The Saudis use a sword, the Islamic extremist use knives.

Yes I'm going to quibble on the method. A guillotine is a lot quicker than a knife - and that matters.

However going forward when I mention head choppinng I'll be certain to add Islamic extremist so you'll know.

Yes, yes yes, terrorists are bad poeple, we all know that-

But Ted, the issue is INNOCENT CIVILIANS BEING TORTURED-

you have avoided that question over and over- you seem to be okay with this wide net?

Yes yes yes – and you have some proof they are all “innocent” AND “civilian”. You have no proof they are all “tortured” or innocent. The idea that we risk lives and spend millions to snatch “innocent civilians” off the street all over the world is just ludicrous. Wide Net??? What is that???


Meanwhile people here try to justify the brutal tactics as “standard execution method”. Ya sure.

I agree the approval is not "official". I do believe that approval was granted (unofficially) for the extradition of these citizens, and there is ample evidence to back this reasoning. Italy would be my best, most direct example. The Director of Intelligence in Italy was implicated. Italy's justice minister at the time rejected calls for the extradition of C.I.A. agents accused of kidnapping Abu Omar. The Milan prosecutor subsequently resubmitted the extradition request when the new government was in place. If the highest officials in the government and intelligence at the time gave approval, that is not exactly kidnapping an Italian citizen from the streets. That is approval for the extradition of an Italian citizen, to his home country. I believe this is the case with every one of these renditions, with the likely exception of the German citizen who was taken from Morocco (that truly was egregious).



The Canadian government was under political pressure, just as Europe is under political pressure. I believe that the public story is not the same as the private one, and this is the reason for surreptitious renditions via the CIA in the first place. These governments knew such actions would not be popular. They are not actions that are up for vote, they are highly classified security actions and likely most of the officials in government had no idea they were going on (just as most of our politicians didn't know about the CIA actions until the NY times article came out). Every time this matter is investigated, the most crucial documents cannot be released because they contain government secrets. The Italian SISMI head (Pollari), for instance, filed a request to prosecutors, to seize papers in the hands of the Italian government, proving his innocence. The papers document a deal between Italy and the United States on precisely such activities. They won't be released...nor will any from any other country on the long list of countries that have cooperated with the CIA, for the same reasons.



You'll get no disagreement from me that there is too little oversight, the CIA's jurisdiction is too broad and assurances should be made that these suspects are not tortured. Now, here's a question. Suppose a terrorist suspect is wanted in Egypt, and we extradite him with diplomatic assurances that he will not be tortured. Is that enough? Can any country, from the US to Sweden to Japan, extradite terrorist suspects to their respective home countries with such diplomatic assurances?

I know a man who spent some time in a prison in Saudi Arabia. A lot of people from poorer countries go to Saudi to work. When they get there, their passports are taken and they are pretty much at the mercy of a rather arbitrary justice system. This man spent months in jail for an unsubstantiated allegation that required no proof, and no trial, he just sat there rotting (this was before 911 and had nothing to do with the US, but a local "crime"). The conditions were similar to a Medieval dungeon. Those are also the conditions in Qatar prisons, and I'd imagine everywhere throughout the Middle East. So...can we extradite anyone to the Middle East to face justice, for any reason?



The answer here would depend on the above questions I posed. Most every nation extradites people they don't want in their country, for one reason or another. I think that is their right. If they don't wish to make the matter public for reasons of security they shouldn't have to. Suppose for a moment that there was a terrorist suspect, living in (for instance) Germany. The German government gave the CIA his name, helped them obtain him and gave permission for the extradition and flight out to his home country. Then the German government (and CIA) were given assurances by the receiving nations that these suspects would not be tortured, just detained and questioned. Would that be okay?

Edited to add: I should add that the above are rhetorical questions, just to think about (unless you want to respond of course ). I'm merely trying to explain, roughly, where I stand on this matter and why. On the one hand, there is no justification for torture....but on the other I can see reasons for detaining these people and I believe the above is closer to reality. I could be wrong....I've certainly been wrong before.

Of course we have two cases as of this time- one of them Canadian, totally innocent, turned in by nieghbors with a grudge- so I guess if this happened to your kids, say, taken to Pakistan, tortured using Pakistani techniques (these are "extrodinary renditions- meaning your "uncomfortable" stuff wasn't enough for the G-men, they wanted more medivel techniques lock tongs, brands and pincers) - I sincerely wish each person that believes this is okay, is not so bad, would have it happen to thier family, in front of them, and then see how blase' you are about it "oh, so what if they are innocent, it is for a good cause, and electrodes to the genitals is no big deal, besides no one can PROVE my kid wasn't guilty"

Kinda backwards to what everything America stands for- torture now, find out innocence later.

