alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

October 24, 2006

Why Do They Call It Extraordinary Rendition?

by AltHippo @ 9:16 am. Filed under Bush

Sometimes the simplest questions are the best: (DemocracyNow!)

AMY GOODMAN: Why is it called “extraordinary rendition”?

STEPHEN GREY: Well, it’s extraordinary because of the way that it was transformed from a program that brought people back to justice in the United States to a public trial before a judge and jury to a program that took people to places where they wouldn’t face such justice. So, rendition itself has been around for a long time, in fact since the 1880s, and has always been about, you know, snatching people where you wanted in the world. It’s been legal in U.S. law — and not perhaps in other countries — but in the 1990s they started using it to send people to other countries. So it actually started under President Clinton.

But the difference that occurred after September 11th was that it greatly expanded, but also it was used after that period to send people to places where there weren’t even any charges against them. It was used to take people off the streets that were considered a threat and were sent to countries where they had no connection at all. I mean, Maher Arar, as you know, was a Canadian citizen, was sent to Syria. We’ve got an Egyptian citizen sent to Libya. We’ve got Ethiopian citizens sent to Morocco, really showing how it was used as a method of outsourcing of interrogation, not simply just to imprison people somewhere else.

I remember a time, just a couple of years ago, when if I said I was outraged by this, I would have been in the fringe left. Would you believe that less than two years ago after Kerry conceded the 2004 vote people posted comments on this blog to the effect that America doesn’t share my values? I’m aware that those who commented on my “values” really meant specifics relating to their own byzantine interpretations of the sayings of Jesus of Nazareth, but still, there was a conventional wisdom that the coalition of Fundies, Freepers, and Neocons that made up the Bush base represented Freedom. And, if I disagreed with say, pulling people off the street and taking them to countries so they could be waterboarded, then I hated freedom.

I’m glad to say that some of what E. J. Dionne calls the radical center managed to escape from Planet Bush.

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hip·po·pot·a·mus n. A notion, perhaps distinct from conventional wisdom, that needs to be verified by reality-based scrutiny.

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