Plastic Men

Lambert picks up that the CIA is about to expand its role on the Homeland front in their War on Terra.

Obama and his National Security advisor James L. Jones are considering making the whole National Security schtik more elastic under the advice of John O. Brennan, CIA veteran under Bu$hie and currently Obama's presidential adviser for counterterrorism and homeland security.

Greenwald doesn't like Brennan much:

...there is Brennan's December 5, 2005 appearance on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, in which he vehemently defended the Bush administration's use of rendition -- one of the key tools to subject detainees to torture:

JOHN BRENNAN: I think over the past decade it has picked up some speed because of the nature of the terrorist threat right now but essentially it's a practice the United States and other countries have used to transport suspected terrorists from a country, usually where they're captured to another country, either their country of origin or a country where they can be questioned, detained or brought to justice. . . .

MARGARET WARNER: So was Secretary Rice correct today when she called it a vital tool in combating terrorism?

JOHN BRENNAN: I think it's an absolutely vital tool. I have been intimately familiar now over the past decade with the cases of rendition that the U.S. Government has been involved in. And I can say without a doubt that it has been very successful as far as producing intelligence that has saved lives.

MARGARET WARNER: So is it -- are you saying both in two ways -- both in getting terrorists off the streets and also in the interrogation?

JOHN BRENNAN: Yes. The rendition is the practice or the process of rendering somebody from one place to another place. It is moving them and the U.S. Government will frequently facilitate that movement from one country to another. . .

Now, you can split hairs and say that defending rendition isn't defending torture, and you can say that America doesn't torture, to which one can only assert there is overwhelming evidence that some Amerikans- and people who profess to work for Amerika- surely do.

This individual surely approves of whatever you call it.