The outsourcing of torture continues

Change we can believe in:

WASHINGTON - 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 discredited programs, President Barack Obama left an equally controversial counterterrorism tool intact.

Under executive orders issued by Obama last week, the CIA still has authority to carry out what are known as renditions, or the secret abductions and transfers of prisoners to countries that cooperate with the U.S.

If I were an enemy combatant, I would much rather end up in the hands of the CIA in a secret prison rather than being sent by the CIA to Syria or one of the other countries that cooperates with us. The Syrians, unlike the federal government, have a well-earned reputation for making Islamists rue the day that they ever took up jihad.