Masri Misery

Lebanese-German, Khaled el-Masri, who claims he was abducted by the CIA, rendered to Afghanistan, tortured for five months and then dropped on the side of a road in Albania had his day in court. It was a short one, though, as the judge presiding in the matter threw out his lawsuit, which named George Tenet, 10 CIA employees and three unnamed companies as defendants, on the grounds that it would threaten national security. The judge equivocated about the dismissal, claiming that she was not rendering any judicial opinion on the actual conduct of the CIA or the government, only that

in times of war, our country, chiefly through the executive branch, must often take exceptional steps to thwart the enemy.

In other words, yeah, we fucked you over. Tough. We're thwarting a crazy enemy who will abuse and kill innocent people and we must stop this enemy by abusing and killing innocent people.

Thwarting a terrorist enemy by engaging in terrorist activity against innocent people is, indeed, a savy strategy, despite its not having resulted in any useful information. This is especially true when you can get the courts to play along with the game that torturing innocent people is somehow thwarting enemies and not creating new ones.

It has been fairly obvious for awhile now that this is how the Bush administration will avoid actually answering for any of its egregious behaviours. So far, US courts have been only too happy to abide the position that secret and illegal behaviour is enhancing national security.