Extraordinary Rendition Doesn’t Mean a Great Song in the Third Act
Claiming it’s wrong to do something while doing it is disingenuous. Sometimes it’s against the law, unless you are the law. In a great disservice to our freedoms, Alberto Gonzales, now that he is securely Attorney General, defends the practice of ‘extraordinary rendition.’ That’s sending terrorist suspects to other countries for questioning, usually with torture in mind and quite the reverse of his congressional testimony before confirmation. He said in those days that renditions would not be made to countries where it was “more likely than not’ that detainees would be tortured. More likely than not
is a pretty subjective call, when you’re sending prisoners to some of the most repressive and violent regimes on the planet. The official claim is that the threat of rendition is a powerful tool interrogating suspects who fear rendition. I’ll just bet it is!
So, if I have this straight, Alberto is playing semantic games while terrorist suspects continue to be flown out of American jurisdict…