Accountability

Now this is how to deal with renderings:

An Italian judge has ordered the arrest of 13 operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency accused of kidnapping an Egyptian cleric on a Milan street two years ago and sending him to a prison in Egypt for questioning, Italian prosecutors and investigators said today...

The judge's action represents the first time that American operatives face prosecution by a foreign criminal justice system for carrying out the C.I.A.'s policy of "extraordinary rendition," the legal term for the agency's practice of seizing terror suspects in one country and delivering them to be detained in another, including countries that routinely engage in torture. Since Sept. 11, 2001, more than 100 terrorism suspects have been transferred by the United States to Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and other countries, where some former captives have said they were tortured.

Of course, in practice this likely only means that the affected agents will have to tread carefully in Italy itself - there's no chance the U.S. will voluntarily turn them over. (Unless Valerie Plame is somehow involved.)

But at the very least, this makes clear what the renderings are: kidnappings leading to torture, not legitimate law-enforcement activity.