>SNIP
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>>I dare say that what may have been happening for years was different.
>>A 60 Minutes episode had the guy who invented "rendition" smugly describing why/how he did it and that "protcting Americans" was his overriding concern. If I remember correctly his 'invention' was towards the tail end of the Clinton administration.
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>Hogwash. Once again, you cannot believe everything you see on the news - probably in this case the news only received the information the administration wanted to get out. It may not have been called 'rendition' and it may not have been an official policy of a previous administration, but I can tell you that it has indeed been happening since 1983 that I know of and not just by the U.S. Although, it has only been since 911 that the focus of this type of activity has been on al queda...

Here's an excerpt:
""The option of not doing something is extraordinarily dangerous to the American people," says Michael Scheuer, who until three months ago was a senior CIA official in the counterterrorist center. Scheuer created the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit and helped set up the rendition program during the Clinton administration.

"Basically, the National Security Council gave us the mission, take down these cells, dismantle them and take people off the streets so they can't kill Americans," says Scheuer. "They just didn't give us anywhere to take the people after we captured."

So the CIA started taking suspects to Egypt and Jordan. Scheuer says renditions were authorized by Clinton's National Security Council and officials in Congress - and all understood what it meant to send suspects to those countries.

"They don't have the same legal system we have. But we know that going into it," says Scheuer. "And so the idea that we're gonna suddenly throw our hands up like Claude Raines in 'Casablanca' and say, 'I'm shocked that justice in Egypt isn't like it is in Milwaukee,' there's a certain disingenuousness to that."

"And one of the things that you know about justice in Egypt is that people get tortured," says Pelley.

"Well, it can be rough. I have to assume that that's the case," says Scheuer.

But doesn't that make the United States complicit in the torture?

"You'll have to ask the lawyers," says Scheuer.

Is it convenient?

"It's convenient in the sense that it allows American policy makers and American politicians to avoid making hard decisions," says Scheuer. "Yes. It's very convenient. It's finding someone else to do your dirty work."
"

I'm sure you know similar was going on in the past. I'm just saying this 'style' is different and probably applied much more widely than the prior activities.