or is it the fact that prisoners are rendered to countries which torture?

I note from the NY times article you link to the following:

"Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch said the new interrogation policy represented a significant step toward more humane treatment, though he expressed dismay that administration officials failed to impose stricter limits on rendition.

But he praised the Obama administration’s overall approach to difficult counterterrorism issues, saying the government had adopted “some of the most transparent rules against abuse of any democratic country.”

While there are individual policies about which we can complain and complain heartily, is there no virtue in examining the overall approach taken by the current administration?

A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.

Story (with link to the actual report) is linked below. Scary stuff....."enemies of the state" can be a very broad term.

Is rendition per se illegal?

Are you asking if it's illegal for governments to enter other countries and abduct people and ship them around the world without any legal process?

Why do you think there are "extradition" treaties which provide for legal process? If everyone can just render whoever they want, why bother with extraditions?

Obviously, it's worse -- a separate crime -- if you render them to be tortured, but the rendition itself is detention and extradition without process.

But I would imagine that a lot of the time we have some kind of tacit permission from the nation in question. It sounds like in this instance the CIA believes it should be allowed to do whatever it wants in any nation regardless of that nation's laws or approval of the actions. There's no way anyone could actually think such a policy is reasonable. They had it coming.

Yes, I can see that. I am curious as to why there was no big outcry when Bill Clinton did it (as the NY Times article suggests).

What is the dynamics here? Are we not sending them back because of some procedural issue or what? After all, we were quite upset when a convicted rapist avoided justice because he went to a country that did not have an extradition treaty with us that required him to be sent back. If Italy convicted one of these people for rape, would we also protect them?

Anyway, Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by Stephen Grey is a good read.

Torture is illegal, and the Eighth Amendment makes this abundantly clear: “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” It’s a single sixteen word sentence, poetic in its simplicity and clarity. It has no qualifiers. It doesn’t limit its protection to citizens, or to those within its territorial boundaries. It protects everybody, everywhere. It says “we do not torture.” Our nation backs this up with treaties, federal and state laws, regulations, rules, and guidelines that permeate all layers of government. The legal and political prohibitions against torture are broad and deep.

Yet the previous administration and now this one's principle actors think they should be immune from these restrictions because, as they perversely claim, torture was used for morally defensible ends.

Whatever one thinks of the efficacy of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the fact is, although large fractions of the public are disturbed by the details, these same folks are tempted to look away if they think that these methods “saved American lives.” Those of us opposed to torture need these people’s support if our views are to prevail, and so we need to challenge this notion head on.

Torture has never been used to elicit truthful information. Not ever, not from anybody. Throughout history torture has been used either to drag out whatever falsehood was expedient at the time, to terrorize an unpopular minority, or to satisfy the hidden lusts of the torturers themselves.

Whatever dark chapter one chooses: The Spanish Inquisition, Salem witch trials, Europe’s anti-Semitic pogroms -- all we find are lies. Can’t find enough witches? Try a little torture. Can’t find the hidden cabals of Protestant heretics? Inflict a little torture. It doesn’t matter what you’re looking for: space aliens, running dog lackeys of American imperialism, fifth columns of hidden subversives, or hidden connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. If you’re having trouble finding enough demons in this demon-haunted world, try torture. After all, with personal accountability “off the table,” what can it hurt?

Recall that the American interrogation program was modeled after the SERE program (Survive, Endure, Resist, Escape), a program developed by the military in the mid-fifties intended to prepare American pilots in case they were captured during the Korean war. The North Koreans were using “enhanced interrogations” to extract false confessions claiming America was using germ warfare. In short, the interrogation techniques used by our agents in Iraq were modeled after a system whose purpose was to generate lies in Korea 55 years ago.

To those defenders of the Bush regime: Show us your examples where torture has been used for morally defensible reasons. Don’t limit yourselves to just your “War on Terror,” but consider all of history. One U.S. Senator says that torture has been used for 500 years, so it must work. Torture was “successfully” used to obtain confessions of witchcraft, of satanic rituals, of treason, of any convenient treachery, but never for reasons we could be proud of. In light of such evidence, the claim that these methods could have saved American lives rings hollow. Instead, as we are now discovering, torture was used not to thwart the next attack, but instead to pave its way.

We, the proponents of exposure, must not allow the Right to define the debate around the efficacy of torture without directly challenging their central claim that torture was used exclusively for honorable ends, the saving American lives. The more we dig in this particular patch the more apparent it will become that the crime of torture was in service of an even greater crime, the war in Iraq.

By the way, those who say that a thorough investigation, let alone criminal penalties would tear the nation apart sell America short with their hysterical fear-mongering -- especially if we conclude that torture did not save lives, but was used for more malignant ends. The civil rights movement of the sixties and seventies couldn’t tear the country apart, nor the labor movement of the twenties and thirties. Civil War did not tear the nation apart, and I doubt that this would. However, I agree that investigations and possibly criminal charges would be very controversial. That is all the more reason to resolve this issue, since unless we choose to face these crimes head-on, the door to future use will be wide open.