Render Me

Daniel Benjamin tries to reassure me that the Bush administration won't have the CIA send me off to Syria to be tortured, naming this myth number five about rendition:

5. Pretty much anyone -- including U.S. citizens and green card holders -- can be rendered these days.

Not so, although the movie "Rendition" -- in which Witherspoon's Egyptian-born husband gets the black-hood treatment and is yanked from a U.S. airport and taken to a North African chamber of horrors -- is bound to spread this myth. A "U.S. person" (citizen or legal resident) has constitutional protections against being removed from the country through rendition, and there have been no incidents to suggest the contrary. In fairness, though, the ghastly case of Maher Arar -- a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who convincingly says he was detained at New York's JFK Airport, handed off to Syria and tortured -- is way too close for comfort.

Not only is the Maher Arar case too close for comfort, but I don't understand, in practice, what my remedy is. If, say, my little brother Nick got nabbed and sent to Syria to be tortured, he'd hardly be in a position to file suit -- he be being held secretly in a Syrian prison. My dad or I might notice he's gone missing and maybe Spencer could even rake some muck and figure out that he'd been sent by the CIA to Syria to be tortured and we could sue, thus availing ourselves of the "constitutional protections" to which Benjamin refers. But what if the administration invokes the state secrets privilege as they did in the Arar case? Then where are we.

Alternatively, consider FISA, which granted "U.S. persons" certain protections against electronic surveillance. Well, the administration just broke that law and when they got caught, congress seems inclined to respond with a combination of changing the law so they can do what they want in the future, and granting retroactive immunity to lawbreakers. Under the circumstances, I may have protections but they seem pretty worthless.

Comments

Furthermore, even if you did a judgment from a US court, sovereign Syria would be under no obligation to enforce it and hand your brother back.

Posted by southpaw | October 20, 2007 3:16 PM

. . . did get* a judgment . . .

Posted by southpaw | October 20, 2007 3:17 PM

Reinhold Niemoeller:

In Germany, they came first for the Communists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Communist;
And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist;
And then they came for the Jews, And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew;
And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up."

George Santayana:

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

And these words need to be sent to Hilary Clinto, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid as well as the supporters of the Bush cabal.

Posted by hopeless pedant | October 20, 2007 3:23 PM

the treatment of padilla, who is a full u.s. citizen, is not reassuring in these respects either.

look: once habeas is gone, everything is gone.

because your "constitutional protections" are worth no more than your ability to invoke them and enforce them in court.

so once they have made sure you can't have access to the courts, any other alleged protections are hogwash.

hamilton had it right in federalist #84, quoting blackstone:
"To bereave a man of life, [says he] or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls "the BULWARK of the British Constitution.

habeas is the bulwark of *all* constitutional protections.
anyone who tells you we still have protections after the bush regime has trashed habeas--is selling you a pack of lies.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 20, 2007 3:23 PM

A "U.S. person" (citizen or legal resident) has constitutional protections against being removed from the country through rendition

Is Daniel Benjamin naive, stupid, or insane?

When you have an administration that has shown that it's perfectly willing to ignore the constitution t do whatever the hell it wants to do, what makes him think that there are "constitutional protections" for anyone anywhere?

Hell, even if they do something illegal they'll just get the Congress to retroactively make it legal.

Constitutional "protections" only exist in as far as there is oversight watching to make sure that those protections are adhered to. No oversight, no protection.

Posted by NonyNony | October 20, 2007 3:27 PM

The Danish media is making a big deal out of this interview (http://politiken.dk/poltv/?ExtID=2373) with Michael Scheuer where he says that the very first rendition was a guy with Danish polical asylum who was napped in Croatia back in 95 and sent to Egypt with the authorization of Clinton.

Posted by Mike in Denmark | October 20, 2007 3:50 PM

Not to worry Matt, they aren't going to render you or you brother. They have the right mind you, but they won't. Well unless there is a case of mistake identity, like there seems to have been with Arar. Ooops. Well sometimes mistakes are made.

