In 'Rendition' Realities By David Ignatius, on Wednesday, March 9,
2005; Page A21 he writes:

"Torture is immoral and illegal, and the refusal to allow cruel
interrogation techniques is one measure of a civilized society. But
this ironclad moral argument doesn't necessarily apply to the
practice known as 'extraordinary rendition.'"

This is the thesis of his essay. That somehow "extraordinary
rendition" does not violate the strict moral code that holds torture
to be barbarous and inhuman because why? He goes on:

"Rendition is the CIA's antiseptic term for its practice of sending
captured terrorist suspects to other countries for interrogation.
Because some of those countries torture prisoners -- and because some
of the suspected terrorists "rendered" by the CIA say they were in
fact tortured -- the debate has tended to lump rendition and torture
together. The implication is that the CIA is sending people to Egypt,
Jordan or other Middle Eastern countries because they can be tortured
there and coerced into providing information they wouldn't give up
otherwise."

There is a reason that rendition and torture get lumped together.
Many of the reports allege that the CIA specifically used rendition
in order to perform interrogations using coercion and intense
psychological pressure -- and used the threat of rendition in order
to try to accomplish a similar result.

David then pops out the standard argument that we've been hearing
from interrogators connected with the CIA for years:

"The problem with this argument is that it assumes that the CIA
believes that torture works. But in 30 years of writing about
intelligence, I've never encountered a spook who didn't realize that
torture is usually counterproductive. Professional intelligence
officers know that prisoners will confess to anything under intense
pain. Information obtained through torture thus tends to be
unreliable, in addition to being immoral."

If the CIA doesn't believe that torture gets useful information, then
why "soften up" inmates, or use any of it's methods on prisoners? Why
the big fuss about rendition? I bought this line of defense for
years, until I realized that there is another 'layer' to the torture
issue than the layer of 'merely' extracting information. At any rate
David cites one of the many examples that "prove" that torture is an
unreliable effort and are usually cited as reasons the "professional"
CIA doesn't support it's use:

"The unreliability of torture as an interrogation technique was
conveyed powerfully by Jane Mayer in an article in the New Yorker
last month. She cited the case of a Syrian-born terrorist suspect
named Maher Arar, who was seized at New York's John F. Kennedy
Airport in September 2002 as he was traveling back to his home in
Canada. He was then sent to Syria under the CIA's program
of "extraordinary rendition" and, by his account, whipped repeatedly
on the hands with two-inch-thick electrical cables."

"'Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually
confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say,' wrote Mayer.
She quoted Arar as explaining his false confession this way: 'You
just give up. You become like an animal.' The Syrians eventually
concluded that Arar was innocent. He was released without charges."

David then goes on to explain the "reason" the CIA officials he
talked to advocate rendition anyway:

"Such stories rightly shock the conscience, and they make you wonder
how anyone could ever advocate rendition. But in conversations over
the past several years with senior CIA officials and the heads of
several Arab intelligence services, I've heard explanations for why
the practice is used. These arguments for rendition at least ought to
be understood as Congress and the public struggle with the moral
issues involved."

He quotes an intelligence official:

"What's gained by transferring a prisoner to his home country for
interrogation is emotional leverage, according to Arab and American
intelligence chiefs. A hardened al Qaeda member often can't be
physically coerced into giving up information, no matter how nasty
the interrogator. But he may do so if confronted by, say, his mother,
father, brother or sister. That family contact is possible if he's
near home; it's impossible if he's in an orange jump suit and
warehoused at Guantanamo Bay."

Wait a minute. This sounds plausible. But there is also a horrific
undercurrent to this message. If an Al Qaeda member is to
be "confronted" by family members -- who may believe in his
underlying philosophy. How are those family members to be induced to
cooperate with authorities? Do the host governments threaten their
arrest as well? Does he get to watch them being tortured as well?
Maybe in the hands of scrupulous CIA officials the pressure is
all "nice-nice" -- "Oh Son how could you do that." But this argument
doesn't imply "niceness" it implies ruthless ends justify the means
thinking. Yes, "string up Mom and the Son will talk."

"I asked the head of an Arab intelligence service once about the
widespread belief in his country that prisoners were tortured. People
sometimes referred to his headquarters as the "fingernail factory," I
said, because they assumed that vicious methods were used, such as
ripping out prisoners' nails. This official insisted that torture
didn't work. He cited cases in which prisoners had been broken
through softer and more clever measures -- applying family pressure
or, in one remarkable case, ignoring a defiant, self-important
prisoner until he all but demanded to be questioned."

Of course he's going to do this. He sounds just like old Gletkin as
quoted during the extensive interrogations between him and poor
Rubishov in "A Darkness at Noon." Breaking prisoners often requires
no more than leaving them in a room with no audio or visual stimulus,
or days of no sleep. Yes "ve haf sophisticated vays to get what we
want from you." And one of the most powerful tools is the complete
and unappealable power of the inquisitor over a prisoner. If he/she
is in the complete hands of an interrogator with no hope of appeal
then a sense of hopelessness sets in and the person can be eventually
made to do almost anything. Just as in the example cited.

And Yes as David cites:

"The head of another major Arab intelligence service explained how
his men cracked an al Qaeda suspect who had refused to talk to the
Americans; their main "weapon," he said, was that they prayed five
times a day in the man's presence."

Telling these stories doesn't obviate the next fact:

"These "nice" interrogation stories don't change the fact that
hideous methods have been used in rendition cases. And in some
instances, the CIA should have known that torture was likely -- and
stopped it. That's wrong; no agency of the U.S. government should
ever turn a blind eye to torture. But I think you can oppose torture
and still find circumstances where rendition might be appropriate."

I submit, that based on the way such people are promoted after
such "mistakes" they knew full well that torture was likely. The
other reason that the CIA pushes torture is that it's not just aimed
at the Terrorist. The terrorist or agent is trained to endure torture
and likely to spill falsehood when put under pressure. It's the
innocents who torture targets. It's purpose is to get the father of
the terrorist to spill his guts, to get the brother to turn on his
brother, and to terrorize whole populations into keeping their mouths
shut and not challenging the authorities. The CIA knows this,
the "friendly" torturers of the host intelligence services know this.
And that is why they torture these guys.

"Before you make an easy judgment about rendition, you have to answer
the disturbing question put to me by a former CIA official: Suppose
the FBI had captured Mohamed Atta before Sept. 11, 2001. Under U.S.
legal rules at the time, the man who plotted the airplane suicide
attacks probably could not have been held or interrogated in the
United States. Would it have made sense to "render" Atta to a place
where he could have been interrogated in a way that might have
prevented Sept. 11? That's not a simple question for me to answer,
even as I share the conviction that torture is always and everywhere
wrong."

If the US had had evidence that he'd done something wrong, they could
have held him as a material witness. More importantly I understand
that all of these guys were violating their passports and Visas so
they had authority to hold him for immigrations violations. I think
this is and was a straw argument because as a Saudi Citizen they
already had authority to deport him, which would have been tantamount
to rendering him to the Saudis.

The real question is whether the CIA is serious about what it claims
it does in these cases. Does it really even try to "watch" over
prisoners to prevent violent interrogations? Is it really serious
about upholding the principles of civil liberties that we cherish so
much at home -- abroad? The issue isn't really whether the CIA is
deporting people for questioning, but how they are doing it and what
is being done to those people and how much responsibility the CIA
bears for what happens to them.

Chris