Kinda un-American of you Ted- do you hate America?

Hello Ted.

The fact that we have no proof whatsoever that they have all tortured and/or are guilty of 'something/anything' is more to the point, due to this admins and your refusal to act in a befitting moral and/or legal manner.

The fact that almost all have not been charged with a single crime (let alone be shown to be a terrorist, enemy combatant) is more to the point, the fact that these men have been incarcerated for almost five years now without due process is more to the point.

I find it absolutely stunning that people like yourself, from a country that has prided its self on advocating freedom and democracy as the most important values in life, are quite willing to sacrifice anyone/everyone (no matter if innocent) and sacrifice any sense of civilised decency or any normal human values at all to make yourself feel superficially safer and/or as some sort of revenge for past atrocities.

Again I ask, if this is indeed the case and all evidence appears to scream it from the rooftops , what is it exactly you are really trying to achieve in Iraq?

I also state again that these actions and attitudes can do nothing other than show the rest of the world that you (collectively) are indeed as bad, if not worse than the monsters you are trying to defeat.

They have an excuse. Supposed rational, educated, culturally superior human beings such as we in the west do not.

Ted, I also ask you, how can a negative be proved exactly? Would you like to comment here?

Why do you think we have due process? why do you think the onus of provision of evidence is always on the prosecution (to prove beyond reasonable doubt, guilt), rather than on the defendant (to prove innocence)?

The fact that there are indications that some intelligence officials have played a part in the rendition and the suspicions that perhaps higher officials within the government knew more about this, do not make the affairs legal or acceptable in any way. Even if the public story is different than the private one (as you argue), it is still obvious that cooperation with this U.S. extraordinary rendition policy is considered in all the countries in the Western world a possible violation of human rights and thus an offense. From this perspective Germany and Italy have started an official investigation and have issued arrest warrants.
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Sweden, one of the countries from which rendition has been carried out, has been critised by the U.N. and by the E.U. and has officially denounced further cooperation with the U.S. rendition program.
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In Canada an official public inquiry "into the actions of Canadian officials dealing with the deportation and detention" of Arar has been carried out and a formal protest has been lodged against the U.S. link

As I said before it doesn't matter if the U.S. and CIA had direct or indirect help from other nations in the Western world. It is no excuse for the continuation of this illegal, immoral and unethical policy.



First of all there is a difference between extraordinary renditions and official extradtions:

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Besides that legal extraditions can only occur between two countries that have signed bilateral treaties or agreements and in general an extradition treaty requires that a country seeking extradition be able to show that:
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In the case of extraordinary renditions there isn't a prima facie case against the individual sought. In most cases the individual hasn't been charged at all. Because all the receiving countries in the extraordinary rendition program are well known for crimes against humanity, there is a no reasonable expectation for a fair trial and the likely penalty, if the individual gets to the point were he has been summoned to court, will likely not be proportionate to the crime. Besides that, apart from Egypt, Pakistan and Jordan, the U.S. has no extradition treaties with the other receiving countries (Syria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Uzbekistan) and yet they are willing to render suspects to these parts of the world. link

Editted to insert a link.
Editted to add
Legal scholar L. Ali Khan, a professor of law at Washburn University School of Law in Kansas, explains the difference between rendition and extradition briefly but clearly:


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BTW: the quote comes from another well written article that discusses all the aspects of the extraordinary rendition program

Hello Nina,

Your implication that theses folks are just innocent bystanders doesn’t hold water and as Mrs. Piqpen point out with the help of foreign intel services .http://www.americasdebate.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14100&pid=207280&mode=threaded&show=&st=&#entry207280.

And I still maintain as this article discusses they are not routinely tortured. Certainly I am not saying it never happened and was “right” when it did. But to believe torture is used on all is not realistic.