Just ask Sr. Diana Mae Ortiz
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_n22_v32/ai_18171625/pg_1

Are burns in the protocol for the rendered. Well I guess there is no protocol for them. If, by mistake your just made a prisoner without a number here they can't burn you, much less dig your eyes out with a spoon or use a blowtorch on your underarms. They didn't do that to Padilla. Sure,he's a looney tune now but all in all he's a pretty happy guy and he reportedly loves the government. Not like all these stinking liberals.

Posted by rapier | October 20, 2007 4:35 PM

Could Bush render Barack Obama to Syria without consequences? The answer is almost certainly not, for practical political reasons.

Could Bush/President Y render person "x" to Syria without consequences? "No, we have habeus, and courts willing to protect it, etc or whatever." has always in reality been inadequate and can only be answered empirically, according to circumstances, and after the fact.

Can Bush render? We could stop him, punish him if we wanted to, if only with pitchforks. The law has little to do wuth the question.

Posted by bob mcmanus | October 20, 2007 4:35 PM

Benjamin - "A U.S. person" (citizen or legal resident) has constitutional protections against being removed from the country through rendition"

where does he get this citizen or legal resident distinction? The due process clause of the fifth am applies to all persons within the US jurisdiction.

Zadvydas v. Davis, 533 U.S. 678, 693 (U.S. 2001):

"But once an alien enters the country, the legal circumstance changes, for the Due Process Clause applies to all "persons" within the United States, including aliens, whether their presence here is lawful, unlawful, temporary, or permanent." See Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202, 210, 72 L. Ed. 2d 786, 102 S. Ct. 2382 (1982); Mathews v. Diaz, 426 U.S. 67, 77, 48 L. Ed. 2d 478, 96 S. Ct. 1883 (1976); Kwong Hai Chew v. Colding, 344 U.S. 590, 596-598, 97 L. Ed. 576, 73 S. Ct. 472, and n. 5 (1953); Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356, 369, 30 L. Ed. [**2501] 220, 6 S. Ct. 1064 (1886); cf. Mezei, supra, at 212 ("Aliens who have once passed through our gates, even illegally, may be expelled only after proceedings conforming to traditional standards of fairness encompassed in due process of law").

Posted by Pat | October 20, 2007 4:39 PM

bob mcmanus asks: "Can Bush render?"

No, as a matter of fact. He can _order_ people, who order other people, to physically detain and transport a human being. An important part of our problem is the willingness of those down the chain of command to follow Dubya's orders. Either our bureaucrats and operatives are all loyal Bushies, or they are all mindless automatons, or the job market is so bad out there that they all fear for their livelihoods. I'm not sure which of those possibilities is the most worrisome.

-- TP

Posted by Tony P. | October 20, 2007 5:06 PM

I'm not following this. Doesn't the same logic show that the Clinton administration could deport Yglesias's little brother Nick to Cuba? All they need is a Cuban relative to claim custody. You don't get a hearing--or, more precisely, you do get a hearing, but when the administration doesn't like the court's ruling, it sends in a SWAT team to do what the court wouldn't order. It seems like at least as good a precedent as some case involving a Canadian of Syrian descent.

Posted by y81 | October 20, 2007 5:28 PM

I see y81 has just a created the stupidest comment in the history of the internet.

Posted by grh | October 20, 2007 5:38 PM

Ah, yes, the old classic "ELIAAAAAAAAAN".
Almost didn't recognize it, what with all the
grotesque contortions needed to fit it into
the current narrative.

Still, never loses its charm.

Posted by DJ | October 20, 2007 5:48 PM

Washington Post has become the mouthpiece for the coming fascism in America.

Posted by gregor | October 20, 2007 6:01 PM

You (or anyone else) could also be thrown naked into a Navy brig somewhere in say, South Carolina for three years before they let you see a lawyer.

Posted by M. Carey | October 20, 2007 6:07 PM

habeas is the bulwark of *all* constitutional protections.
anyone who tells you we still have protections after the bush regime has trashed habeas--is selling you a pack of lies.

