The controversy building over what is euphemistically referred to as 'extraordinary rendition' - the abduction by CIA officials of foreign nationals who are then taken for interrogation to countries where they have no protection under US law - surely does more than anything else to uncover the perverse logic of the 'war on terror'.
The allegation, first published in September, is that the United States government has been holding people at secret prisons, some in eastern Europe, where they are interrogated freely by CIA officials, but are given absolutely no contact with the outside world. Needless to say, the abduction of people who have not been charged - and their forceful transfer to 'black prisons' - would be a horrifying contravention of international law and what most of us consider as some of the core values in or legal and social systems: habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions and UN Conventions.
The US government has used a rather pathetic Wag The Dog fallacy to repudiate claims that they used British airports to illegally transfer prisoners: "We do not move people around the world so they can be tortured," said Stephen Hadley. You can always be pretty sure that you're on to a winner when the government starts answering questions no one had asked yet.
The awful thing, of course, is the fate of the people who are subjected to this treatment. The US government and their apologists will no doubt tell us that they are terrorists and represent a very real threat to security and peace. But this is not 1300. You cannot kidnap people and then tell us that it's OK - they're terrorists. This is the sort of thing which we all found so unpalatable about Saddam Hussein. Or Augusto Pinochet. These cases really prove that there is no regard for human rights in the anti-terror coalition. When they deny one man's rights, they deny everyones.
Read more on 'extraordinary rendition' here.
UPDATE:
Condoleeza Rice has made another worthless statement wherein she mixes further fallacies together in a big rhetorical pie!
"The US does not use the air space or airport of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee when we believe he or she will be tortured," - a very carefully worded statement really answering a seperate question. This is really old hat political stuff.
She said rendition had been practised for decades and was "not unique to United States or to the current administration". - a very nice use of the Irrelevant Conclusion (Ignorantio Elenchi) fallacy. Top marks to Ms Rice for some sweet rhetoric here. Of course, the Irrelevant Conclusion fallacy is used in this case as a red herring. The question is: does the US illegally move prisoners around? It wasn't - how long have you been doing it and who else does it?
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...a blog by Tom Clarke in Barcelona, Catalonia, covering politics, culture and society