[Peace-discuss] Unbelievable deception

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From today's Chicago Tribune. What scum he is.  --CGE]

...Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority
to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and
transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said the rendition program is
poised to play an expanded role because it is the main remaining mechanism-aside
from Predator missile strikes-for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

The rendition program became a source of embarrassment for the CIA, and a target
of international scorn, as details emerged in recent years of botched captures,
mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries
where they were tortured.

The European Parliament condemned renditions as an "illegal instrument used by
the United States." Prisoners swept up in the program have sued the CIA as well
as a subsidiary of Boeing Corp., which is accused of working with the agency on
dozens of rendition flights.

But the Obama administration appears to have determined that the rendition
program was one component of the Bush administration's war on terrorism that it
could not afford to discard.

The decision underscores the fact that the battle with Al Qaeda and other
terrorist groups is far from over and that even if the U.S. is shutting down the
prisons, it is not done taking prisoners.

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools, you still have to go after the bad
guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity
when discussing legal reasoning behind the decision. "The legal advisers 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."

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"...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-renditions_31jan31,0,2998929.story