Posted by kid bitzer | October 20, 2007 3:23 PM

*************************************************

Let's follow the Lincoln regime down the path to fascism:

http://slate.com/id/2059132/

If Lincoln's Maryland actions were dubious, a wave of arrests the following summer under another habeas corpus suspension was downright indefensible. The wave began after Congress instituted the first-ever military draft in July 1862. Because the draft proved highly unpopular and hard to enforce, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, at Lincoln's behest, issued sweeping orders on Aug. 8 suspending habeas corpus nationwide—the first time the writ was suspended beyond a narrowly defined emergency area. Stanton decreed that anyone "engaged, by act, speech, or writing, in discouraging volunteer enlistments, or in any way giving aid and comfort to the enemy, or in any other disloyal practice against the United States" was subject to arrest and trial "before a military commission."

The exceedingly broad mandate precipitated a civil liberties disaster. It allowed local sheriffs and constables to decide arbitrarily who was loyal or disloyal, without even considering the administration's main goal of enforcing the draft. At least 350 people were arrested in the following month, an all-time high. Some of the accused had done nothing worse than bad-mouth the president. (That was also true before Aug. 8. On Aug. 6, for example, Union Gen. Henry Halleck arrested one Missourian for saying, "[I] wouldn't wipe my ass with the stars and stripes.")

On Sept. 8, the federal official overseeing these arrests decreed that law enforcement agents were enforcing the Aug. 8 orders too stringently. It was evident that people were being arrested who posed no threat to the public safety. Thereafter, the arrests subsided. Still, Lincoln himself reiterated the suspension on Sept. 24, and arrests without trial continued. Overall between 10,000 and 15,000 people were incarcerated without a prompt trial. On balance, their detention almost certainly did not enhance American security nor hasten the Union victory.

************************************************

And we all know habeas corpus never came back after the Civil War

Posted by Campesino | October 20, 2007 7:04 PM

Matt's point cannot be made enough: What matter our procedural remedies and protections when an administration is allowed to breach the law without anyone holding them accountable? What remedy is there when the enforcement mechanisms of the Executive refuse to comply with judicial or legislative checks, assuming those are even brought to bear at all?

Posted by James F. Elliott | October 20, 2007 7:08 PM

This is one of those really frightening possibilities that arises from the government's wish to keep things secret. We are in many ways lucky (Though Arar has paid a heavy price for our "luck") that the government made such a high profile mistake. Without the outcry over his disappearance, this program might have remained a rumor.

When the government's actions are hidden from public view, it can act with impunity, and the only possible protection is constant watchfulness. About the only protection is a free press and a viable opposition. (I'd suggest also the good character of our government might offer protection, but I can't get through that phrase without breaking into bitter laughter)

Posted by heedless | October 20, 2007 7:12 PM

>>A "U.S. person" (citizen or legal resident) has constitutional protections against being removed from the country through rendition

Not if you are labled an "enemy combatant" by the Decider. Then you can be detained and tortured FOR YEARS without any charges. The govt. can even "lose" evidence and records of your "interogation" sessions, and no one will really raise much of a stink over it.

Posted by jim | October 20, 2007 7:33 PM

Matt's point cannot be made enough: What matter our procedural remedies and protections when an administration is allowed to breach the law without anyone holding them accountable? What remedy is there when the enforcement mechanisms of the Executive refuse to comply with judicial or legislative checks, assuming those are even brought to bear at all?

Posted by James F. Elliott | October 20, 2007 7:08 PM

***********************************************

I know. That darn Lincoln - totally unaccountable.
***********************************************

Controversy followed. The most explosive incident centered on John Merryman, a Marylander arrested for insurrectionary activities. Summarily jailed, Merryman petitioned for a habeas corpus writ, which Chief Justice Roger Taney granted. But the commanding officer at Fort McHenry, where Merryman was held, refused to release the prisoner, citing Lincoln's edict. With the army loyal to Lincoln, Taney couldn't enforce his order and railed against the president while Merryman stewed in jail for seven more weeks. After being freed, he was never tried.

Posted by Campesino | October 20, 2007 7:55 PM

Well, Campesino, I completely agree that Lincoln should have just let the Southerners secede. 'Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.', as they might say. A bigger man (like, say, Shaq) could've even overlooked the whole Fort Sumter fracas. And today, they would just be our other Mexico.

That said, seven weeks was the explosive incident? Padilla was in jail for 3 and a half years without habeas corpus. Just goes to show: Lincoln was an amateur.

