{"id":6877,"date":"2009-02-02T11:41:23","date_gmt":"2009-02-02T19:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bradblog.com\/?p=6877"},"modified":"2009-02-02T13:45:53","modified_gmt":"2009-02-02T21:45:53","slug":"la-times-punked-obama-not-continuing-bush-extraordinary-rendition-program","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/?p=6877","title":{"rendered":"LA Times ‘Punked’: Obama NOT Continuing Bush ‘Extraordinary Rendition’ Program"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Scott Horton at Harper’s<\/i>…<\/a><\/p>\n

In a breathless piece of reporting in the Sunday Los Angeles Times<\/i>,<\/a> we are told that Barack Obama “left intact”\u009d a “controversial counter-terrorism tool”\u009d called renditions. Moreover, the Times<\/i> states, quoting unnamed “current and former U.S. intelligence figures,”\u009d Obama may actually be planning to expand the program. The report notes the existence of a European Parliament report condemning the practice, but states “the Obama Administration appears to have determined that the rendition program was one component of the Bush Administration’s war on terrorism that it could not afford to discard.”\u009d<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Times<\/i> just got punked.<\/div>\n

Horton — who testified as an expert witness for the European Parliament report mentioned — says the paper conflated the controversial Bush program, which often included torture and long-term abduction into secret CIA-run prisons in foreign countries, and a significantly less nefarious type of rendition, in use since the early 90’s, and perhaps even during the Reagan era.<\/p>\n

He explains the difference between the pre-Dubya “renditions program”, which an Executive Order from Obama<\/a> has not<\/i> ended, versus Dubya’s “extraordinary renditions<\/i> program” which Obama has<\/i> outlawed (despite media reports over the last several days to the contrary), thusly…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

There are two fundamental distinctions between the programs. The extraordinary renditions program involved the operation of long-term detention facilities either by the CIA or by a cooperating host government together with the CIA, in which prisoners were held outside of the criminal justice system<\/i> and otherwise unaccountable under law<\/i> for extended periods of time. A central feature of this program was rendition to torture<\/i>, namely that the prisoner was turned over to cooperating foreign governments with the full understanding that those governments would apply techniques that even the Bush Administration considers to be torture. This practice is a felony under current U.S. law, but was made a centerpiece of Bush counterterrorism policy.<\/p>\n

The earlier renditions program regularly involved snatching and removing targets for purposes of bringing them to justice by delivering them to a criminal justice system. It did not involve the operation of long-term detention facilities and it did not involve torture.<\/p><\/div>\n

We’re shocked — shocked<\/i> — that the rightwing Tribune Media’s LA Times<\/i> could have been so misleading and inaccurate. Bill O’Reilly tells us constantly how “liberal” they are, so this must be some kind of aberrant editing error, no doubt.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong><\/em> Andrew Sullivan has more<\/a> on how the Times<\/em> got “rolled” by the Right. And Washington Monthly<\/i> explains, in some detail, what Obama’s Executive Order doesn’t<\/i> allow (despite the LA Times’<\/em> irresponsible reporting to the contrary.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Scott Horton at Harper’s… In a breathless piece of reporting in the Sunday Los Angeles Times, we are told that Barack Obama “left intact”\u009d a “controversial counter-terrorism tool”\u009d called renditions. Moreover, the Times states, quoting unnamed “current and former U.S. intelligence figures,”\u009d Obama may actually be planning to expand the program. The report notes […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ep_exclude_from_search":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[239,405,55,188,366,100],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-6877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-barack-obama","category-bush-legacy","category-cia","category-mainstream-media-failure","category-torture","category-war-on-terror"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6877"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bradblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=6877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}