I thought for sure it was torture, but then I saw this and realized that rendition is A-OK with this president!
The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.
The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.
In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.
"The past 10 months" includes Barack Obama's administration, for the slow kids in the back of the class.
Allahpundit notes that this isn't quite rendition.
A clever move in how it kills two birds with stone, avoiding further headaches for Obama over how to dispose of terrorists in U.S. custody while leaving jihadis in the possession of people willing and able to go the Mancow route for emergency information if need be. But, er, how is this significantly different from rendition? The only difference that I can see is that instead of grabbing these people ourselves and handing them over to Jordanian or Pakistani intel for interrogation, we’re leading their guys to the suspects and letting them take it from there.
Makes sense to me. That way, we don't end up with useless discussions about prosecuting lawyers for giving legal opinions.
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