August 25, 2009
Courtesy Of The Progressive
Amidst all the discussion about the CIA’s latest report on torture and Eric Holder’s decision to appoint a torture prosecutor, one related story did not get the attention it deserved.
It’s the story, I’m sorry to say, of another Obama betrayal.
When he was campaigning for President, he said we needed to end the practice of “shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries.”
But now Obama has decided to continue the Bush policy—and I’m not going to use the euphemism of rendition, because it’s a policy of kidnapping.
And it’s illegal to kidnap someone and ship them to another country for interrogation.
But that’s what Obama is going to keep doing.
Oh, he promised to provide better oversight to make sure that the kidnapped individuals are not tortured, but there’s no guarantee of that.
Plus, Bush gave the same guarantee, and we know what that was worth.
Once the CIA or the Pentagon outsources a prisoner to another country for interrogation, anything goes.
And let’s not be naïve here: That’s the point!
It’s about letting someone else do our dirty work.
It’s about plausible deniability.
And it’s about lack of accountability.
Obama is better than this. Or at least I thought he was.
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