The Central Intelligence Agency and Libyan intelligence services developed such a tight relationship during the George W. Bush administration that the U.S. shipped terror suspects to Libya for interrogation and suggested the questions they should be asked, according to documents found in Libya's External Security agency headquarters...
The files provide an extraordinary window into the highly secretive and controversial practice of rendition, whereby the agency would send detainees to other countries for interrogation, including ones known for harsh treatment of detainees. The program was ramped up for terror detainees after the Sept. 11 attacks.
When taking over the CIA at the outset of the Obama administration, then-director Leon Panetta said the agency would continue to use rendition, but would seek assurances that the detainee wouldn't be tortured—which has been the standing U.S. policy...
September 3, 2011
"Tripoli Files Show CIA Working With Libya."
The Wall Street Journal reports:
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26 comments:
The practice dates at least to 1995, when Egypt began aiding the U.S. with rendition
That's Clinton's term. Boy, he's stayed above the fray on this one.
You'd think the Wall Street Journal could come up with writers who can express their meaning without ambiguity. Does the last sentence quoted mean that torturing detainees or not torturing detainees has been "standing U.S. policy". It's impossible to tell from the syntax, so the reader is left to guess what the writer meant to say.
Without torture, what good is rendition?
What will Sully do now????
This shit has been going on since the beginning of time.
Some people just want to live in denial. So, we give them a way to deny it.
NO torture, fine. Just waterboard the motherfuckers.
AllenS said...
Without torture, what good is rendition?
hehe, it's a cost saving measure. A libyan jail charges a lot less per terrorist per day than we have to pay at Gitmo and they don't get to complain about how the Libyans abuse the Koran :)
Without torture, what good is rendition?
This. Maybe Freder or one the other smart liberals can explain why the Obama administration is handing these people over to "countries known for harsh treatment of detainees" if they don't want the detinees to be, you know, treated harshly.
If they want these detainees to be treated in accordance with the Geneva conventions or whatever, why aren't we interrogating them ourselves?
I guess we know why it was important to attack them, then.
You'd have to be a fool to think that the Clinton and obama administrations didn't send these prisoners to other countries not to be tortured.
And I'm all for it. Bravo to you with the cigar, and you with the mom jeans.
RS;dr.
Otherwise, the notion one can Mirandize enemy combatants as merely criminals is, at best, quaint.
Or it's a policy preference for the self-loathing, to allow our enemies every possible advantage, dressed up as a self-satisfying moral lecture.
That there are nations happily partnering in rendition with the US suggest the way the world really works doesn't conform to the views of the Andrew Sullivans of the world, notwithstanding prison rape fantasies...
Sounds like Muammar was Dubya's bitch.
Curious George said...
"NO torture, fine. Just waterboard the motherfuckers."
They're goatfuckers, Curious, goatfuckers.
So several U.S. presidents used Gaddafi to do their scut work then Obama abandoned him and said he had to go. He should have known what was coming after seeing what happened to Mubarak.
Meanwhile, as Liberals piss their beds, NATO kills ex-GITMO detainee in Afghanistan
Good for the CIA.
Just being sent to Libya is an exquisite form of torture. People like Gaddafi survive and prosper not solely on the pains they inflict but on the pains they are capable of inflicting. Just tell someone with a fair imagination that they are in a Libyan prison and will soon be interrogated by a Libyan examiner, and that person's imagination will do the heavy lifting. It's much more effective than telling them that they have a right to have an attorney present during the examinaiton....But the most efficient method is not always the right method. This really stinks.
Who was it who postulated last night that Oblamer was doing the reverse of what Bush would do, as long as it didn't hurt him politically?
"Without torture, what good is rendition?"
I suppose, the threat of torture. I mean, it's pretty obvious our own political leaders don't have the cajones to do it, and the detainees know it. Would Libya even need to actually torture, or would the possibility of it be enough?
Anyway, I suspect rendition has little to do with actually getting information out of these guys, and more to do with just getting them out of our hair. It's not a wise policy long-term, but there aren't a lot of other good options either.
I haven't seen any hard evidence that these guys we've sent have even been tortured. Does anyone have anything reliable? Or is this another "we all *know* what really goes on over there," arguments?
Erik,
We don't know if they've been tortured. Hell, we don't know if any of them are still alive. I agree with you about getting them out of our hair.
Obama doesn't torture!
He kills. (30 dead AQ today in Yemen.)
PatCA said...
Obama doesn't torture!
He kills. (30 dead AQ today in Yemen.)
================
Because if you ask any enemy rights lover like Freder or Sullivan they should go free rather than risk having their precious enemy rights violated by capture, humiliation by having female guards, or killing without trial.
Obama, the beloved black messiah of the Left and Euros - prefers the "Kill, do not capture!" order be given.
The Islamoids of course would love it if Freder or Ayman al-Zawahiri got to determine US policy. But I suspect, given a choice between killed on sight even if unarmed and trying to surrender (Obama rules) and capture and interrogation (Bush rules) - they miss Bush.
The other part of rendition that makes great sense if it is a Libyan, Syrian, Israeli Palestinian, Saudi national is those nations do not like AQ and have a home-based ability to bring in family, friends, acquaintances of the Islamoid terrorist for questioning. To get information, but also get lots more about the Islamoids conversion to Jihad, their recruiters, their money sources, what logistics people worked on their training and travels. (the tools are not "torture" normally, but tools that US prosecutors use all the time - threat of financial ruin and jailtime for friends and family unless the detainee or they come clean. The loss of jobs of associates from being under suspicion unless they are cleared or given lienency in return for cooperation. Really tough jail conditions the Americans cannot employ but which are routine in the 3rd WOrld.
The Saudis, for example, did huge damage to AQ after they got onboard in 2003 - by treating each renditionee they got as a piece of the network they were trying to dismantle. Some even went free as the AQ document forger, logistician, local recruiting Mullah or university student they fingered - "disappeared". Several members of the Saudi Royal Family or favored businessmen or bankers ID'd as Al Qaeda funders met "sudden, untimely deaths" in KSA and the UAE.
"NO torture, fine. Just waterboard the motherfuckers."
I thought you said no torture.
"Maybe Freder or one the other smart liberals can explain why the Obama administration is handing these people over to 'countries known for harsh treatment of detainees' if they don't want the detinees to be, you know, treated harshly."
What's to explain? The Obama administration, as with those who came before it, want to have our captives tortured, but by other hands in other lands, so we can claim "clean hands", (sic).
As I've said many times, Obama is fully vested as a member of the Presidential War Criminals, Torturers and Mass Murderers fraternity.
Tim,
"RS"?
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