CAMPAIGN COMMITMENTS : Part 3

Rendition: it is the title of a good movie or the name of a nightmarish experience one never forgets, depending on the case.

 

Rendition is the secret practice by American forces to kidnap abroad and transfer the taken to third party countries cooperating with the United States. Once in the hands of their foreign jailers, the prisoners are secretly detained and “interrogated”. Their detention is secret and unlimited.  They are not allowed access to legal representation or to the exterior world and such, as long as the foreign jailers or their “American colleagues” say so.

Rendition is an American practice in force since Reagan, often used to submit terrorists, protected by the frontiers or the social courant of another country, to the American justice. (The kidnapped suddenly appears in a country willing to extradite and everything is OK.)

Extraordinary Rendition is a twist on the matter which started after September 11.  Under Extraordinary Rendition, kidnapping of targets did not always happen with turning them over to the American justice in mind. Targets will be kidnapped and turned over third party country for the main goal of being interrogated there with methods illegal under American laws.  Often they would be released without ever having been in the States, or they would be eventually turned up at GITMO.

 

For many, such practice goes against every single democratic principle in the book and it was the target of international scorn. The European Parliament condemned renditions as “an illegal instrument used by the United States.” 

During his campaign, Obama always promised a radical change in the way Intelligence would be collected: GITMO would be closed, harsh interrogation techniques would be prohibited, the CIA secret prisons would be closed and rendition would be a thing of the past.

And again, in full media galleria, Obama signed some Executive Orders on the subject on January 22.  No more torture, no more Guantanamo. And everybody sang Kumbaya.

Pretty picture would you say? Well not so fast… Yes on paper, the CIA has to shut down its secret interrogations, but its activities being secret by nature how to be sure? Yes, GITMO will shut down, eventually, in the future, on day, may be in a year… we’ll see, we’ll let you know… Yes torture will not be allowed anymore during interrogations. But terminating rendition, not so fast, and actually not at all. Rendition will stay and will probably intensify as the only tool left on the belt.

Because if Chicago is not on the forefront of terrorism, it is on the White House’s one. And if intelligence collection practices ala Bush were not pretty, let’s remind us they were war practices. And war is ugly, and full of excesses and blunders.

Two days ago, Greg Miller, writer for the Los Angeles Times reported: “One provision in one of Obama’s orders appears to preserve the CIA's ability to detain and interrogate terrorism suspects as long as they are not held long-term. The little-noticed provision states that the instructions to close the CIA's secret prison sites "do not refer to facilities used only to hold people on a short-term, transitory basis."

One of his sources within the Obama’s administration speaking on the condition of anonymity told him: “Obviously you need to preserve some tools -- you still have to go after the bad guys,…The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

 

The Irony is that the CIA has never considered Extraordinary Rendition a very productive tool. Regarding the interrogation techniques used abroad as poorly efficient, it reserved it for second tier terrorists, preferring to have its own experts interrogating primary targets.

 

So, one more time Obama is failing his campaign commitments, but in this case for the simple reason that in the matter of counter-terrorism, such were idiotic and unsustainable.  They should have never been made.

The CIA is not made of choir boys.  It is a government agency made of the best of the best in their area. That it can perform to the best of its abilities under the Congress and American courts’ supervision is essential to the security of the United States and of the world by extension.

One more time, true to his demagogy, Obama cut where it should not have. He chose to weaken our national defense rather to tell it as it is to the American people.

But when it comes to you my European friends who do not vote in America, Obama threw you under the bus. You will continue, knowingly or not to participate in American Renditions by opening your air spaces to our transit flights.

 

ARTICLE WRITTEN BY : FRENCH NAIL