The hypocrisy of politics, or 'It's stuff like this that made me realize Hope/Change was nonsense.'

Torture Tort Terror - Reason Magazine:

"During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama criticized the Bush administration for its excessive secrecy, noting that it had “invoked a legal tool known as the ‘state secrets’ privilege more than any other previous administration to get cases thrown out of civil court.” Obama also promised to end “extraordinary rendition,” a practice through which “we outsource our torture to other countries.”

In September, however, the Obama administration used the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit by five former captives who say they were tortured as a result of extraordinary rendition. Although candidate Obama surely would have been outraged, President Obama is for some reason less concerned about abuses of executive power.

“To build a better, freer world,” Obama the candidate wrote in a 2007 Foreign Affairs essay, requires “ending the [practice] of shipping away prisoners in the dead of night to be tortured in far-off countries.” It turned out Obama meant that he, like his predecessor, would seek assurances that detainees transferred to other countries would not be mistreated. After all, why would governments that routinely torture their prisoners lie about it?"