|
|
:: Thursday, June 30, 2005 ::
And Now for Our Next Extraordinary Rendition...
No, Virginia, “extraordinary rendition” is not a description of how the Boston Symphony performed Beethoven’s Fourth.
As it turns out, “extraordinary rendition” is how the CIA describes in comforting legalspeak the shipping off a captured terrorist assassin to some ally for “aggressive” interrogation: the kind of questioning that highly sensitive congressmen far from the killing fields find shocking, shocking! Presumably the ally lives in a country that prefers survival to white-hat rules when dealing with people who think blowing up Mom and the kids and decapitating Christians and Jews is okey-dokey.
Lexicographical research shows that this official spinspeak derives quite legitimately from legal usage: to render is to hand over.
There may also be a close connection with culinary usage: to render is to melt fat over low heat.
:: James Baar 6/30/2005 05:45:00 PM [+] ::
...  
|
