My Rendition

Why does George W say these things? He was reported yesterday, claiming: The United States does not secretly move terrorism suspects to foreign countries that torture to get information.

I guess it is for home consumption, because few people outside the US believe it. But even for home consumption, he must know by now that these kind of statements will come back to bite him on the bum.

He made the same claims about torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. They were bad enough; little wonder he is now denying ‘rendition’wich is far more sinister than earlier revelations.

The question is, what shape will a brutalised democracy take at the hands of those willing to ignore its fundaments, to adopt authoritarian methods, in the supposed effort to protect it? You can't simply put the principles of our democracies 'on the shelf' for the time being, then roll them out when all is safe. All will never be safe for the ambitious, avaricious politicians.

Condoleezza Rice is a little more direct, at least while in Europe, in defending the ‘justifiable’ practice of rendition, at least so far as she will define it. That is as the covert capture and transfer of terrorism suspects without the involvement of a court.

I think the CIA should be prosecuted for taking perfectly good words and assigning them to horrendous operations. It’s a form of sanitizing and deception which has long been recognised around the planet. The modified language invariably signals a problem; it also screws up perfectly good language. But I digress…

Let’s start with a few fact about the practice:

* It was first authorised under President Bill Clinton in the mid-1990s to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism and overcome CIA difficulties in obtaining a conviction against suspects.

* It was expanded hugely under President George Bush, who gave the CIA sweeping new powers after the September 11 attacks.

Since then the staff of the Counter-Terrorist Centre, the CIA branch that oversees renditions, is reported to have quadrupled to more than 1000 people.

* More than 100 more people have disappeared or been "rendered" in the past few years, in addition to the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay.

* The most common destinations are Egypt and Jordan, which are known to have tortured prisoners.

I have a sneaking respect for Condoleezza Rice, though I’m not sure how far I would trust the emotion. Still, she’s out there, super salesman for what is proving to be a super lemon.

Trying to justify the unjustifiable, she says: ''The United States, and those countries that share the commitment to defend their citizens, will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists. Sometimes these efforts are misunderstood."

Are they? For a country which speaks of liberty, of rule of law, of innocence until proven guilty, there isn’t much to misunderstand. Pre-emptive justice is dangerous territory. It must presume guilt which sadly, many Americans appear ready to do.

To allow the diminishing of these basic standards to fight unseen enemies invariably makes lowering the standards against ordinary citizens easier. If you can justify ignoring basic principles abroad, even the ordinary citizen will soon believe it can be justified at home. But then it already is, isn’t it.