Condoleezza Rice confirms the use of rendition.

Picture taken: 30 August 2004, 8:47 pm


Today, Condoleezza Rice, The US secretary of state, confirmed the use of 'rendition': transporting suspects to countries where they can be questioned outside the protection of US law.

In the same statement she said, '... the US would use "every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists".

We once again enter the world of political hypocrisy that is the vernacular of politics today.

The war against terror (and remind me which war that is exactly?) seems to abound in the rhetoric of fear and dogmatic assertion without burdening itself with any necessity of proof.

But worse, far worse, are the kinds of statements made by Ms Rice today.

To deliberately transport someone to a somewhere that is outside the protection of the law is de facto unlawful.

You cannot pursue terrorism unlawfully without yourself being a terrorist. You cannot prosecute an illegal war, such as the Iraq war, without being a terrorist.

Of course this kind of political hypocrisy has become so normal as to render it almost beyond the questioning of ordinary people like you and me, but question it we must.

Blair and Bush and Rice stand before committees and groups and speak with all the self assured confidence of religious fanatics, unless we question them and challenge them then fascism is a present reality in the name of democracy.

If rendition is unlawful, then how can Ms. Rice expect us to believe that those being treated in this way are not being tortured? Of course we can't and we should not.

She also said rendition had been practiced for decades and was "not unique to United States or to the current administration". Bad practice, no matter how widespread and widely used, does not good practice make, and just because my neighbour is a thief, a liar or despot is no reason for me to become one.