pro-torture left – Moe Lane

So, they used rendition on Barader?

Barader was seized in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and US intelligence forces, according to US government officials quoted in the New York Times. Mullah Barader has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with US and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials. Though Barack Obama has banned US agencies from using forms of torture such as waterboarding, Pakistani questioning techniques are frequently brutal.

Via Ann Althouse, via Instapundit.

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, I voted for the other guy.

Crossposted to RedState.

US negotiating to reoccupy Uzbek air base?

You know, Uzbekistan. Where they BOIL PEOPLE ALIVE.

Not being content to embrace and expand a program of deniable third-party torture as a viable counter-terrorism tool, the Obama administration has apparently decided to try to mend relations with the nation of Uzbekistan (H/T: Instapundit):

Sources: US considers Uzbekistan as backup base

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States is considering resuming military cooperation with hardline Uzbekistan as a potential backup plan given the uncertain future of a nearby air base that is a main artery for troops and supplies for the widening Afghanistan war, U.S. officials said Thursday.

Defense officials say they are examining options for supply routes through a semicircle of nations from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf that could be used in place of a strategic air base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

This is, of course, in response to said air base being closed in response to Russian ‘encouragement’… which is in itself in response to the election of a new President of the United States. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, here. Continue reading US negotiating to reoccupy Uzbek air base?

Greenwald, Sullivan’s faux-outrage over rendition.

“‘To cowardice,’ he said, and flung the empty glass against the back wall of the fireplace with a savageness I had never seen in him before.”

The quote is from Spider Robinson’s short story “Unnatural Causes” (found in his first Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon story collection, known as, well, Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon), and we’ll be revisiting it in a moment. But first: pro-torture pro-Obama bloggers Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Sullivan have decided that they are very unhappy about Obama’s decision to maintain the Bush administration’s policy of “asserting a broad “state secrets” privilege to shield from disclosure information related to the CIA’s rendition program.” You may find a link to Greenwald’s table-pounding via Glenn Reynolds, and one to Sullivan’s via Ace of Spades: no offense to either Glenn or Ace, but I’d rather not track the filth that they linked to directly into my nice, clean website.

And it is filth, because if you look at either pro-torture pro-Obama blogger, you’ll see that neither has done anything except pound on the table. And they won’t, either. Their outrage is rather finely tuned. Continue reading Greenwald, Sullivan’s faux-outrage over rendition.

Having chewed off the currently-available meat of Obama’s new rendition policy…

…and having accomplished my primary mission of ensuring that as much of the Online Left as possible is now incapable of saying “I was never told that what I did was wrong” about themselves – I suggest Dissenting Justice for your future reading along these lines. It should be fascinating to watch: I think that this is Professor Darren Hutchinson’s first real experience dealing with progressives who have had their status as the most moral people in the room questioned, and it should be a quite illuminating experience for the guy. Hopefully not too traumatic, though. It’s always… weird… the first time that you encounter somebody who has visibly decided to put you in the Not-person box for your opinions. Fortunately, you get used to it.

(pause)

What a depressing sentence.

The nuance of the pro-torture Left (HRW edition).

Because it’s different when THEY do it, you see.

Good term, Wizbang: I like it. Anyway, via Dissenting Justice (via Instapundit) we can see in miniature the… ah, evolution of the Left’s stance on Obama’s reversion to rendition. Our hypocrites for the day are Human Rights Watch*:

April 7, 2008 to at least January 19, 2009:

The US government should:

·Repudiate the use of rendition to torture as a counterterrorism tactic and permanently discontinue the CIA’s rendition program;

Some time after January 20, 2009:

“Under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “What I heard loud and clear from the president’s order was that they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured — but that designing that system is going to take some time.”

Translation: all that stuff about the need to end rendition? “Oh, that’s just what we call pillow talk, baby, that’s all.”

Moe Lane

PS: Remember. Eastasia. We’ve always been at war with Eastasia. Continue reading The nuance of the pro-torture Left (HRW edition).