In which Obama's policies continue to make mine eyes to bleed.

[unusualmusic_lj_archive]

Obama’s First Rendition Looks Very Questionable

If his first publicly known rendition case is any indication, there may well be a legitimate question as to whether Obama's rendition program is even more repulsive than that of George Bush. More evidence will be required for an informed answer, but Obama is off to a very inauspicious beginning. From Scott Horton in an exclusive for Huffington Post:

[I]n a federal court in suburban Washington, a case is unfolding that gives us a practical sense of what an Obama-era rendition looks like.

Raymond Azar, a 45-year-old Lebanese construction manager with a grade school education, is employed by Sima International, a Lebanon-based contractor that does work for the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also has the unlikely distinction of being the first target of a rendition carried out on the Obama watch.

According to court papers, on April 7, 2009, Azar and a Lebanese-American colleague, Dinorah Cobos, were seized by "at least eight" heavily armed FBI agents in Kabul, Afghanistan, where they had traveled for a meeting to discuss the status of one of his company's U.S. government contracts. The trip ended with Azar alighting in manacles from a Gulfstream V executive jet in Manassas, Virginia, where he was formally arrested and charged in a federal antitrust probe.

This rendition involved no black sites and was clearly driven by a desire to get the target quickly before a court. Also unlike renditions of the Bush-era, the target wasn't even a terror suspect; rather, he was suspected of fraud. But in a troubling intimation of the last administration, accusations of torture hover menacingly over the case. According to papers filed by his lawyers, Azar was threatened, subjected to coercive interrogation techniques and induced to sign a confession. Azar claims he was hooded, stripped naked (while being photographed) and subjected to a "body cavity search."

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And now, it has gone to the point where we are conducting renditions for alleged contractor fraud. So much for breaking laws to protect the country from terrorism. Meanwhile, what about the contractor fraud from Halliburton and Blackwater and KBR?  Oh yeah.



 

Amazing isn't it that the US government can snatch Azar at gunpoint, bag him, tag him and fly him to Virginia for minor contracting fraud by his employer, yet they cannot seem to do so much as stop giving bonuses to KBR who kills American soldiers through their reckless disregard. Nor have they bagged and sensory deprived anybody from DynCorp, who has engaged in major fraud on defense contracts in Afghanistan and Iraq. Go figure.

The rot deepens.

Comments

[the-willow.insanejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

He's still in his first year - he can't be thinking about relection and not rocking the boat or something, right? Not after a campaign that was all about rocking the boat?

[unusualmusic.livejournal.com]

i don't know. I just want it to stop!

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

Me, too. There's "not rocking the boat" and then there's pure evil. It's so upsetting; he's the first president we've had in my memory I expected more from. (well, okay, maybe Jimmy Carter, too, but I was 7.)