Like so much else in our moment, it contravened laws the U.S. had once signed on to, pretzeled the English language, and took the American taxpayer to the cleaners.
I'm talking about the now-notorious "extraordinary rendition" undertaken by the Bush administration in Italy: the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003 and his transfer -- with Italy's CIA station chief evidently riding shotgun -- to Egypt.
This was but one of an unknown number of extraordinary-rendition operations -- the estimate is more than 100 since Sept. 11, 2001, but no one really knows -- that have been conducted all over the world, delivering terrorist suspects into the custody of Uzbekistanis, Syrians, Egyptians and others notorious for their use of torture. But it just so happens that this operation took place on the democratic soil of an ally, and that the team of 19 or more participants passed through that country not like the undercover agents of our imagination, but, as former clandestine CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle told Reuters, "like elephants stampeding through Milan. They left huge footprints."
Those gargantuan footprints give us a glimpse of the unexpectedly extravagant "shadow war" being conducted on our behalf by the Bush administration. So let me skip the normal discussions of kidnappings, torture or whether we violated Italian sovereignty, and just concentrate on what those footprints revealed. If President Bush's "global war on terror" has been saddled with the inelegant acronym GWOT, the Italian rendition operation should perhaps be given the acronym LDVWOT, or "la dolce vita war on terror."
Of course, if House Majority Leader Tom DeLay could charge his airfare to Britain on an American Express card issued to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and food and phone calls at a Scottish golf course hotel on a credit card issued to his former aide and Washington lobbyist Edwin A. Buckham; if Halliburton could slip a reputed $813 million extra in "costs" into a contract providing logistical support for U.S. troops (including $152,000 in "movie library costs" and a $1.5-million tailoring bill), then why shouldn't the Spartan warriors of the CIA capture a few taxpayer bucks while preparing a kidnapping?
Here's what the newspapers have reported about this particular version of la dolce vita. The CIA participants took rooms in Milan's five-star hotels, including the Principe di Savoia, one of the world's most luxuriously appointed hotels, where they rang up $42,000 in expenses. The total cost of their stays: $144,984. The gourmet spies preferred to eat in the fanciest restaurants in Milan and elsewhere.
