Tortured Logic?

This story in the New Yorker about the supposed outsourcing of US torture is getting a lot of play. But read this part from the Q&A that accompanies the story:

Amy Davidson: You begin your piece with something President Bush said recently—that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.”

Jane Mayer: President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales all made similar statements last month, asserting that not only does the United States condemn torture, it also does not send U.S.-held suspects to other countries for torture. In reality, the record appears to be quite different. Beginning around 1995, the Central Intelligence Agency inaugurated a form of extradition sometimes referred to as "extraordinary rendition," in which captured foreign terrorism suspects have been transported by the U.S. to third countries for interrogation and prosecution. The former C.I.A. director George Tenet estimated that between the time the program started and 2001 there were some seventy renditions. Most experts suggest that since the Bush Administration launched the global war on terrorism after the attacks of September 11, 2001, that number has grown dramatically. Present and former officials involved in these renditions, including several whom I quote on the record in this week's New Yorker, suggest that, from the start, it was suspected that many of the rendered persons were tortured abroad. Certainly, in three cases where the suspects have emerged publicly to speak about their treatment—the cases of Maher Arar, Muhammed Zery, and Mamdouh Habib—they have alleged that they were tortured after the United States rendered them to other countries.

Lots of bones to chew on there. First, note that this practice began in 1995. That's back in the first Clinton term. But of course at that time, we had not even had the provocation of 9-11. So if this practice of extraordinary rendition is so awful, and it started under Clinton, then isn't the gripe with him?

Second, note the "most experts suggest... that the number has grown dramatically" BS. Who are these experts? What did they do to gain their expertise? And what is dramatically?

Third, note that the stated purpose of turning them over to other countries is "interrogation and prosecution". Are we shocked to learn that in some other countries, interrogation involves torture?

Fourth, and I hate to keep harping on this, but note the phrase "...from the start, it was suspected that many of the rendered persons were tortured abroad." You mean that Bill Clinton's administration was turning over persons to countries where he new they would be tortured? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you!

And here's her first case (from the actual article):

Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was born in Syria, was surprised to learn of Bush’s statement. Two and a half years ago, American officials, suspecting Arar of being a terrorist, apprehended him in New York and sent him back to Syria, where he endured months of brutal interrogation, including torture.

Oh, I see, we turned him over to Syria and said, "Could you torture him for us a bit and let us know what he tells you?"

And later, our unnamed experts return:

Critics contend that the unstated purpose of such renditions is to subject the suspects to aggressive methods of persuasion that are illegal in America—including torture.

Then we get the news on the number of these extraordinary renditions:

Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates that a hundred and fifty people have been rendered since 2001.

Okay, so about twice as many people have been subjected to rendition in the last three years as had been in the prior six years; an increase fourfold in the annual rate. Would it shock you to learn that our government was a little more diligent in expelling terrorist suspects in the last few years than during the Clinton Administration? But wait, there's more: Guess where these terrorist suspects are being expelled to?

The most common destinations for rendered suspects are Egypt, Morocco, Syria, and Jordan, all of which have been cited for human-rights violations by the State Department, and are known to torture suspects.

Well, hush mah mouth! Why would we be sending them to those countries? Could it possibly be that those are four of the states where terrorist suspects are likely to have come from? I do wonder about the fact that Saudi Arabia is not on that list though.

After an obligatory bash at Guantanamo (helped along by a quote from Jamie "The Wall" Gorelick), the article then proceeds to go into the long background of this practice, which remember was in place for about 6 years of the Clinton Administration.

Incredibly, the only time Clinton is mentioned is in this passage:

He recalled, “We went to the White House”—which was then occupied by the Clinton Administration—“and they said, ‘Do it.’”

The article is full of such snark that it's surprising it got past the New Yorker's editors. Get this:

The Bush Administration’s departure from international norms has been justified in intellectual terms by élite lawyers like Gonzales, who is a graduate of Harvard Law School.

Jeez, why don't you just hold up a sign exhorting the audience to boo and hiss?

I'm sorry, but this is not a serious article, it's just another attempt to bash the Bush Administration.