Prison abuse starts here
Sending U.S. detainees abroad for interrogation invites torture
March 14, 2005
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpgon144175651mar14,0,5218680.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlinesAlberto Gonzales should stop defending the indefensible. There is no way to justify the illegal practice of "extraordinary rendition," a euphemism for the abominable practice of secretly transferring detainees in U.S. custody in the war on terrorism to other countries known to torture prisoners.
Dancing around illegality in defense of immorality is disgraceful behavior for the attorney general, who is, after all, the nation's top law enforcement official. Gonzales should stop it and the White House should stop sending detainees to other countries for interrogation.
Gonzales has said repeatedly that U.S. policy is not to actually send detainees to countries where the government believes or knows that they're going to be tortured. That's what domestic law and international convention require.
U.S credibility on torture has been eroded by the sad record of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, CIA "ghost detainees" deliberately kept off the books and hidden from international observers, and abusive practices at Guantanamo Bay that the International Committee of the Red Cross called tantamount to torture. All that makes official disavowals of extraordinary rendition, in the face of accounts to the contrary, very hard to believe.