While perusing Richard Clarke’s Against all Enemies, Tigerhawk ran across this eye-opening passage:
Snatches, or more properly “extraordinary renditions,” were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government…. The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, “That’s a no-brainer. Of course it’s a violation of international law, that’s why it’s a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.” (pp. 143-144)
[my emphasis]
Wow. So is it safe to say that Al Gore supports rendition? After all, the Clinton administration (which Gore, I’m told, practically invented) rendered plenty of folk to Egypt, for instance.
Well, not so fast. Here’s the new Al Gore, from a speech at NYU in March of 2004:
[…] The soldiers who are accused of committing these atrocities are, of course, responsible for their own actions and if found guilty, must be severely and appropriately punished. But they are not the ones primarily responsible for the disgrace that has been brought upon the United States of America.
Private Lynndie England did not make the decision that the United States would not observe the Geneva Convention. Specialist Charles Graner was not the one who approved a policy of establishing an American Gulag of dark rooms with naked prisoners to be “stressed” and even – we must use the word – tortured – to force them to say things that legal procedures might not induce them to say.
These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the President’s own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject […]
Indeed, the secrecy of the program indicates an understanding that the regular military culture and mores would not support these activities and neither would the American public or the world community. Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors.
[My emphasis]
I guess it’s possible Tipper’s open-mouthed kiss sucked the sauciness right out of Al—or that Naomi Wolf is somewhere working on yet another rebranding of the one-time alpha male in earthtones (“remember, Al: research shows that the soccer mom demographic absolutely hates the rendition, so you want to hit that point as often as possible”)—but my guess is that Gore has switched his position out of political expediency.
Would his position have switched were he President after 911? Highly doubtful. But such is the state of the modern Democratic party that it’s high profile players are willing to say just about anything to attack the President and his prosecution of the War on Terror.
Asks Tigerhawk,
Al Gore supported rendition before al Qaeda had declared war on the United States and hung its battle flag on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the African embassies, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Bali disco, the Madrid trains, and the United Nations. But after those defeats, Al Gore changed his mind. Has any reporter for any major news organization bothered to ask Gore to explain his reasoning?
—which of course begs the question, insofar as it assumes a rational actor.
And I ain’t yet sold on that bit.
(h/t Terry Hastings)
BECAUSE OF THE HYPOCRISY!
Jeff, Jeff, Jeff.
Don’t you understand yet? The Democrats are the good guys. Whatever they say or do comes from a place of moral, intellectual, and spiritual perfection. They have nothing to answer for because they’re never ever wrong.
Watchest thou The West Wing and Commander in Chief, go thou forth learned and enlightened.
And Happy Thanksgiving. I give thanks for this blog.
This can all be pretty simply explained. Per Steyn, Gore has simply had few microchips updated along with a new, sleeker, AlGORhythm software 5.0 (TM) enhancement.
Some are more equal than others.
Jeff, you hit on something serious here – lots of the dems are NOT rational actors, but rationalizers. And we’re all in danger because of that fact…
Point of order Tom W.
This should read: They have nothing to answer for because there is no such thing as wrong.
Since everything is relative, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter, and all that, you have no right to judge.
Ah, but there is. Republicans, and especially conservatives, and especially especially “neocons” are always wrong.
The key to understanding moral relativism is that it isn’t a denial of good and evil, it’s merely a denial that actions are good or evil. Good and evil are terms reserved for actors.
This comes from the Marxist idea of opression. In Marxism, there are 2 groups of people: one group is the oppressors, who are always wrong, and the oppressed, who are always right. Even when they perform the same identical acts, the oppressors are always evil and the oppressed are always justified.
Most of what passes for leftist thought nowadays is a mutated form of Marxism. Leftism has inhaled so much of Marxist thought that even they don’t understand how much they depend on it.
This is old news.
For her Feb. 2005 New Yorker article “Outsourcing Torture: The secret history of America’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program,” Jane Mayer interviewed C.I.A. counter-terrorism expert-turned-Bush-basher Michael Scheuer:
If you say so. I reposted the above in Tigerhawk’s comments. See what his readers have to say.
