Leon Panetta and extraordinary rendition

Writing about the choice of Leon Panetta for head of the CIA, Andrew Sullivan wrote in the Times of London that

[t]he first name floated for CIA head was John Brennan, a career spook well regarded in intelligence circles who had backed Obama early on. But his record was one of ambivalence towards “the program” and he even publicly expressed sympathy for it in some interviews. After an outcry, he quickly withdrew his name. Then last week: a nomination that surprised everyone.

Leon Panetta is someone everyone who is anyone in Washington knows well. He’s a huge player in California Democratic politics, a congressman for many years and a former Clinton chief of staff. A centrist, his expertise is in managing bureaucracies and budgets, not intelligence. But he served on the 9/11 commission and knows his way around the federal labyrinth. He is also the kind of genial fellow who appeals beyond party.

Well, as long as he’s genial! I wonder, however, what Andrew makes of my colleague Eli Lake’s front pager today on Panetta’s involvement with Clinton’s policy of extraordinary rendition:

“The Clinton Policy in practice meant torture,” Joanne Mariner, counterterrorism director for Human Rights Watch, told the Washington Times. “We haven’t been able to interview the people themselves, but we have evidence that they were tortured.” …

Mr. Panetta’s role in setting the overall policy is less clear. [Chief Osama-hunter from ’95-’99 Michael] Scheuer, who opposes the Panetta nomination to head the CIA, said, “You can’t have it both ways. If Leon Panetta was involved in national security policies, he is also responsible for the more brutal end of the rendition program. If he was not involved, then there is no reason to believe he is competent to do the job.”

Now, there’s some question as to how much input Panetta actually had on the policy. But even if he had no actual say, isn’t it fair to argue that he has an air of, at least, “ambivalence” toward the program of torture that ramped up so rapidly under his boss, Bill Clinton?

And let’s not forget that extraordinary rendition involves actual, y’know, torture. Like, electric shocks and pulling fingernails and getting beaten in the severest manner possible. As opposed to these “outrages” that took place at Gitmo:

“For 160 days his only contact was with the interrogators,” said Crawford, who personally reviewed Qahtani’s interrogation records and other military documents. “Forty-eight of 54 consecutive days of 18-to-20-hour interrogations. Standing naked in front of a female agent. Subject to strip searches. And insults to his mother and sister.”

At one point he was threatened with a military working dog named Zeus, according to a military report. Qahtani “was forced to wear a woman’s bra and had a thong placed on his head during the course of his interrogation” and “was told that his mother and sister were whores.” With a leash tied to his chains, he was led around the room “and forced to perform a series of dog tricks,” the report shows.

I’m sorry, but that’s not torture. Getting sent to an Egyptian prison where you’re beaten and starved and electroshocked? Torture. Having women’s underwear put on your head? Not torture. (Possibly not the best way to treat a prisoner, but most decidedly not torture.) So I guess my question for Andrew is a simple one: How can you support the nomination of a guy like Panetta, who was the chief of staff in an administration devoted to torturing terrorism suspects for information?