Michael Scheuer, a 22-year veteran of the CIA who resigned from the agency in 2004, has told the Germans newspaper, Die Zeit, that the Clinton administration had been looking for a way to circumvent US legal system since the mid-1990s .

President Clinton, his national security adviser Sandy Berger and his terrorism adviser Richard Clark ordered the CIA in the autumn of 1995 to destroy Al Qaeda. We asked the president what we should do with the people we capture. Clinton said ‘That’s up to you’.

Scheuer, who headed the CIA unit that tracked Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden from 1996 to 1999, says he developed and led the “renditions” program.

It appears that both Democratic and Republican administrations hae been willing to shred human rights protections in the war on terror.

Does anybody else think we need an alternative?