Instead of his motto being "Hope and Change," Obama ought to change it to "Irony and the Status Quo."

The latest evidence that Obama's overheated, exaggerated rhetoric about how Bush was fighting the War on Terror revealed a naivete and stupidity about the nature of that war and our enemies comes to us via the New York Times and an article by Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti:

The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials. The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.

In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.

In addition, Pakistan's intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaeda operatives captured since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said.

The irony is palpable. The zeal that liberal activists have shown to condemn American policies regarding terrorism has led to the same type of outsourcing that they have decried when it comes to provision of goods and services in other areas.

It is called rendition. And it is still occurring under the new Obama administration. The one that is -or was supposed to be -all about change. I wonder if the panoply of rights that America had given terror suspects during the Bush years will be accessible to these terror suspects? Has the perfect been the enemy of the good? I guess the Obama administration - lionized for its honesty and openness - has had other issues on its mind and just forgot to tell the American people that rendition is still a fact of life.