The Truth About Rendition

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It would be a full-time job to catalogue all the lies that come out of the Bush administration. But here are two important ones. Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings calls the president on his statement today that “we do not render [detainees] to countries that torture.” Not even the most Clintonian parsing of that statement could make that true.

Meanwhile, in the Christian Science Monitor, Tom Regan swats down Condoleeza Rice’s claims about rendition, and compiles evidence that innocent detainees have been captured, rendered abroad, and tortured. Numbers are hard to come by, but here’s one attempt:

One [US] official said about three dozen names fall in that category [those mistakenly detained]; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by Al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the Al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

“They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism, one CIA officer said.

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We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

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Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

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