Why?

Perhaps this explains it:

So, while a few die hard “24″ fans — and Alberto Gonzales, and Michael Mukasey — might still claim confusion about waterboarding being torture, nearly everyone else would agree that having your penis sliced with razors once a month IS torture.

According to the close-the-barn-door-late theory, should official confirmation of this behavior escape the U.S. establishment cone of silence, it would be a PR disaster. That, not the perennial whine of “National Security,” is the source of the pressure the British Judges felt.

There is a lot of smoke around the L.A. Times article suggesting Barak Obama’s Executive Order ending extraordinary renditions was bogus.

But even if Mr. Obama did end the extraordinary brand of renditions, according to a Democracy Now! interview with Michael Rattner of The Center for Constitutional Rights, there is still a hole big enough to drive tour busses full of victims into the Gulag.

Will this be another big disappointment like Mr. Obama’s plans to double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan — and his authorization of Predator drone strikes on the tribal people of Pakistan? And will we meet other Binyam Mohameds in the future, this time created by the Obama Administration?

You can read the entire Dark Alliance series for the San Jose Mercury News here.

And get the book here.

So if Iranian assassins are called “death squads” what are similarly trained operatives from the CIA or Army called?

Perhaps the euphemisms that Pentagon officials use are: customer service representatives, safety patrol officers, personal assistants, and make-over specialists.

While the actions of both sides are essentially premeditated murder, the CIA and Army special forces should also come clean about their decades old operations involving the execution of foreign nationals.  Come clean on operations in Guatemala, El Salvador, Vietnam, and even Iran itself.

Contemporaneously, after deafening calls to reinstate the official sanctioning of assassinations, the legacy of director Richard Helms continues unabated,as the Pentagon continues to fund and operate the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning which has trained hundreds of foreign nationals with assassination tactics.

Furthermore, despite being banned in the 1970s — after revelations disclosed by the Church and Pike committees — with the assistance of Israeli Defense Forces, the US Army has been actively training “hunter-killer” squads in Iraq under a program called Operation Gray Fox.

And the latest act of bellicosity: this hypocritical condemnation comes a month after an exposé showed that last year, Congress appropriated $400 million for the CIA to conduct clandestine operations in Iran.

While the exact nature of the operations are undisclosed, it is difficult to fathom that the funds are financing more plumbers, carpenters, and electricians in a covert attempt to build new homes and infrastructure for local residents.