Governments obscure torture by outsourcing it to proxy torturers with euphemistic names

Evidence

In addition, responsibility for torturous interrogation practices was displaced by outsourcing them to proxy agents. Abducted foreign suspects were shipped for interrogation to overseas countries that torture detainees. As one intelligence official put it: “We don’t kick the shit out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the shit out of them” (Cosgrove-Mather, 2004). This brutal policy, carried out by proxy torturers, was cloaked in an innocuous name, “extraordinary rendition.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2403

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘extraordinary rendition’ as a euphemism for state outsourcing of torture.
• SEED: Article angle: the psychology of euphemism — how innocuous labels (‘extraordinary rendition’) enable officials to maintain moral self-image while authorizing atrocity.