Ed Markey: “we must prevent Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Goss from carving out a special exemption for the CIA to the…”

“we must prevent Vice President Cheney and CIA Director Goss from carving out a special exemption for the CIA to the McCain amendment barring torture, a Bush-Cheney-Goss EZ pass around the law. But we should also realize that even if we ban torture by U.S. Government agencies, the CIA is likely to increase the illegal practice of extraordinary rendition, where they seize or kidnap suspects and send them to countries like Syria or Uzbekistan which are likely to subject the prisoners to torture. The Secretary of State just flew around Europe trying to explain why the United States is continuing to snatch citizens off the streets of Italy and Germany and fly them on CIA planes to secret prisons where they may be tortured. Earlier this year, I attached an amendment to the defense authorization bill to stop this practice. If we want to shut down the fast lane for torturers, we need to adopt both the McCain amendment on torture and the Markey amendment barring the outsourcing of torture to countries that do torture around the world in the name of the United States of America and the CIA. ____________________”