Will Obama Administration Consider Preserving CIA Renditions as Anti-Terrorism Weapon?

by Damozel | UPDATE & CLARIFICATION HERE.

Is the Obama administration preserving -- or thinking of preserving -- a loophole in "President Obama's well-publicized revocation of Bush's policies regarding torture"? (Huff Post)

Greg Miller (via memeorandum) at The L.A. Times:.

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.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as "an illegal instrument used by the United States."...

An exhaustive investigation by the European Union concluded that the CIA had operated more than 1,200 flights in European airspace after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The implication was that most were rendition-related, with some taking suspects to states where they faced torture. (LAT)

Obama seems....not so sure.

[T]he 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....In his executive order on lawful interrogations, Obama created a task force to reexamine renditions to make sure that they "do not result in the transfer of individuals to other nations to face torture," or otherwise circumvent human rights laws and treaties....(LAT)

Here's Miller quoting "an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning" (with "legal" and "reasoning" being badly misused either by the official or by Miller; I can't tell which):

."Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys....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." (LAT; emphasis added)

Surprisingly -- by which I mean (speaking for myself) shockingly -- Human Rights Watch seems all right with a limited policy on renditions.

"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. (LAT)

The Heretik remarks, and certainly speaks for me, and doubtless for most progressives:

No question [rendition] works.  No question it violates sovereignity and international law.  That’s how the Israelis got Eichmann, an open and potentially embarassing secret  For those who approve the practice, how many Americans would be happy if other nations ran the streets here and snatched up whoever they thought necessary?  ....Outrage is relative.

Exactly.  Because, of course, those wimpy, cowardly, human-rights-loving Europeans have never had to deal with terrorism up close and personal the way we've had to do since...since September 11, 2001!

Meanwhile, John V. Santore at Huff Post tries to demonstrate that the Obama administration perhaps doesn't really mean what it looks like it means, but concludes:

We can draw solace from the seemingly unambitious principals outlined by the administration regarding torture, but the situation must be continually monitored.  (HuffPost, emphasis added)

Because, as Santore also points out:

The Bush administration, lest we forget, also publicly rejected torture throughout Bush's presidency. I would like to know more about the "limited circumstances" Malinowski refers to under which rendition is permissible. But even if such exceptional circumstances exist, they must not be allowed to become the rule. Similarly, the inclusion of the phrase "short-term, transitory basis" must not be allowed to expand into a broad loophole justifying permanent detentions.

Finally, we cannot permit intellectual sloppiness to persist regarding this issue. The use of the term "bad guys" by the administration official quoted above hearkens back to the mentality which bred illegality under Bush. If cowboy foreign policy is a thing of the past, then nobody within the administration should talk like a cowboy. (HuffPost; emphasis added)

To which I would add a heartfelt, "Amen." 

More at Memeorandum.

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