Panetta's Hypocrisy?

The Washington Times › January 21, 2009

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Summary

Leon Panetta, President Barack Obama's choice to lead the CIA, has been publicly critical of the Bush administration for permitting terrorists to be waterboarded, a simulated drowning tactic. But, as The Washington Times' Eli Lake reported last week, during Mr. Panetta's tenure as White House chief of staff in the mid-1990s the Clinton administration accelerated a practice known as "extraordinary renditions" - kidnapping terror suspects and sending them without formal judicial proceedings to third countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia that have far less than a stellar human- rights record. When Mr. Panetta's confirmation hearings begin Jan. 27, he should be asked to explain his own involvement in implementing these policies during the Clinton years. There is no way to get around the fact that Clinton administration policies implemented on Mr. Panetta's watch probably helped facilitate the transfer of terror suspects to the custody of foreign governments with human-rights records far worse than that of the United States.

Mr. Panetta's public, on-the-record, comments about U.S. interrogation methods during the presidency of George W. Bush have sounded like Human Rights Watch talking points. "Fear is blinding, hateful and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what's wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock? The simple answer is the rule of law," Mr. Panetta wrote in the Washington Monthly last year. "We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground. We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that." "We" in his last sentence may not include Mr. Panetta.