Obama Keeps Renditions In the Toolbox
President Obama may be trying to shut down Guantanamo and CIA black sites, but he's decided to make renditions a part of his regime. In case you've repressed it along with other Bush-era nightmares, extraordinary rendition is what the U.S. calls kidnapping someone and sending him to a nasty place to be tortured.
President Obama may be trying to shut down Guantanamo and CIA black sites, but he’s decided to make renditions a part of his regime. In case you’ve repressed it along with other Bush-era nightmares, extraordinary rendition is what the U.S. calls kidnapping someone and sending him to a nasty place to be tortured.
An administration official tells the L.A. Times that they intend to keep it “within certain parameters” in order to make it “an acceptable practice.”
It would be nice to know what that means. Call us crazy, but if you’re going to keep alive a practice associated with a moral low point for the U.S., you should probably be totally transparent about what you intend to do.
WAIT, BEFORE YOU GO…Los Angeles Times:
Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.
Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.
If you're reading this, you probably already know that non-profit, independent journalism is under threat worldwide. Independent news sites are overshadowed by larger heavily funded mainstream media that inundate us with hype and noise that barely scratch the surface. We believe that our readers deserve to know the full story. Truthdig writers bravely dig beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that tells you what’s really happening and who’s rolling up their sleeves to do something about it.
Like you, we believe a well-informed public that doesn’t have blind faith in the status quo can help change the world. Your contribution of as little as $5 monthly or $35 annually will make you a groundbreaking member and lays the foundation of our work.
Since April, at least 69 people have been appointed or transferred to political jobs within the administration with little or no fanfare. A ProPublica investigation reveals who some of them are.
The Obama administration has seen another key player out the door. This time, it's national security adviser James Jones, whom Obama thanked for his "sacrifices" in his announcement in the White House's Rose Garden on Friday. Who's next?
In alleged retaliation for Republican stonewalling, President Barack Obama will bypass the Senate and make recess appointments to 15 high-level administration jobs. For context, George W. Bush made more than 170 such appointments; Bill Clinton made nearly 140.
Could the current climate in Washington, D.C., be discouraging lobbyists from practicing their persuasive trade in and around the White House? Or does the downsizing of their ranks have more to do with the economy than the political zeitgeist on Capitol Hill?
The bad rap that "faith-based initiatives" got during the last administration hasn't kept the new management at the White House from treating its Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships seriously. It has fleshed out the lineup of advisers to a total of 25 with two new recruits.
Here are the five most-read stories of the last seven days, including Chris Hedges on America's moral meltdown and Robert Scheer on the economic incompetents who find easy employment in the Obama administration. Full list after the jump.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.