Terrorist civil rights

Nicely timed to coincide with Bush's trip to the G8 a Swiss investigator named Dick Marty has broken a story about the CIA prisons in eastern Europe, alleging criminality.

The CIA shot back in defense, no big surprise there. As far as we know there was no former Ambassador involved in this one.

Rendition or secret prison stories are common but almost all of them display a lack of background on the program, for obvious reasons I think. Those who wish to understand the issue (including the MSM) need to take a minute and and read this interview conducted by Der Speigel with Michael Scheuer, the father of rendition who developed it at the behest of Bill Clinton in the mid 90s:

Who invented the "extraordinary renditions" system?

Michael Scheuer: President Clinton, his security counsellor Sandy Berger and his terrorism counsellor Richard Clarke instructed the CIA in autumn 1995 to destroy Al-Qaida. We asked the president what we should do with the arrested persons? Clinton replied that this was our problem. The CIA indicated that they are not jailors. It was then suggested we find any solution whatsoever to this problem. And this is what we did, we established a procedure and I myself was part of this working group. We concentrated on those members of Al-Qaida who were wanted by the police in their respective countries of origin or those who had already been convicted during their absence.

But it gets better:

Why would countries wish to cooperate with you on their own territory? They could have done all the work themselves?

Michael Scheuer: They thought that only the USA was under threat. And that they would only become the target of terrorist attacks once they start arresting suspects. If we had not started the process, nobody would have done it.

Was the New York Times or Washington Post outraged back in the day? I don't recall it.

The question goes to the heart of liberal democracy in the age of mass-casualty attacks and is no more solved today than 9/12, ie, do we throw caution to the wind and deny terrorists the moral victory of subverting our justice system while risking that such actions might enable them to pull off pending attacks on our cities, killing thousands?

Most detractors would unhesitatingly answer "yes", pointing out that such a pathway is a paved road to Hell. That is until the target city becomes their own, whereupon the answer might produce a bit more reflection. All politics is local, as they say.

It's tough. I really don't have the answer. But I'm certain that criminalizing or politicizing such things is not helpful. It's more than a little irritating when certain Europeans--ones who've heavily benefited from the blood of American soldiers in ridding their Continent from tyranny--act this way.