The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the CIA believes that torture works. But in 30 years of writing about intelligence, I've never encountered a spook who didn't realize that torture is usually counterproductive. Professional intelligence officers know that prisoners will confess to anything under intense pain. Information obtained through torture thus tends to be unreliable, in addition to being immoral.

in conversations over the past several years with senior CIA officials and the heads of several Arab intelligence services, I've heard explanations for why the practice is used. These arguments for rendition at least ought to be understood as Congress and the public struggle with the moral issues involved.
What's gained by transferring a prisoner to his home country for interrogation is emotional leverage, according to Arab and American intelligence chiefs. A hardened al Qaeda member often can't be physically coerced into giving up information, no matter how nasty the interrogator. But he may do so if confronted by, say, his mother, father, brother or sister. That family contact is possible if he's near home; it's impossible if he's in an orange jump suit and warehoused at Guantanamo Bay.

I asked the head of an Arab intelligence service once about the widespread belief in his country that prisoners were tortured. People sometimes referred to his headquarters as the "fingernail factory," I said, because they assumed that vicious methods were used, such as ripping out prisoners' nails. This official insisted that torture didn't work. He cited cases in which prisoners had been broken through softer and more clever measures -- applying family pressure or, in one remarkable case, ignoring a defiant, self-important prisoner until he all but demanded to be questioned.
The head of another major Arab intelligence service explained how his men cracked an al Qaeda suspect who had refused to talk to the Americans; their main "weapon," he said, was that they prayed five times a day in the man's presence.

Before you make an easy judgment about rendition, you have to answer the disturbing question put to me by a former CIA official: Suppose the FBI had captured Mohamed Atta before Sept. 11, 2001. Under U.S. legal rules at the time, the man who plotted the airplane suicide attacks probably could not have been held or interrogated in the United States. Would it have made sense to "render" Atta to a place where he could have been interrogated in a way that might have prevented Sept. 11? That's not a simple question for me to answer, even as I share the conviction that torture is always and everywhere wrong.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...9-2005Mar8.html



What I find stunning Nina is the blasé way the horrendous acts against civilians and our military are IMO “excepted” by the world and the harsh criticism we get for trying to bring theses monsters to justice. If you think that allowing a terrorist to be free in another country because he feels he is “safe” is a good idea I disagree. And as pointed out above, if rendering him to his home country allows for the development of information that will save lives then we need to do it. Our enemy tells us they are planning bigger and better acts of murder and if snatching someone off the street can stop that I am all for it. Their “tactic” is to hide in other countries. Our answer to that is the render them when we can.



My position on Iraq today is we are trying to establish a stable government before leaving. We went there because the region is vital to the US (oil) and because Saddam had WMD and it appeared the UN was never going to do squat. My disagreement with Bush is the timing. I would have waited until it was clear the UN was influenced by Iraqi money (oil for food scandal) and I would not have gone in without knowing I could put hands on WMD quickly.



Cannot and that is why the terrorists have the directive in their “training manual” to ALWAYS claim torture. But if you are suggesting that we allow this to “work” and allow people to stay out there to plan and carry out acts of horrific murder I am strongly against it. And let me say again enemy combatants and terrorists don’t deserve “due process” – even the Genève Convention is clear on this . They don’t get “charged” in a US court and get a free lawyer – is that what you expect???? Why???

But at the same time Ted your implication that they are all guilty also doesn't hold water. None have been charged officially and, as I already try to point out to Mrs. P, the fact that foreign intelligence officials in some occassions played a role is not an excuse to justify this policy.


So if I understand this correctly, you are stepping away from your first argument "the U.S. does not torture because it doesn't work". Now you are admitting that apparently it did happen on some of the detainees and that it was wrong. Even if the U.S. is guilty of the torture of only one prisoner as a result of the rendition program, it is still an official violation of international laws and human rights!

Besides this, I have to say that I found some questionable assertions in the article you provided.



It is amazing how the writer can first point out to the fact that detainees are send to countries that are worldwide infamous for their use of torture and their disrespect for human rights, and then tries to claim that that brutal interrogation methods are not being used on detainees who are held in these countries because the CIA does not believe that torture works. This doesn't add up. So the CIA knows very well that nations like Syria have a long history of human rights abuses, but dares to state that the prisoners they send to this country will not be treated in a inhumane way. How so? Why should anybody believe this statement, while it is so obvious that brutalisation is an accepted interrogation method in these countries.
His arguments is also contrary to what former experts and even government officials have said.
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Funny thing, that he read this same article, but he overlooked all these arguments and statements.



What the author failed to acknowledge is the fact that people who are being rendered completely disappear from the face of the earth for a while. Family members do not know where the detainee went to. This has been the case with el-Masri, Arar, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and as far as I can tell all the other individuals who were rendered. This argument is not credible at all.



