One of the peculiar aspects of Bush foreign policy was the insistence that we could not trust the Syrian government enough to talk face-to-face on regional issues, but that we were happy to receive assurances that the people we sent over there for interrogation wouldn’t be tortured. Silly us.

President Obama, sadly, has said he’ll continue the policy of extraordinary rendition — the temporary deportation of terror suspects to other countries. If American torture doesn’t get us good information, then neither will foreign torture. If our interrogation methods aren’t good enough for the president, then he needs to set about addressing that — not outsourcing the torture business.