Outsourcing... what?!

When you hear "outsourcing", you usually think "migration of jobs overseas". Well, this term is now also associated with a much darker and more sinister policy - that of 'ourtouscing torture'. It consists in seizing individuals in Africa, Asia, Europe, Canada or the United-States without even the semblance of due process and sending them off to be interrogated by regimes known to practice torture.
A chilling article by the New Yorker gives a detailed account of this secretive program called "extraordinary rendition". According to journalist Jane Mayer, the program, which was started during the Clinton aministration,

was originally carried out on a limited basis, but after September 11th, when President Bush declared a global war on terrorism, the program expanded beyond recognition—becoming, according to a former C.I.A. official, “an abomination.”

Canadian citizen Arar was seized because his name had turned up on a watch list of terror suspects. He was reported to have been a co-worker of a man in Canada whose brother was a suspected terrorist.

Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say.

Indeed, G.W. Bush might be inspired to watch a few episodes of season 4 of '24' and see that in the end, torture does not work anyway. So why bother?