We've come to a crossroads of sorts or at least I have after reading Obama preserves renditions as counter-terrorism tool. Over the years I have argued against Rendition and I won't stop now. What is bothering me is how many people will sit back and say it can be a safe "tool" in the hands of the Obama Admin. ? We have already witnessed some rogue actions from some of the Pentagon holdovers, loyal bushies, what's to say it won't happen again ? Did I mention that Kidnapping is a International Crime ?
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.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward....
I'm not sure how long the US has been using "Rendition", but I do know Clinton did it, and possibly Bush Sr. Back when Clinton did it , it was known as "extraordinary rendition", but that adverb seems no longer accurate. Wiki has the basics right enough .
While legal rendition has been used by the United States increasingly since the 1980s as a method for dealing with foreign defendants, extraordinary rendition is a wholly extra-legal process that differs in its nature and usage as a tool in the US-led "war on terror". Modern methods of rendition include a form where suspects are taken into US custody but delivered to a third-party state, often without ever being on American soil, and without involving the rendering country's judiciary; they have been termed "extraordinary rendition".[citation needed] The CIA was granted permission to use rendition in a presidential directive signed by President Bill Clinton in 1995, and the practice has grown sharply since the September 11 terrorist attacks. http://en.wikipedia.org/...
The problem has been too often of late that innocent people have been taken this way and held and tortured for years without recourse. At least one of them is trying to sue for what was done. All this makes me wish Pres. Obama would reconsider this madness.
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 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.
It has become almost trite to say this is not the kind of change I signed on for and I don't want it being done in my name. Sure, just like the 24 excuse for torture, someone will come up with some reason to break/bend the rules. In a special time like that a Pres. will do what he thinks needs done and face his peers afterwards as Lincoln did, or not, like Bush. It should not be a policy with decisions left to the CIA or DoD to use as some tool in their kit.
So let's take a poll of the progressives here and see just how we feel about this.