Rendition

Interesting little blurb percolated its way out today. Seems the Obama administration has issued an executive order allowing the continuation of the practice of rendition. For those unfamiliar, rendition is where you turn a terrorism suspect over to a third party government for interrogation. The practice actually goes back to the Clinton administration, but we don't like to talk about that. The interesting part of this little development has been the silence that has met the announcement. The New York Times and Washington Post, two outlets that flogged the last president for the practice, are conspicuously silent on the new ruling. I guess it's only bad when someone you don't like is ordering it.

Ares

Update: Someone with way more time and smarts than I followed through on this. Professor Hutchison of the Dissenting Justice blog posted some before and after statements by Human Rights Watch. This is the before:

The US government should:

Repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA's rendition program;

Disclose the identities, fate, and current whereabouts of all persons detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody by the CIA since 2001, including detainees who were rendered to Jordan;

Repudiate the use of "diplomatic assurances" against torture and ill-treatment as a justification for the transfer of a suspect to a place where he or she is at risk of such abuse;

Make public any audio recordings or videotapes that the CIA possesses of interrogations of detainees rendered by the CIA to foreign custody;

Provide appropriate compensation to all persons arbitrarily detained by the CIA or rendered to foreign custody (emphasis added).

This is what was issued after by Human Rights Watch:

"Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place" for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "What I heard loud and clear from the president's order was that they want to design a system that doesn't result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured -- but that designing that system is going to take some time."

Note to Human Rights Watch: Turn off the lights & lock the door. You're now hacks instead of advocates. Mind you, I'm actually in favor of the practice of rendition. But when a group that advocates something as basic as human rights twists sideways in it's seat merely because of who occupies the Oval Office they've ceased to be useful. Co opting is it's own form of corruption.