Confused by this latest revelation of secret Bush administration activity? Prisoners in Guantanamo, torture in Abu Ghraib, secret CIA renditions and now secret NSA spying.

I didnt know there was a secret FISA court but since there is, why would the Bush Administration avoid the court and have the NSA spy without a warrant based on secret presidential authority? At first I was baffled. The court seems easy enough to use and its whole purpose was to grant warrants for secret surveillance... By itself this NSA thing makes no sense.

But when you combine it with President Cheney's insistence on torture and the CIA Rendition program (ie capturing people and whisking them off to 3rd World Prisons), there appears to be a method to the madness...

The reason not to use the FISA court is because you dont want anyone to know who you are spying on so that you can "render" them to secret prisons and torture them at your leisure. In the name of protecting us from terrorists, of course. What if these people have a bomb and could kill thousands of innocent Americans?

Why Wouldn't They Go to the FISA Court?

Laura Rozen thinks that Noah Schachtman is right: the NSA domestic intercept program that the Bush administration set up to evade oversight by the FISA court is the result of improvements in technology followed by utter stupidity in its application:

60 Minutes also did a disturbing piece on the rendition program. We captured and tortured an innocent man for 6 months in secret jails. Ooops. The Arab names are so hard tell apart.

But not to worry, he was only a foreigner. We are the country of freedom so if we need to capture a few people and torture them, so be it. At least we have the good taste to keep it secret and dont go showing off with video tapes on TV like those terrorist fellows. And President Cheney is a freely elected Democratic official, so we are the good guys.

Rendition Revisited

(CBS) The Secretary of State last week had to tour Europe fending off charges that the United States is illegally kidnapping and torturing suspects in the war on terror.

But most everywhere Condoleeza Rice went, she was peppered with questions about the man you’re about to hear from.

Kalid al-Masri is a 42-year-old car salesman from Germany. His incredible story of kidnapping, imprisonment and interrogation has helped expose a secret U.S. tactic now known as "rendition." A CIA unit called the rendition group has used a fleet of unmarked planes to snatch suspects around the world. Well over 100 people have disappeared this way.

But a number of these suspects have been flown to prisons notorious for torture. And some, like Khalid al-Masri, may have been rendered by mistake.