Posted by Bo | October 20, 2007 8:07 PM

Well, Campesino, I completely agree that Lincoln should have just let the Southerners secede. 'Don't let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya.', as they might say. A bigger man (like, say, Shaq) could've even overlooked the whole Fort Sumter fracas. And today, they would just be our other Mexico.

That said, seven weeks was the explosive incident? Padilla was in jail for 3 and a half years without habeas corpus. Just goes to show: Lincoln was an amateur.

Posted by Bo | October 20, 2007 8:07 PM
***********************************************

http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jala/5/neely.html

The apologetic tone taken by James G. Randall and other writers on the problem of arbitrary arrests in the North during the Civil War has always seemed to me to be curiously at odds with the tone Abraham Lincoln himself took. He did not apologize. In his public letter of June 12, 1863, to Erastus Corning and others, Lincoln said with characteristic toughness: "... the time [is] not unlikely to come when I shall be blamed for having made too few arrests rather than too many." He argued that the Confederate States, when they seceded, had been counting on being able to keep "on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, supplyers, and aiders and abettors of their cause" under "cover of 'Liberty of speech' 'Liberty of the press' and 'Habeas corpus.'" Nicolay and Hay, who were not given to overstatement, noted that "few of the President's state papers ... produced a stronger impression upon the public mind than this." 1
1
Little wonder. Elsewhere in the letter, the president used even stronger language, saying that he could never:

appreciate the danger ... that the American people will, by means of military arrests during the rebellion, lose the right of public discussion, the liberty of speech and the press, the law of evidence, trail by jury, and Habeas Corpus, throughout the indefinite peaceful future ... any more than I am able to believe that a man could contract so strong an appetite for emetics during temporary illness, as to persist in feeding upon them through the remainder of his healthful life.2
Stressing the image conjured up by Lincoln's use of the word [End Page 7] "emetics," one could almost say that all the complaining about arbitrary arrests made him want to vomit. 2
As most students of the Lincoln administration's racial policies agree, a historian must pay careful attention not only to what Lincoln said but also to what he actually did. The administration's statistical record on arbitrary arrests is persuasive testimony that Lincoln was not particularly embarrassed by the policy. No careful work on the numbers of civilians arrested by military authorities or for reasons of state has ever been done by a historian, and those historians who have attempted an estimate previously have been writing with the goal of defending Lincoln in mind. Even so, the lowest estimate is 13,535 arrests from February 15, 1862, to the end of the war.3 At least 866 others occurred from the beginning of the war until February 15, 1862. Therefore, at least 14,401 civilians were arrested by the Lincoln administration. If one takes the population of the North during the Civil War as 22.5 million (using the 1860 census and counting West Virginia but not Nevada), then one person out of every 1,563 in the North was arrested during the Civil War.4
*************************************************

Lincoln was quite the amateur all right. Only put 14 - 15,000 people in jail without due process.

Posted by Campesino | October 20, 2007 8:22 PM

Well, sure, but, let's be real here, the South had slaves; it's not like that wasn't already a huge gaping hole in the idea of holding people without due process. Again, I think we* would be far better off today if we had let them secede, so I'm hardly an apologist for Lincoln's wartime excesses. OTOH, my position is a pretty clear case of 20/20 hindsight, since I doubt Lincoln could have imagined the failure of reconstruction or the South clinging to extreme racist policies nearly a century later.

* And by we, I mean everybody not in the Confederacy, which by now would be an indigent theocracy that anybody with a lick of sense or a drop of negro blood would have long since fled.

Posted by Bo | October 20, 2007 8:36 PM

So what about foreigners? Are they chopped liver?

Posted by novakant | October 20, 2007 8:44 PM

Are they chopped liver?

That's a State Secret. What I can tell you is that Soylent Pot Pie is being added to the federal school lunch program next year.

Posted by Bo | October 20, 2007 9:06 PM

"Either our bureaucrats and operatives are all loyal Bushies, or they are all mindless automatons, or the job market is so bad out there that they all fear for their livelihoods."

Take a look at the guys running the US prison system.

They fit at least two and sometimes all three of those categories. I can say that from personal experience.

Most US prison guards are either wannabe cops who couldn't pass the exams (you need SOME education to be a cop in most places these days) or ex-military who were downsized because they were too stupid to BE in the military and thus had no career future there. (Nowadays, of course, after Iraq, they'd be snapped up and made generals.)

