"Al Gore was for "extraordinary rendition" before he was against it
By TigerHawk at 11/23/2005 12:01:00 AM
While we're on the subject of the loyal opposition's wholesale memory failure, perhaps it is worth reviewing Al Gore's support for the practice of "extraordinary rendition" (aggressively anti-rendition Wikipedia entry here). I stumbled across this passage in Richard Clarke's Against all Enemies, published last year in a fairly blatant attempt to compare the Bush administration's anti-terrorism efforts unfavorably with those of Bill Clinton:
Snatches, or more properly "extraordinary renditions," were operations to apprehend terrorists abroad, usually without the knowledge of and almost always without public acknowledgement of the host government.... The first time I proposed a snatch, in 1993, the White House Counsel, Lloyd Cutler, demanded a meeting with the President to explain how it violated international law. Clinton had seemed to be siding with Cutler until Al Gore belatedly joined the meeting, having just flown overnight from South Africa. Clinton recapped the arguments on both sides for Gore: Lloyd says this. Dick says that. Gore laughed and said, "That's a no-brainer. Of course it's a violation of international law, that's why it's a covert action. The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass." (pp. 143-144)
This passage is especially interesting in light of Gore's more recent speechifying, in which he specifically denounced rendition. No more "go grab his ass."
Al Gore supported rendition before al Qaeda had declared war on the United States and hung its battle flag on the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the African embassies, the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the Bali disco, the Madrid trains, and the United Nations. But after those defeats, Al Gore changed his mind. Has any reporter for any major news organization bothered to ask Gore to explain his reasoning?"
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