You can’t kill him, either,†he added.
You can’t?
Snatches, or more properly “extraordinary renditions,†were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government..
[…]
Another implicit acknowledgement of violations of accepted standards of behavior is the process of farming out prisoners to countries less averse to torture and giving assignments to private contractors.
Next up for discussion on Protein Wisdom – the difference between imports and exports, and why only elitist Democrats say there is one.
Tigerhawk’s response to the very same inference raised here by Obstetrician in a time of back alley abortions:
The Clinton administration rendered plenty of people to foreign countries, including particularly Egypt (see the linked Wikipedia entry, which (with all the usual caveats) is fairly fact-filled on the history of rendition in the 1990s). However, I do not know whether it did so prior to 1993, which is the year of the conversation related by Richard Clarke. Still, we can guess that the Clinton administration’s renderings to the Egyptian secret police were not done over Al Gore’s objections. If so, he should say as much so we understand the nuances in his position.
Why is algore talking to us anyway, since according to that nice graph in his book, Earth in the Balance, we all went extinct in the Year 2000 anyway?
Al Gore was so insulated from reality in 2000, he never considered that he wouldn’t win in a landslide. When he didn’t, I truly believe the man snapped and that he has been in a mental meltdown ever since. It is too bad because outside politics, he is a nice guy. I met him and Tipper when his son was hurt in Baltimore many years ago and I was working for a Member of Congress from Maryland and asked to be the surrogate token Republican sympathy person on the local level. (Yuck that sounds terrible doesn’t it?)
The Clinton administration rendered plenty of people to foreign countries, including particularly Egypt (see the linked Wikipedia entry, which (with all the usual caveats) is fairly fact-filled on the history of rendition in the 1990s).
Mayhap.
That still doesn’t deal with the fact that the author of this piece, in his frenzy to bash Gore, has confused “renditions” in the sense of kidnapping people overseas in order to transfer them to American jurispudence with “renditions” in the sense of taking people from American jurispudence and giving them to proxies for torture too illegal to do on American soil.
Are you sure Al isn’t simply advocating a little grabass?
Sure, that would qualify as torture in some circles, but….
Fortunately, “torture too illegal to do on American soil” will soon become an extinct catagory, and there will be no need for renditions in the second sense. America, the great service economy, should have no problems developing a full service human mutilation capability.
…Mayhaps.
Which doesn’t change the fact that the Clinton administration rendered people to foreign countries known to get a little rough in their interrogations.
And I don’t think Tigerhawk confused things. But you can ask him if you’d like.
And I don’t think Tigerhawk confused things.
I suggest a remedial reading course. Ask at your local library if you don’t know where to find one.
You know, it’s interesting that you chose today to talk about Al Gore being willing to break international law. I haven’t seen a whisper on this site about the story on George Bush having to be persuaded out of bombing Al Jazeera.
Having mentioned this, I look forward to the comments that will ensure along the lines that freedom of the press is only okay if the press agrees with George Bush.
I think you should change your name to Pretentious in a time of Rationalization. We would know it was still you.
Grecian Formula in a time of Just For Men Gel —
I’m not paying for the upkeep of this site so I can listen to personal attacks from anonymous pissants like you.
I’m also not responsible for writing on every story that you think I should write on.
Want my opinion on Bush’s interest in bombing al Jazeera?
1) It didn’t happen
2) It was a reasonable thing to ponder, as they are the information arm of al-Qaeda.
3) I don’t much care about the story because there’s no real story there (see 1).
Now, if you’d like to continue attacking me personally, get a blog of your own and begin doing it there.
Squiggler, outside of the porn biz Jenna Jameson is hell of a cook and plays a mean game of scrabble. But that’s not what history will remember her for, for a reason.
Al Gore is perhaps the most power hungry pol Washington’s seen in a generation. Or at least has the biggest sense of entitlement I can recall. Bob Dole’s recounting of Gore’s shameless vote for tv time dealings over the Gulf War invasion sums up his character for me, anectdotes to the contrary notwithstanding.
