Comments on: Did Obama Really Create a Loophole for Rendition?

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By: damitajo1

damitajo1 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:04:54 +0000

this issue has created a lot of defensive responses from my fellow liberals. i wonder why….i think overly protesting shows something sinister.

By: damitajo1

damitajo1 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:02:49 +0000

The article does not say that Obama will torture or engage in prolonged detention. Instead, it says that he will continue the kidnapping aspects of it. Will liberals criticize this too? http://dissentingjustice.blogspot.com/2009/02/s...

By: damitajo1

damitajo1 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:04:54 +0000

this issue has created a lot of defensive responses from my fellow liberals. i wonder why….i think overly protesting shows something sinister.

By: damitajo1

damitajo1 — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:02:49 +0000

By: Daphne Eviatar on a roll « Later On

Daphne Eviatar on a roll « Later On — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 20:48:26 +0000

[...] Did Obama Really Create a Loophole for Rendition?, which begins: This story that ran Sunday in The Los Angeles Times, “Obama Preserves Rendition as Counter-Terrorism Tool”, has caused quite a stir. Swirling ’round the blogosphere, it’s got all sorts of people in a tizzy that President Obama isn’t really ending torture and the Bush administration policy of “extraordinary rendition” of suspected terrorists to torturing countries. [...]

By: Eli Lake

Eli Lake — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:50:47 +0000

I think it's pretty clear that Clinton sent suspected terrorists in some cases to foreign jails where they were tortured. I get into this issue in a piece I wrote last month on Leon Panetta, but you can find this stuff in Jane Mayer's reporting and plenty of other places. My piece is here. http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009/jan/15/pan...

As for the implications of my lede or what you think it signifies, well that's a pretty thin reed. I assume my readers speak and understand plain English and they could figure out for themselves whether the new temporary detentions were black, gray, white or whatever. Judging from the web hits the story received when it went out last week, I assume many people had not known that Obama's executive orders had an exemption for these temporary detentions by the CIA. Like you say in your blog post, we don't know from there what any of this will mean, but I think you overshot in your critique of me. As for the LA Times, I think they got it basically right that such temporary facilities strongly imply Obama will continue rendition. We don't know if that will be the kind of rendition to dungeons as practiced by Clinton and W, or some kinder and gentler form of rendition.

By: deviatar

deviatar — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 09:52:40 +0000

You're right, you carefully did explain that it's only temporary detention that the order would allow. However, to call it an “exclusive” report about a little-known “loophole” strongly suggested, as did your lead, that Obama plans to keep using some form of “black sites” — i.e., secret prisons — to hold people. And the implication was that the people holding them will be up to no good — and maybe abuse and torture. And those suggestions have, along with the LA Times piece, raised lots of fears and complaints that Obama isn't really going to end torture and abuse as he's promised, but will just follow the same old Bush playbook and call it something else.

Along the same vein, I don't think it's legitimate to equate the rendition policies under Clinton and Bush; from what I'm told, the Clinton administration sent people to countries where they'd face official judicial proceedings, not where they'd be held for years in prison and tortured, as the Bush administration did.

By: Eli Lake

Eli Lake — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 23:39:22 +0000

At no point in my story did I say the executive order leaves open the possibility of the CIA to keep operating “black sites.” I said that it allows the CIA to operate “temporary detention facilities,” a phrase I picked up from the Obama administration and repeated by an analyst from the Center for American Progress. That struck me as news, particularly since in the story, I say Obama had just closed the black sites. I don't know if this exemption will mean suspects will be shipped off to countries that torture as they were in the Clinton and subsequent Bush years. I would also add that in my piece, last week, I also quoted Chris Anders, who was not nearly as rosy as he is in this blog post. He said to me:
“If President Obama has taken the CIA out of the prison business, he should also take the CIA out of the short-term jailer business as well.”