And most of them are mindless automatons.

And a large number of them are clearly too stupid to be working a job that pays $40-50,000 a year. And the job they work is primarily, as the inmates like to say, "baby sitters and key turners." They call them "hacks", meaning "Horses Asses Carrying Keys."

It's like Ayn Rand once said: some Nazi camp guards tried to help the prisoners, some just did their jobs, others tried to make the prisoners more miserable. The end result is the same. It's the SYSTEM that matters.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 20, 2007 9:08 PM

So Campesino's point is?

That Lincoln was a dictator? I believe Gore Vidal already established that...

That the suspension of habeas corpus" was temporary and did not lead to "fascism"? Well, the latter is still a matter of debate, I'd say.

Not to mention that Lincoln was assassinated - and some people point to the said Mr. Stanton as a leading member of that conspiracy (theory).

That suspending habeas corpus in a civil war is reasonable? Uhm, where's the "civil war"?

That the "GWOT" is equivalent to the US "Civil War" in seriousness? Doubt many historians would back that claim...

As a counterexample, habeas corpus was suspended in Massachusetts during the "Shay's Rebellion", which IIRC prompted Thomas Jefferson to state that Shay's men should be let go, because if you imprison people for riot and insurrection, what check is there on government.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 20, 2007 9:37 PM

I think Daniel Benjamin is correct in his final assessment, although their immunity from the WoT has little to do with constitutional protections. U.S. citizens who trace no lineage or friendship to Arab nations have little to fear, personally, from arbitrary detention and rendition in the WoT.

Our terror policies are tools created by, and placed in the hands of monocultural executive branch agents, and we can expect these monocultural agents to wrongly detain individuals by misintepreting or poorly investigating the significance of a subject's contacts in an Arab homeland. We can also expect our WoT agents to act on unreliable information. For instance, UK citizen Moazzam Begg was snatched up in Afghanistan based on a tip from some other WoT detainee. He was eventually released from Guantanamo without being charged. One can only speculate as to how many of these erroneus tips were produced by "harsh interrogation tactics".

We shouldn't pretend that the WoT imposes a real burden on most U.S. citizens. Ordinary U.S. citizens aren't being detained. This makes rendition more alarming and morally problematic in a democracy like ours.

I understand the rhetorical purpose of trying to imagine how present laws could countenance the rendition of an ordinary innocent American. It is an attempt to shift the policy perspective from terrorist-fighter to victim of paranoid executive overreach. It's a (perhaps necessary) response to this unfortunate reality: the people most likely to have their lives destroyed by arbitrary detention and rendition have no electoral or political sway in this country.

That same kind of procedural defect that leads to the incessant ratcheting up of the power of law enforcement: nobody in power views the world from the perspective of potential victim of the police state rather than potential victim of crime.

The significance of this observation is that the judiciary, the least political and most rigorous branch when it comes to individualized determinations of guilt and innocence, should be deeply implicated in the WoT if we are to have any expectation that our terror policies are carried out rationally. Instead, we have extensions of the political executive branch masquerading as courts (military commissions fashioned out of whole cloth by a small cadre within the administration post 9/11) and statutes like the MCA stripping real independent courts of jurisdiction.

The Bush administration crusade for a "unitary executive" is inseparable from the failures and abuses in the WoT. It shows in conspicuous fashion that our constitution, which separates power, overlaps authority, and checks excesses, is not just a quaint ideal -- it is a fundamentally wise policy that would strengthen our fight against terror if adhered to.

Posted by StJoe | October 20, 2007 9:48 PM

I forgot to add that prior to his release, Moazzam was tortured in Kandahar, imprisoned in Gitmo for several years, and threatened with rendition.

Posted by StJoe | October 20, 2007 10:04 PM

US permanent residents can be rendered. So says the military commissions act which amended the federal habeas corpus statute (28 USC 2241) so that it now says the following:

Except as provided for in this subsection, and notwithstanding any other law, no court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim or cause of action, including an application for a writ of habeas corpus, pending on or filed after the date of enactment of this Act, against the United States or its agents, brought by or on behalf of any alien detained by the United States as an unlawful enemy combatant, relating to any aspect of the alien’s detention, transfer, treatment, or conditions of confinement.