And Phoenician, your point is important, and this is not a “gotcha” moment in that sense. But it does paint two drastically different pictures of the man, one who’s a little, say, cavalier about international law and treatment of terrorists and one who calls Abu Ghraib an “American gulag.” Somebody ought to snatch his ass back to Stalin’s gulags and let him see how apt the comparison is.
I’m not paying for the upkeep of this site so I can listen to personal attacks from anonymous pissants like you.
What personal attack? There’s nothing wrong with remedial reading courses, or the need to take them – we resource them all the time. If you honestly do not think Tigerhawk confused the two despite the bits I bolded in the extract, then you have a problem reading. That isn’t a sin.
2) It was a reasonable thing to ponder, as they are the information arm of al-Qaeda.
This will be news to the Emir of Qatar. Do you have any proof of this accusation, apart from the fact that they refer to propaganda from Al Qaeda as well as the US?
This story may help.
“Although Qatar is one of the smallest states in the world, with a population of only 690,000, its foreign ministry is constantly buzzing with activity. Consider what it has had to contend with over the last month: In April, Libya abruptly withdraw its ambassador after the emirate’s state-funded Al-Jazeera satellite television station broadcast an interview with a Libyan opposition figure. Shortly thereafter, the Iraqi government lodged a complaint with Qatari officials when Al-Jazeera reported the enormous expenses of Saddam Hussein’s lavish April 28 birthday celebration. On May 2, Tunisia’s ambassador complained to Qatar’s foreign ministry about a program on Al-Jazeera that accused his government of human rights violations.1 A week later, the Iranian daily Jomhuri-ye Eslami, a conservative newspaper aligned with Ayatollah Khamenei, accused the station of “attributing false news to the esteemed leader of the revolution” after it reported that Khamenei favored the annulment of Iran’s February parliamentary elections.”
So they’ve pissed off Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, Iran – and now the US.
Sounds to me like a news network doing its job.
But it does paint two drastically different pictures of the man, one who’s a little, say, cavalier about international law and treatment of terrorists and one who calls Abu Ghraib an “American gulag.†Somebody ought to snatch his ass back to Stalin’s gulags and let him see how apt the comparison is.
The first sense of rendition refers to people for whom there is good evidence that they are Bad Guys, who would otherwise escape justice, being bought under American justice. The second sense refers to a whole bunch of people, many of which are innocent, who are already in American custody, being sent out specifically for reasons too illegal to deal with in America. Are you telling me that you really see no difference between bringing someone into the sway of American law and alienating them from American law?
And Al Gore wouldn’t need to have his ass snatched to one of Stalin’s gulags – the CIA has rented some of them in Eastern Europe for their own purposes. There’s nothing, legally, to stop Al Gore, an American citizen, being picked up without a warrant, shipped off to these gulags, and tortured without appeal.
I’m not paying for the upkeep of this site so I can listen to personal attacks from anonymous pissants like you.
So, ignore me. Either I’m posting complete crap which can be ignored, and wasting my time, or I’m bringing information to the table that you and your commentators would not otherwise consider. I suspect the marginal cost to you of my contributions is considerably less than the information I add to the conversation – and the real reason for your threats is that you don’t want to deal with that information.
You’re pissed off at me not because I lie, but because I tell the truth. Feel free to ignore me if you disagree – or ban me if you can’t handle it. Hell, I’ll be more than happy to stop participating here and report back to the liberal blogs that Jeff Goldstein simply couldn’t handle it. You’ve done better than most wingnut sites so far.
I’m also not responsible for writing on every story that you think I should write on.
True enough. Isn’t it good I’m able to provide links so you don’t have to waste your time?
Stopped reading that after “what personal attack?”
Mmm. Sorry about posting it twice – egotistical as I am, that should be put down to computer glitches and stupidity rather than a desire to see my words twice.
Apologies in advance for commenting here, rather than my own blog—I only have my Blackberry this evening, and the comments field works here, but not there.
