"A Kidnapping in Milan"

The number of men rendered to torture by the United States under George W. Bush is still not known.  Reporters on the beat have guessed from one hundred to several hundred; a few outliers think more than a thousand.  Many decent Americans believed that when Bush left office their long national nightmare would be over.  They were apparently under the impression that Democrats had not connived in the outsourcing of torture.  Two days after Obama became president, he issued an executive order banning the United States from torturing people directly but not – contrary to many confused reports – from sending captives elsewhere to be tortured.  What created the confusion (intentionally, I suspect) was that Obama ordered a task force to
study extraordinary rendition with the goal of ensuring that the United States did not send people to be tortured.  The task force, of course, had no power to ensure the goal was met, but hopeful reporters read what they wanted into the order.  Later Obama’s CIA director, Leon Panetta, explained that the CIA would still extraordinarily render people.  He added, as a kind of balm, “If we render someone, we are obviously going to seek assurances from that country that their human rights are protected and they are not mistreated.”  It was precisely what the Bush administration had said.

Toward the end of 2009 the president’s task force recommended that the United States protect the victims of its renditions by visiting them in the dungeons it had rendered them to.

Simultaneously Obama’s Justice Department was arguing in federal court, again exactly as Bush’s had, that lawsuits against the government by victims of rendition must be dismissed because they would reveal secrets vital to the nation’s security.  The lead plaintiff in the most important suit, Binyam Mohamed, had been rendered by the CIA to Morocco, where his genitals had been sliced open dozens of times and caustic liquid poured in the wounds.

As for Abu Omar’s kidnappers, Obama’s people said off the record that should Italy request their extradition, the president would not comply.  Bush’s people had at least had the courage to say so on the record.

The above came from “A Kidnapping in Milan” by Steve Hendricks.  It is the ending of the book.  The photos came from an email from IndictBushNow.org at a protest at Bush's lie-brary.   Seems to me that Obama needs to be arrested too.