There's been quite a controversy in the last few days when an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for 13 CIA agents. The agents are accused kidnapping a Musilm cleric in Milan in 2003 and shipping him off to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured.
(Three CIA officials claim that Italian authorities were briefed on the plot. The Italian government denies this.)
Italian intelligence officials were also annoyed because they had the cleric under surveillance of their own and the kidnapping scuppered their plans. Of course, they might have been planning to deal with the cleric via the traditional justice system in accordance with the rule of law...something the Bush administration clearly opposes on philosophical grounds.
The 'extraordinary renditions,' which is the official euphemism for such kidnappings, are causing alarm in Europe. There's even a push for European authorities to end cooperation with the CIA.
The CIA action angered Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was one of President Bush's main supporters on the Iraq aggression. He "demanded full respect for Italian sovereignty from the United States," in an official statement.
Some people advocate action merely for the sake of action. They offer such arguments as "Any action is better than no action." They hide behind words like resolve and steel and strength, as an excuse to avoid any scrutiny of specific action. If such scrutiny makes its way through, they proffer normally inocuous phrases 'Support our troops' and 'God Bless America' as an insidious way to change the subject, to avoid answering the criticisms. Don't let such people fool you. These 'extraordinary renditions,' which many fear aren't as extraordinary as the CIA might have you believe, have proven damaging to America's credibility and to its national security, without any perceptible benefit.
Kidnappees are shipped off to third countries, so no one can even use the excuse that they're providing valuable information to American intelligence officials. Then again, some might argue that if the US simply legalized torture, we wouldn't have to go through all this hassle.
And if this alleged CIA misconduct threatens the cooperation of our European allies on critical issues of security, then how can it possibly be beneficial to our national interests?
Yet despite such actions that threaten security cooperation with our most important allies (some of whom have their own radicalized, domestic Muslim populations), the CIA successfully fought efforts to bring its activities under greater outside control.
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