With policies such as this that results in innocents being rendered and tortured such as Arar and El-Masri anti-Americanism is bound to increase worldwide, especially when the US continues to use rhetoric about spreading justice and the rule of law globally.
THe evidence that the policies even work is questionable. We are supposed to rely upon the word of someone who can't say whether waterboarding is torture.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
CIA chief backs rendition flights
Mr Hayden staunchly defended "special methods of questioning" The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden, has defended the methods it uses to interrogate terror suspects. Gen Hayden said programmes such as extraordinary rendition produced what he said was irreplaceable intelligence.
Under the programme, terror suspects are transported to secret prisons in countries with less stringent interrogation rules.
Mr Hayden, speaking in Chicago, said the leads gained justified rendition.
"The irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason why we have what I admit freely is a very controversial programme."
The CIA had produced thousands of intelligence reports from the "fewer than 100 hardened terrorists" detained since 2002, Mr Hayden told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
'Water-boarding' controversy
His comments came as President George Bush's nominee for US attorney general came under fire for his position on interrogation techniques.
Michael Mukasey was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee
Nominee Michael Mukasey condemned one technique, water-boarding, as "repugnant" and possibly "over the line," but declined to explicitly rule it out as torture, saying he could not speculate on classified procedures.
Water-boarding simulates drowning by immobilizing a prisoner with his head lower than his feet and pouring water over his face.
Leading Democrats in the Senate have threatened to block Mr Mukasey's confirmation if he does not explicitly rule out water-boarding as illegal.
When asked to comment about Mr Mukasey's statement, Mr Hayden avoided a clear answer.
"Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer," he said.
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