Obama Follows Bush's Folly

There was a quick report on PBS tonight that Leon Panetta. if confirmed as Director of the CIA, would continue the “longstanding” practice of extraordinary rendition as long as the recipient countries promised not to torture the rendees, if that is a word.

Rendition is not extradition.

Extradition is a longstanding practice. California wants a suspect apprehended in Georgia to stand trial before its court. Note that California asked Georgia to send the suspect.

Rendition is an invention of our intelligence services.We ask another country to "question" someone that we couldn't get any information from. While extraordinary, it is more importantly extralegal – read the linked article.

President Obama is disappointing me. This is nothing more that continuing Bush’s policy with the gratuitous proviso that we tell the country we are dealing with “now don’t you torture him!” (Wink.)

Here, my more liberal readers will part company with me. Big Rick, Jay, my brother Larry, perhaps Dale will give me some props, though I don't want them.

As Big Rick says, you don’t want to watch sausage being made. I don’t like it, but military and intelligence types do things that don’t qualify for a PG rating. I really don’t understand the Bush Administration’s and now Obama’s insistence on publicly acknowledging that they are doing these things. Of course they are, as did their predecessors, and as will their successors. It may not be right but it is reality.