Anyhoo, a couple of points. First, I do not doubt that there have been many more renditions since September 11 than before. That is not surprising, since we only really woke up to the degree of al Qaeda’s threat after that fateful day. We are hunting bad guys much more aggressively than we were in Clinton’s day, and that makes for more renditions.
Second, the point is less to snark ugly on Gore than it is to observe that the “ethics” underlying many of the criticisms of the Bush administration are more than a little situational.
Third, Michael Scheuer may be correct in his subtle distinctions, or he may not be. We do know, however, that he and Richard Clarke dislike each other almost as much as they both dislike the Bush administration. In particular, scheuer is a virtual spokesman for at least a certain faction within the CIA, while Clarke thinks the CIA is filled with weenies.
WE HAVE IT ON RECORD! WE HAVE IT ON RECORD!
Why do so many progressives use nics like “Truth,” “Logic,” “Enlightened,” “Spirituality,” “Cro-Magnon in a World of Neanderthals,” “Smartest Guy in the Room,” “Bush Lied,” etc., while conservatives have nics like “Hous bin Pharteen,” “the frollicking mole,” “Spiny Norman,” “tongueboy,” “Village Idiot’s Apprentice,” “Michael Moore’s Coffin,” and “The Cryogenically Frozen Head of Yassir Arafat”?
I think I can figure out which group would be more fun to hang out with in a bar.
A couple more points in response to the comment quoting Michael Scheuer:
First, I know it is “old news.” I was quoting a best-selling book published 18 months ago. How could it not be?
Second, it is hardly older than the claim that Bush “lied” to justify Iraq, and yet that story is of unaccountably enduring fascination for the press. I merely stumbled across this example of Al Gore’s previous willingness to disregard the law back before we understood what a threat al Qaeda was, and thought it interesting as a reminder that at least some of the attacks on Bush’s policies may have little to do with the policies per se.
Third, Scheuer’s claim that 90’s era renditions all followed criminal convictions in absentia tells us nothing we didn’t know—that the Clinton administration pursued al Qaeda as an exercise in law enforcement. The Bush administrtation has, I think, quite clearly rejected that model, especially for non-citizens. Talk about your “old news.”
That having been said, if Bush’s opponents today are hanging their defense of pre-Bush renditions on convictions in absentia, may I suggest that that isn’t exactly the most robust procedure for proving guilt.
I do agree, however, with those critics of Bush policy that argue that we need an endgame of some sort. I don’t really care if there are a few dozen innocent people who mistakenly spend a few years in Gitmo—the numbers are trivial compared to the errors of our own prison system—but we still need a plan for dealing with them short of locking them up “until the end of the war.” The difference between me and the liberals is that I just view the innocents in Gitmo as another form of collateral damage that would have been avoided if our enemies didn’t use civilians as camouflage or a shield.
Sorry about posting it twice – egotistical as I am
WE HAVE IT ON RECORD! WE HAVE IT ON RECORD!
[url=”http://www.golyr.de/songtext_283115.htm”]Well, it ain’t braggin’ if it’s true
Yes sir, yes sir
It ain’t braggin’ if it’s true [/url]
Al Gore is mentally challenged. If you don’t believe me, turn down the sound next time you see him talking on TV. It is absolutely grotesque.
“I haven’t seen a whisper on this site about the story on George Bush having to be persuaded out of bombing Al Jazeera.”
PiatoR,
And I suppose you think the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy during “Clinton’s war” was actually accidental? I mean, just because they were giving the Serbs satellite and other real time information doesn’t mean that the bombing wasn’t an accident, does it?
And why shouldn’t a sane person think about bombing the enemy’s propaganda arm?
How old are you? 14?
I’m telling you, he makes a lot more sense when you realize that he isn’t rooting for us or on our side, literally.
Are you, mate?
Lost Dog,
Having access to a 14 year old…well, he turns 14 in early December, I asked him if he thought an enemies propaganda arm was a legitimate target. “You mean like Gobbels? Yeah, that’s legitimate.”
So even some 14 year olds get it.
Turing word “truth.” No fucking way.
Are you, mate?
To be clear, that’s directed towards Phoenician pal, not you Lost_Dog.