I am wondering where this head of Arab intelligence comes from. It is impossible that he comes from any of the receiving countries in the rendition program, because all these nations are known for their use of torture and human rights abuses. I find it gullible that the author acknowledges these statements as truth.



Perhaps an even better question is this: suppose agents of Able Danger had identified Atta as an Al Qaida operative in the U.S.. Would it have made sense to share this critical information with the FBI so the necessary steps could have been made that might have prevented 9/11? link


But Ted, in this particular tread we are not focussing on the horrendous acts of terrorist or Islamic fundamentalists, we are talking about the violations of human rights and international laws that accompany extraordinary renditions. If you want to start a new thread about terrorist horrors be my guest, but don't deflect the arguments being made in this thread by pointing out the other side is even worse.



Ted, many experts are seriously doubting your view of the Geneva Conventions. At this moment I will not go into deeper detail about the G.V. because it will lead us off topic quickly. I would just like to point out how dangerous your line of reasoning is:
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Editted to add:

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I think this is a nice example of the pot calling the kettle black.

What I am saying is it is not policy and never will be. We know what was done at AbuGrabe was wrong. No one knows if people were tortured since there is noo proof of this and I don’t believe the terrorists.




A well used expression meaning IMO that we will find and bring the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice and not do what Clinton did which was put them on the FBI most wanted list. It does not mean torture – period. This is pure speculation. As I have said I strongly support rendition of anyone involved with 9/11 or A lQuada.





But it is clearly obvious that the practice will be necessary in order to capture many of the worst terrorists. So should we allow them to go free when we know where they are? Do we hope we can catch them later before they kill more Americans or innocent people? Is this “better for the world” If one of theses people we let slip away later kills thousands or tens of thousands of Americans are we going to feel good about this knowing we could have prevented it? My answer is NO. We get them, with help from allies, anyway we can and if that means they disappear for a while then that’s the way it is.

See, this is where you lose me. I agree with most of what you've said. We cannot mistreat anyone and then validate that by turning around and saying "well, they torture more than we do!" The way terrorists treat others is irrelevant to the debate here. I agree one hundred percent. Now, look to the above example. In this case you are calling the "kettle black" by offering an example of an arbitrarily accosted journalist in Liberia. This example would be analogous and valid if we (US intelligence) followed the journalist around, compared notes with Liberia, deemed him a terrorist suspect, and aided the government of Liberia in this abduction. That's what happened in Europe. And I don't think that if that happened we would be blaming Liberian agents and sending out warrants for their part in the abduction.

So, for example, in the case with Sweden, you've indicated that their participation in rendition is over. Problem solved. There will be no more renditions from Sweden. If there are, that is a violation of their sovereignty. Right now, I don't see any evidence to substantiate that this is happening. If Italy decides to end their participation, that too will solve the problem, and so forth...

Perhaps I should have explained the quote and my statement a bit more. First of all I am well aware that the Liberian case and extraordinary renditions are not identical. What I wanted to point out was the fact that the U.S. post-9/11 policy has set a dangerous precendents that can easily be followed by other nations.

In order to fight international terrorism the current U.S. administration and its legal advisors felt they needed to introduce an unprecedented legal response that goes beyond the confines of ordinary criminal and military law. This "New Paradigm" allows the government to emphasize on detention and prevention of crimes, at the expense of the more traditional notions of due process. This novel (and questionable) legal approach created the legal context in which terrorist suspects could be interrogated, detained, and tried in ways that would not be permissible under U.S. and international laws. The introduction of "unlawfull combatants", secret detention centers, Gitmo and the extraordinary rendition program are all elements of this "New Paradigm".

Many experts, like State Department' legal advisors William Taft IV, have pointed out that the questionable legal basis of the anti-terrorism policy could set dangerous precedents. What happened to Hassan Bility (an U.S. citizen) in Liberia is just that. Here we have an innocent journalist and human rights activist who has been unrightfully detained and held incommunicado for six months. The Liberian government, headed by Charles Taylor, justified this action by upholding the same legal standards and using the same argumentation that the U.S. is using to detain terrorist suspects and "illegal combatants". In this context you should place my comment about "the pot calling the kettle black". The U.S. is urging Liberia to follow the rule of law, but at the same time the U.S. administration and intelligence agencies are more than willing to by-pass the law themselves in their fight against terrorism. Here we see the danger when the leader of the Western world is willing to change the international rules in order to fit its own needs.

