Wolf Howling: rendition

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Hypocrisy, History & The Sleep Of The Righteous

Intelligence is the key to stopping terrorist plots. Ask the 9-11 Commission to describe 9-11 in three words and they would no doubt be "an intelligence failure." Ask Dick Cheney, Michael Hayden, George Tenet or Mike McConnel what has kept us safe these past eight years, and their answer would no doubt be "actionable intelligence." In the shadow war we are in - one which could conceivably at some point involve nuclear or biological attacks on the U.S. - to forego opportunities to collect and act on intelligence would be a grotesque dereliction of duty.

Thus it is troubling indeed to learn today from the NYT that the CIA, limited as it is to non-coercive means of interrogation and no longer able to run holding facilities for terrorists, both thanks to the January executive order of President Obama, is now outsourcing virtually all interrogations of captured al Qaeda members to other countries. The only benefit of this that I can tell is that it allows President Obama to maintain his illusory position atop the moral highground, his conscience pristine. Meanwhile, we have lost control of intelligence sources, and the job of breaking them now falls to nations whose historical methods of interrogation have been coercive indeed. It is then up to those nations to decide what intelligence to share with us.

When it comes to waterboarding and other evils, necessary though they may be to keeping us safe, we are told by Obama that these things are immoral and must not be done - by us at least. It is a measure of the boundless hypocrisy of President Obama that he presents himself as the supreme moral being and will take no position that will sully his utopian self, but then he allows captured al Qaeda operatives to be interrogated by other countries for whom waterboarding would, historically at least, be viewed as mild.

What is the price we must pay so that Obama and the far left can sleep each eve with pristine conscience, secure in the knowledge of their own superior self-righteousness? For if the bill comes due, the price will be in the blood of innocent Americans.

For those who buy into Obama's vacuous utopian moralizing, know that the harsh realities of history paint a very different picture. One example I find incredibly grating is Obama's oft repeated claim that we won World War II because we "stayed true to our values."

In making that claim, Obama never defines the "values" to which he refers, though it is implicit that he defines them as the values du jour that he is pumping in his speech that day. Nor does he explain the nuance of our supposed fidelity to such values in the context of such things as interring all Japanese Americans for the duration of the War, the fire bombing of Dresden, the decision to drop the atomic bomb, nor the execution of German spies. And neither does he explain the seeming dichotomy in how our fidelity to his value du jour that he would have us believe caused us to win over Germany did not conversely cause the Soviet Union to lose to Germany, given that the Soviet's values in terms of civil liberties, torture, etc. were antithetical to ours.

At any rate, I will go to sleep tonight with a small worry deep in the back of my head over the safety of my family and my country. Obama will go to sleep tonight apparently untroubled, his conscience pristine. Are not those roles dangerously reversed?

Update: And do see the 'better late than never' Dafydd ab Hugh's take on this at Big Lizards. As he notes, even this turn of events is not enough to satisfy the hard left base of Obama who are "hoping to achieve their life goal of completely disarming the United States in the midst of an existential war."

Overreaching With Extraordinary Rendition

There are some things that exist in such a gray area that to create a bright line rule one way or another is going to be problematic. Waterboarding, arguably torture but which, sparingly used, has proven critical to our national security, certainly falls into that category. Another is the practice of extraordinary rendition. That is the kidnapping of wanted people in foreign lands. It is a technique that bypasses extradition treaties which are, in a particular instance, too cumbersome or otherwise would not work to allow the U.S. to take custody of the targeted individuals.

In the past decade, the practice of extraordinary rendition has been associated with targeting terrorist suspects and transporting them to the U.S. or a third country to be held on behalf of the U.S. And while that has caused some consternation among our allies - and been the basis for a truly horrid Hollywood bomb of a movie - there is no move afoot to make such a program illegal. It has proven quite useful. But overuse or even overpublicizing such a program is sure to lead to an international backlash. And that is precisely what may be occurring as regards to extraordinary rendition. This today from The Times of London:

AMERICA has told Britain that it can “kidnap” British citizens if they are wanted for crimes in the United States.

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

. . . Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

The American government has for the first time made it clear in a British court that the law applies to anyone, British or otherwise, suspected of a crime by Washington.

Legal experts confirmed this weekend that America viewed extradition as just one way of getting foreign suspects back to face trial. Rendition, or kidnapping, dates back to 19th-century bounty hunting and Washington believes it is still legitimate.

Jones replied that it was acceptable under American law to kidnap people if they were wanted for offences in America. “The United States does have a view about procuring people to its own shores which is not shared,” he said.

He said that if a person was kidnapped by the US authorities in another country and was brought back to face charges in America, no US court could rule that the abduction was illegal and free him: “If you kidnap a person outside the United States and you bring him there, the court has no jurisdiction to refuse — it goes back to bounty hunting days in the 1860s.”

Mr Justice Ouseley, a second judge, challenged Jones to be “honest about [his] position”.

Jones replied: “That is United States law.”

He cited the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a suspect who was abducted by the US government at his medical office in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1990. He was flown by Drug Enforcement Administration agents to Texas for criminal prosecution.

Although there was an extradition treaty in place between America and Mexico at the time — as there currently is between the United States and Britain — the Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the Mexican had no legal remedy because of his abduction. . . .

Read the article here. The Machain case discussed above involved a doctor who had assisted in the brutal murder of DEA agent by a drug gang. If memory serves, the doctor's role involved administring drugs to the DEA agent so that he would remain conscious throughout the time he was being tortured to death. The Mexican government was not cooperating in the extradition of the doctor, so the DEA took matters into its own hands to bring him to the US to face justice.

As any rate, the use of extraordinary rendition is not something that U.S. officials or are agents need to be discussing in public. If our legislators raise it, that is one thing, but there is nothing to be gained by taking a public position on this program outside of that limited venue. Likewise, using rendition in any but very special cases - terrroism, Dr. Machain, etc. - is likely to cause an international backlash that will endanger the entire program. Rendition is a strategic tool not to be used by just any DoJ official who is frustrated with the extradition process.