The left has spent much of the past 7 to 8 years (primarily after 9/11) bashing the Bush Administration over its use of rendition, a tactic in which the Central Intelligence Agency hands over terror suspects to be interrogated by authorities in their home countries. It’s controversial because often these domestic interrogations can go beyond anything the officials at Gitmo would even dream of doing. Critics call it “torture by proxy”, in fact.

The Bush Administration, of course, didn’t start the practice that Hollywood saw fit to base a film on. The left, including Hollywood, just liked to bash the former administration as if Cheney had thought it up in his secret dungeon’s conference room. Rendition was actually a tactic used by the Clinton Administration to attempt to keep America safe while maintaining some sort of plausible deniability and reaping the benefits of harsher treatment than would be allowed under U.S. detention. It basically outsourced waterboarding…but worse.

Well, guess what? President HopenChange, likely to the chagrin of supporters who thought he’d keep the nation safe using Skittle-pooping unicorns, will keep or expand the practice. Surprise!

The CIA’s secret prisons are being shuttered. Harsh interrogation techniques are off-limits. And Guantanamo Bay will eventually go back to being a wind-swept naval base on the southeastern corner of Cuba.

But even while dismantling these programs, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool.

Under executive orders issued by Obama recently, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the United States.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it was the main remaining mechanism — aside from Predator missile strikes — for taking suspected terrorists off the street.

To be clear, the interrogating countries in question aren’t usually Britain, France, or the Principality of Monaco. No, we’re talking really fun locales like Jordan, Pakistan, or Saudi Arabia. You know, crap holes; places where the Geneva Convention, international regulations, and basic humanity are more “suggestion” than “regulation”. Like I said earlier, the practice of rendition outsources torture.

Yet, as Ed Morrissey points out:

Unfortunately, though, the political jeremiads of the Left has given Obama little room to manuever.  He has already ordered the CIA to close its holding sites for such suspects, at least for indeterminate-length detentions, which means any terrorists taken have to be moved somewhere else in a relatively tight time frame.  The one place the US has for that purpose will close, thanks to the entirely hysterical political press to close Gitmo.  The CIA by law cannot bring the suspects back to the US.  That leaves release, rendition, or assassination as the only three options left to Obama after all of the political posturing of the campaign.

You’re basically left with killing them or handing them over to have their fingernails pulled out by Agent Ahmed in Islamabad. Such an improvement over 18 hours of outside activity, clean showers, private cells, respect for religion, flat screen TVs , and waterboarding for only the most extreme scenarios Guantanamo Bay.

And no, don’t expect the media to slam Obama for this. If anything, it’s likely he’ll be praised for it, and the messy details will be conveniently left out.