Bolton: ‘Use rendition’ to Guantanamo and ‘gentle persuasion’ for Benghazi suspects

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Neoconservative former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation John Bolton is suggesting that the U.S. should restart its practices of using “rendition” and torture to investigate the September attacks in Benghazi, Libya.

During an interview on Tuesday, Fox News host Martha MacCallum told Bolton that she was frustrated that “we’re two months out, and it seems to me, nowhere” in the investigation.

Bolton, who served as an adviser to former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, replied by blasting President Barack Obama’s administration for treating the attack “like it’s a bigger bank robbery” and allowing the FBI to investigate.

“I think it’s through the counterterrorism efforts internationally of the CIA and other elements of the intelligence community that we’re most likely to find out who did it, track them down and do that terrible thing that the Obama administration doesn’t like to do, use rendition to get these people to Guantanamo Bay and try a little gentle persuasion to see what might have happened,” he opined.

On Jan. 22, 2009, Obama signed an executive order ending former President George W. Bush’s practice of enhanced interrogations, which included techniques that many human rights advocates described as torture. The order also halted “extreme renditions” or the transfer of prisoners to countries that use torture.

During his 2008 campaign, then-Sen. Obama had also promised to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp but the center remains open due to push back from Congress.

Watch this video from Fox News’ America Live, broadcast Nov. 20, 2012.

[Photo credit: Gage Skidmore]

(h/t: Media Matters)