Halfway to the truth

Responding to questions raised by a May 10 report from Human Rights Watch, Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif has admitted that the US has rendered as many as 70 terrorism suspects to Egypt since 9/11, Reuters reported on Sunday.

However, Nazif denied that torture is widespread in Egypt, facilely throwing it off on the old excuse of "occasional abuses" by police. He also absolutely denied that anyone rendered to Egypt was tortured. "Period." Of course, since he'd already admitted to "abuses" by police, how he can be so sure that none of those uh, unfortunate incidents occurred to any victim of rendition is unexplained, but what the hey, he's our trusted ally, how can you doubt him?

Besides, what does Human Rights Watch know about torture or human rights? I mean, the group

said torture was so widespread in Egypt, especially in national security cases, that each transfer from the United States and other countries constituted a violation of international conventions against torture,

but, really, what competence do they have to make such a judgement?

And those people at Amnesty International? What can they have to tell us about torture in Egypt? And as for the US State Department, which charged Egypt with committing torture in its report on human rights for the year 2004, well, it's obviously biased and probably just hates America, don't you think?

Footnote: The Shrub team insists that the US neither engages in torture nor sends suspects to other countries without assurance of proper treatment. Well, the first part of that has long since been blown out of the water and the second, to mix my images, is leaking badly.

"We take these assurances, we do what we can to monitor them, and obviously if we get evidence that countries are not abiding by these assurances, that we take into account in the next time we have a decision to make about a possible rendition," national security advisor Stephen Hadley told CNN's "Late Edition."

For the sake of argument, let's take Hadley at his word. With that, point one is that Hadley said "we take," not "we would take." That's a significant difference because it means that there have been cases where rendered subjects have been tortured and we know it.

Point two: "Take it into account" leaves open the clear possibility of continuing to render people to countries where we know previous renditions have resulted in torture. So much for "we never do, never would do, it."

Point three: "Next time?" What the hell about this time? "Stop now! Send them back at once or we will publicly denounce you!"

Yeah, I know - foolish thoughts.