obama administration to stipulate that prisoners could be transferred only to countries where they would be guaranteed a public hearing in an official court. “Producing a prisoner before a real court is a key safeguard against torture, abuse and disappearance,” Malinowski said.
Here’s the problem with Malinowski’s suggestion: it’s impossible. As any person with a couple working brain cells can tell you, once we hand a prisoner over to another country, we have absolutely no control over what happens to them. Most countries aren’t so stupid as to try Islamists as criminals, because they aren’t. Only the left has managed that so far. Malinowski probably isn’t a stupid man, so I’m going to assume he knows all of this. Which means that what he’s doing is giving the President official cover to do what his organization spent the better part of eight years condemning.
I’m sure that a few suspected terrorists will get trials. Most will not. Most will either find themselves free to rejoin their Islamist brethren and resume their murderous ways or will find themselves in far less kind hands than they were at Guantanamo Bay. This isn’t rocket science; it’s just common sense.
President Obama boxed himself into a corner by promising to close Gitmo in a year. I still don’t believe he will, partially because of stories like this. If he closes Gitmo, he has to keep rendition on the table, and not the fantasy-world rendition that Human Rights Watch imagines will happen.
I wonder when we’ll hear the cries from the usual suspects about how President Obama is a torture-happy goon and is making us less safe around the world. My guess is we’ll see just the opposite. Folks on the left are going to twist themselves into pretzels trying to explain how rendition is now the greatest thing since bologna and ketchup sandwiches. The hypocrisy will barely be noted by the MSM because it rarely ever is. Watch and see.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Obama to Close Gitmo…One of These Days
- Abandoning the Women of Pakistan
- History, Mr. President. You’re Doing It Wrong!
Category: Fighting the Islamists, President Barack Obama, The World At Large
Half of the prisoners released from Gitmo have already gone back to being terrorists,i.e. friends of Obama.
None of the terrorists wear military clothing(unless you count the used diapers they cover their faces with). None of them have heard of the Geneva Convention until they get captured. Then the left scrambles trying to make sure these new prisoners get their due rights.
The pimp should load all the gitmo prisoners(And their lawyers) on a couple of C-141's and fly them over Iran.
This would do two things – we'd get rid of obsolete aircraft that have been pulled from service and we'd also be rid of money sinkholes.