Any alien. Included resident aliens.

Posted by P O'Neill | October 20, 2007 10:55 PM

"relating to any aspect of the alien’s detention, transfer, treatment, or conditions of confinement."

"treatment, or conditions of confinement"

If that isn't a law legalizing torture, I don't know what is.

Doesn't matter what any OTHER US law says about torture, this says you can't file a writ of habeas corpus concerning the prisoner's treatment or conditions of confinement.

Trumps everything.

Legalized torture, right there.

End of story.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 21, 2007 1:04 AM

Plead to come to America, get the Visa, even get the naturalized citizen status - then try to kill Americans or plot to?

Sorry, after a hearing, we have the option to trying the foreign unlawful combatant in courts hear for terrorism - or simply strip them of their legal status in America and deport them.

If an Egyptian or Palestinian or Saudi or Algerian is found here with explosives or some big plot to kill infidels....and we decide to just deport them - I don't care if the Jihadi gets strung up by his balls in his native land. He should have thought of that before betraying his hosts.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 21, 2007 3:06 AM

And the jihadis - and for that matter, most of their foreign governments that you support - don't care if you get strung up by your balls in your native land - which is much more likely if your attitude becomes the norm.

And frankly, in your case, I don't care either.

I know you THINK you'll be the one doing the stringing - but it's amazing how often it doesn't work out that way.

For example, a hacker could download some kiddie porn onto your machine - and you'd be going away.

They don't like kiddie porn types in the joint. They'd have to put you in "The Hole" for your protection. You should experience "D" cell house - the "Dog House" - at Leavenworth in the summer - in 110 degree Kansas heat. They bring ice around twice a day to keep you from dying of heat exhaustion. Nice of them. In the winter, it's forty degrees. You need to wear the coat they give you for your hour long "recreation" - in a cage - to keep you even moderately warm at night.

Hope you get to experience it, Ford.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 21, 2007 3:50 AM

It's worth keeping in mind that, even when purporting to follow the letter of the law, some of these people just have no respect for its meaning.

When Padilla was first arrested, he was appointed a lawyer by the court. When Padilla was transferred to military custody in an attempt to strip him of his writes, his lawyer filed papers demanding her right to visit Padilla and defend his interests. The government's lawyers challenged these papers on the grounds that Padilla hadn't signed them. Of course, one reason Padilla hadn't signed them was that the Government wouldn't even let him know he still had a lawyer.

One key point here is that so far as I ever heard no-one was ever punished for making this offensive argument in court. Anyone who would entertain the notion of making that argument for a minute has a basic contempt for the whole concept of habeas corpus, civil rights, and legal representation. Will you trust these people to respect your rights?

Posted by Warren Terra | October 21, 2007 5:13 AM

Under the unitary executive theory, as I understand it, Bush considers himself free to do anything - anything - in the name of national security. The fact that he may not yet have extraordinarily rendered an American citizen is surely a result of circumstance, or self-restraint by the administration. It most certainly does not result from the Bush administration's "fealty to the law." (Due to the incredible secrecy of this administration, there is no way to know for certain that no American citizen has been extraordinarily rendered.)

Posted by Michael S. | October 21, 2007 6:41 AM

For some of the people on this thread, the following remains true:

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety - Benjamin Franklin

Posted by Arun | October 21, 2007 8:56 AM

This is one crappy op-ed...so obtuse, partial, and disingenuous it could have been written by Dick Cheney.

In rare cases when the country of residence is a hostile one, an "extraordinary rendition" can be carried out: a covert effort to abduct the suspect and spirit him out of the country.

Hostile countries such as Italy?

Posted by smintheus | October 21, 2007 10:50 AM

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

Just sayin'

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | October 21, 2007 12:33 PM

Hostile countries such as Italy?

And don't forget Macedonia! Ah, Macedonia, the ancient foe. Technically, it wasn't the "country of residence", since Khaled al-Masri was only there on vacation; the country of residence would have been Germany. Ah, Germany, the ancient foe! Now we're getting somewhere.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 21, 2007 1:13 PM