Unfortunately Liberia is not the only country that follows the dangerous precedent the U.S. has created:

Russia
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Uzbekistan
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Indonesia
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India
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Georgia
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Egypt
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China
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P.S. I hope this explanation has taken away any confusion Mrs. P.

I do not care how much CNN persons in Europe watch, or how many times they've gone on holiday to the US, no, they really don't understand our government. You really have to live here. In fact, our media--news, movies, TV, papers--so distort American culture that the more you, as a foreign observer, are exposed to these sources, the more you will mis-understand America and Americans. There are lots of Americans who have a very limited academic understanding of it, too, but if you live here for many years and literally adopt our culture, you may begin to understand something like the Second Amendment, for example. If not, you just won't. That is my opinion.

As far as foreigners knowing more about us than vice-versa, I would agree. I think most Americans still are isolationist at heart--our govt and multinational corps may not be, but the typical citizen is.

As far as your understanding govt so well, I graduated in political science and economics at Stanford; have worked for the Federal govt; and am a practicing atty. I know a little about it, too, and I think I am correct.




The Bush admin has given a number of reasons for being in Iraq--WMDs, Saddam's oppression, both internal and external, stopping al Qaeda relative to a supposed link to Saddam's govt, the desire to build a democracy in the Muslim world, etc.

I believe the US invaded for one primary reason--In 2000, Saddam began accepting the Euro for oil payments. As the US currency is propped up in great part by the demand for dollars to pay for OPEC oil, the Bush admin reached out and touched Saddam to tell Iraq and the rest of OPEC that they will continue to use US dollars as the medium for exchange. We want a presence there to make sure we are able to continue influencing this issue.

Is the war, therefore, right or wrong? I cannot say, but I do know a sitting president is not going to stand idly by and let the US dollar drop overnight 30 or 40% in relative value because of a decline in petrodollar "bounce".

As far as I am concerned, I was lukewarm at best about the war--Okay, so long as it wasn't too expensive and made too much of a mess, but I thought it overly aggressive considering Iraq had not attacked another nation, like it did in Gulf I. I was not aware of the petrodollar issue when the war started, but am now, and frankly, it is the only justifcation that fits the facts.

In any event, we are there now, and as Colin Powell said, "You break it, you bought it."

Yes a very specific practice moif and “alleged” torture. Do you have proof they were all tortured? How about proof 10% were tortured? 1%??

The “practice” is used to take the killers off the street regardless of where that street is and it woks. And how can we know anything with “full assurance”? What we do know with very “full assurance” is we are fighting and enemy that makes a mockery of not just the rules of war but of humanity as well. And if working with foreign intel services and taking them where they are and sending them where we can best get info works its ok with me.

And you just go right on ignoring what THEY are doing moif. But IMO we are all done “sucking it up”.

Ted, you do understand that these detainees are being rendered to countries that are all known for wide scale abuse of human rights? Countries that have no problem whatsoever in using torture techniques during interrogations. Although everything is done in utmost secrecy, it is still very credible to believe that these suspects have undergone brutal treatment during their stay in Syria, Uzbekistan, Saudi-Arabia and Egypt for example. I dare to say that in all probability all these detainees have been brutalized.


Again, please proove that this policy works. The information I could gather so far indicates that this whole program of extradordinary rendition in combination with the detainement in camps like Gitmo has only caused enormous problems. In a practical, moral, ethical and legal way.



So it is fine by you that these people, who are almost never charged with any crime, are all shipped to countries that are well known for their disrespect for human rights? Besides that it has already been established that the information gathered through the rendition progran often turned out to be misinformation.
The case of Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi is a good example of this:
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I have posted articles that say it does work and you can bet we don’t spend millions and risk lives for nothing. What would you have us do with captured terrorists like the ones at GITMO – let them go? I am disappointed they have not been tried and executed – is this what you want too?



Again if torture does not work then they are not doing it and if the program did not work we would not continue it. We are fighting a stateless enemy that will use any means to kill us. To think we are going to allow them to be free in any part of the world is ludicrous. In no war in history have we faced a more brutal enemy bent on the murder of civilians. I trust the government and all the intel services in the world to make few mistakes in picking people up.



Certainly this man was a wanted terrorist. The fact that he lied and later recanted does not mean it would have been better to leave him on the street does it? And you know as well as I that we did not go to war over false testimony, or “yellow cake” etc.