Yeah, I’m sure the CIA under Clinton never ever rendered someone to a bad, bad country. Nope. They were clean as a whistle.
They were just acting like policement, capturing people in third countries (ILLEGAL?) to bring them back to the USA for trial.
Of course, Scheurer will gladly open his offices so we can check that they never simply transferred someone to Jordan or Egypt.
Also, why the stink about Noreiga if it’s cool to snatch as long as they get a trial? Didn’t the libs oppose that as well?
“To be clear, that’s directed towards Phoenician pal, not you Lost_Dog.”
So much for that whole typo thing, hah.
You’re right, some reporter should ask the question.
You know who would ask the question? Jeff Gannon, that’s who.
Not only are enemy propaganda outlets legitimate targets in wartime, but two of the twenty-four defendents in the first Nuremberg trial were media people. One was acquitted; the other executed.
The fact that PITR seems to think that attacks on media outlets are off the table speaks of PITR’s profound ignorance of history.
Has he ever done that before?
Oh wait, yeah, he did. The issue was abortion.
And why shouldn’t a sane person think about bombing the enemy’s propaganda arm?
A sane person would realise that an Arab news station being objective does not make it “the enemy’s propaganda arm” – unless you’re engaged in a War On Truth instaed of Terror.
Again, provide proof.
Al-“objective” is a satellite network on Eurobird 11,527 MHZ and others. By destroying this enemy/traitor equipment the USAF Space Command can shorten the war and save lives on both sides.
<objective” is a satellite network on Eurobird 11,527 MHZ and others. By destroying this enemy/traitor equipment the USAF Space Command can shorten the war and save lives on both sides.</i>
George Bush is a space alien sent to destroy mankind. By throwing him into a dungeon, humanity will be saved from being devoured by the Pod People from Sirius.
A more entertaining theory, and with just as much proof.
By the way, here’s an interesting story on WingnutGroupThink.
Here’s an interesting story on canibalism by commie-jihadi commentors.
You missed the link, Noden.
You do it like this – <a href=”http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2005/1122nj1.htm”>”George Bush lied</b> when he said Congress had the same evidence he had, and here’s the proof”. If you really want to be helpful, you can provide a two or three para extract such as:
“Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.” […]
”The Senate Intelligence Committee has asked the White House for the CIA assessment, the PDB of September 21, 2001, and dozens of other PDBs as part of the committee’s ongoing investigation into whether the Bush administration misrepresented intelligence information in the run-up to war with Iraq. The Bush administration has refused to turn over these documents.”
“Indeed, the existence of the September 21 PDB was not disclosed to the Intelligence Committee until the summer of 2004, according to congressional sources. Both Republicans and Democrats requested then that it be turned over. The administration has refused to provide it, even on a classified basis, and won’t say anything more about it other than to acknowledge that it exists.”
I hope that helps.
>You missed the link
There is no link, the subject you flee from is the fate of your favorite channel. Al-Jihad is of and by the enemy, when the war is done there will be no Al-Jazera, why should we wait to destroy evil?
There is no link, the subject you flee from is the fate of your favorite channel. Al-Jihad is of and by the enemy, when the war is done there will be no Al-Jazera, why should we wait to destroy evil?
I was under the impression that murdering civilians *was* evil, whether done by Al Qaeda or by the US. I guess I’m not as much a moral relativist as you.
I suspect Bush was JOKING if he said it at all.
Though I guess there could have been some “secret” reason, just like I found the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade to be a bit funky.
Oh, come on man – rendition is foul and base and evil and has dark Nazi-like overtones. It makes you not much better than Saddam or the Communists were with respect to this particular subject.
Many subjects actually – if we look at the use of WP by both Saddam and the US, if we look at the use of torture … the list goes on.
Terrorist killers, jihad funders, commie coconspiritors, and terrorist organizers are soldiers, they use their deception to hide as if they were civilians. Justice and victory require that they surrender or die.
McGehee  Gore has switched pretty much every position he ever had for an election edge, from his family appointment to Congress to his Senatorial run to his current statuse as Cracker Jeremiah…