Ordinary renditions

I have to admit when I read this pearl-clutching story at LAT about Obama continuing secret renditions, I was pretty freaked out that Obama had really sold us a bill of goods. Fortunately, I knew enough to go straight to Cerning for the real story.

Cernig immediately spotted the flaws in the piece. The author failed to read the whole order, or at least failed to mention the pertinent caveats. There's a world of difference between Bush's secret extraordinary renditions and what Obama's order does. But I'll let Cernig explain.

"Illegal Rendition" as practiced by the Bush administration did not involve notifying the IRC, which is why it kicked up a storm in Europe - because it was a crime involving secretly disappearing people into secret prisons. Renditions which include notifying the correct international body, used only for the purpose of getting wanted people before a proper court, and which are fully in compliance with international and domestic law...

That is just normal extra-territorial rendition as practised by the law-abiding world. On this issue, at least, Lefties can sleep easy after all (after they've worried about Obama's war crime of airstrikes indiscriminately killing civilians in Pakistan and his complicity in Bush's torture crimes by apparently ruling out prosecutions of torturers).

What Obama is doing here is not illegal, it's not even unusual and it's not authorizing torture in any manner or form. Scott Horton has more. It's just another case of the major media raising a false alarm.

[More posts daily at The Detroit News.]