Rendition is the practice of turning terrorist suspects over to countries, such as Egypt or Saudi Arabia, where they could be, or are likely to be, tortured. By using rendition, the U.S. can (at least, technically) effectively torture suspects without having to worry about violating Constitutional due process.
Many people find this practice abhorrent. So do I. Torture is torture, and the U.S. should not be in the business of performing it, condoning it, or shipping people off to where it's practiced.
President George W. Bush has been criticized for allowing rendition. Fair enough. But where were the critics of rendition when it started? President Clinton began the practice, during peacetime. A New Yorker article (posted 7 Feb 2005, from the 17 Feb issue), confirms this:
Not long ago, [former CIA counter-terrorism expert Michael] Scheuer, who lives in northern Virginia, spoke openly for the first time about how he and several other top C.I.A. officials set up the program [rendition], in the mid-nineties. “It was begun in desperation, ” he told me. At the time, he was the head of the C.I.A.’s Islamic-militant unit, whose job was to “detect, disrupt, and dismantle” terrorist operations. His unit spent much of 1996 studying how Al Qaeda operated; by the next year, Scheuer said, its mission was to try to capture bin Laden and his associates. He recalled, “We went to the White House” – which was then occupied by the Clinton Administration – “and they said, ‘Do it.’ ” He added that Richard Clarke, who was in charge of counter-terrorism for the National Security Council, offered no advice. “He told me, ‘Figure it out by yourselves,’ ” Scheuer said. (Clarke did not respond to a request for comment.)
(At this point, I should mention that Richard Clarke testified during the 9-11 Commission hearings that President Bush was unprepared for the Sept 11 attacks; he also did a hatchet job on the President in a book written around the same time. Since Clarke was in a position of authority for at least five years prior to Sept 11, I think he bears some responsibility for any lack of preparedness.) The article continues:
The obvious choice, Scheuer said, was Egypt. The largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid after Israel, Egypt was a key strategic ally, and its secret police force, the Mukhabarat, had a reputation for brutality. Egypt had been frequently cited by the State Department for torture of prisoners. According to a 2002 report, detainees were “stripped and blindfolded; suspended from a ceiling or doorframe with feet just touching the floor; beaten with fists, whips, metal rods, or other objects; subjected to electrical shocks; and doused with cold water [and] sexually assaulted.” Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s leader, who came to office in 1981, after President Anwar Sadat was assassinated by Islamist extremists, was determined to crack down on terrorism. His prime political enemies were radical Islamists, hundreds of whom had fled the country and joined Al Qaeda. Among these was Ayman al-Zawahiri, a physician from Cairo, who went to Afghanistan and eventually became bin Laden’s deputy.
In 1995, Scheuer said, American agents proposed the rendition program to Egypt, making clear that it had the resources to track, capture, and transport terrorist suspects globally – including access to a small fleet of aircraft. Egypt embraced the idea. “What was clever was that some of the senior people in Al Qaeda were Egyptian,” Scheuer said. “It served American purposes to get these people arrested, and Egyptian purposes to get these people back, where they could be interrogated.” Technically, U.S. law requires the C.I.A. to seek “assurances” from foreign governments that rendered suspects won’t be tortured. Scheuer told me that this was done, but he was “not sure” if any documents confirming the arrangement were signed.
Now, apparently, Scheuer is having doubts about rendition:
“Are we going to hold these people forever?” Scheuer asked. “The policymakers hadn’t thought what to do with them, and what would happen when it was found out that we were turning them over to governments that the human-rights world reviled.”
I would ask who Scheuer thinks the "human rights world" is. I would also ask why he doesn't think the U.S. is part of that world. Or, if he does think so now, why he didn't when he set up the rendition program. In any case, better late than never. It's better that Scheuer has doubts now, than not. It would have been better still had he had those doubts – and acted on them – years ago. It would have been better still had the Clinton administration had doubts. Better yet, that the Clinton administration never tried to set up the program in the first place.
This continues a theme that runs through this site. President Clinton committed numerous violations of civil liberties. At the time, I was appalled that the Democrats – who often claim they support civil liberties – said nothing. I was also very surprised that the Republicans didn't make an issue of these violations in the 1996 or 2000 campaigns. Well know the Democrats look like hypocrites when they raise the issue, and the Republicans at least look consistent when they don't.
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