Third Party & Independents: Archives

If the guy’s story checks out, I hope he sues the pants off the US government, and then goes after Bush and Ashcroft personally. Seriously, I wonder what his legal recourse is. Is this one of the reasons Bush is fighting so hard against the ICC?

AP-

It doesn’t surprise me a bit that Bush doesn’t want to be a part of the ICC when I see stories like this. As long as we’re separate, the US govt is supreme. But, I’m not exactly thrilled about joining the ICC either. I fear we’d just be trading in one corruption for another.

As far as the lawsuit goes, I doubt he’ll see a dime recompense, especially if there’s sensitive ‘classified information’ involved…

Hey… Wait a minute… That wasn’t a warm, fuzzy security story at all! I feel so betrayed…

I think it’s strange that there have only been 3 comments on this thread so far. I’m wondering where all the people are who so thoroughly supported the use of torture in earlier threads. I would be curious to see how they justify this, because, it’s a given that once we sign up to use torture as a method of combating terrorism, we also sign on to torture innocent people. I wonder what they’d say to this man: ‘sorry for any innconvenice’?

This is off topic of everything else, but why would Homeland security forces just drop this guy off after 10 months and not say anything else? Do they not expect him to be really upset about this?

I guess they really just have lots of faith that nothing will come of it.

Po, what the heck else were they going to do? Once you break something, sweeping it under the rug isn’t always the best choice.

I guess you’re right.

I have noticed a remarkable tendency among Republicans to ignore things that contradict them. This thread is a perfect example. Where is Jack or Eric? Where are the Terri Schiavo supporters? It amazes me how thundering the silence is.

You shrug your shoulders and bomb something else…

Aldous, Democrats tend to ignore things that contradict them too. Or rather, they tend to illogically rationalize and try to make sense out of crap. At the end of the day, it’s still crap, but the Democrats still try to make sense out of it.

However, it would still be nice to get a hard-core Republican to give his/her thoughts on this.

Since I am mentioned by name, I will write. Why haven’t I commented? Two reasons. First because I like A Parker and didn’t want to argue with him about something I don’t feel strongly about and because I really don’t have a strong opinion or put another way, I don’t have a settled opinion on the subject of rendition. In general, it troubles me less than it does most of you.

We commonly deport people to their countries of origin for various reasons. That is how we used to get rid of mobsters and former Nazis. A foreigner can be deported to his country of origin. If he is carrying both a Syrian and Canadian passport and has dual citizenship (which he does), he has created the confusion as to where. The officials may or may not have acted completely in good faith, but they came through a door Arar opened for them. When a foreigner is deported from the U.S. the official decide his country of origin. If you have more than one citizenship, you give them the option. Dual citizens should keep that in mind. It is the law all over the world, not just the U.S.

Syria, as you recall, is no friend of the U.S., so the cooperation could not have been close in any case..

I regret when a person who is not a terrorist falls into the hands of his own people (considering who his own people might be). If the person is a terrorist, frankly I don’t give a damn. And people who have a casual relationship with terror organizations or believe in the radical chic are suffering the consequences of their actions.

I do find it equally frustrating when terrorist supporters can more or less openly operate in our country.

The question is deeper than we like to believe. When we are acting from a position of overwhelming strength, we can afford to be magnanimous. As the danger becomes greater, we have to be less generous. After 9/11 there seemed to be real danger that terrorists would strike again. We ratcheted up our awareness and ratcheted down our tolerance of danger.

What the officials saw is a person who retained his Syrian citizenship, despite years of living in Canada. He is a Canadian, but he is also a Syrian. He has kept both options and given them to others. So this is what the officials faced. They had a report that he was linked with terrorist (wrong or right, they had it). He is coming from Tunisia. He is a citizen of Syria (and Canada).

I will tell you something else I know from experience. The U.S. officials cannot defend themselves in the media. They might have extensive information, but privacy and security concerns prevent them from revealing it. I have worked on cases where we had real bad guys accusing us in the media of being unfair to them. I get a call from a journalist asking for comments and all I could say was that we don’t comment on individual cases. They think we are admitting we are wrong, but that is not true. We truly just can’t comment.

Jack, they did a little more than just deport him…

Maybe you didn’t see the word “torture” followed by the words, “for 10 months.”

The US government has (apparently) already admitted that the person they helped torture was not in fact related to Al Qaeda. I understand it is sometimes difficult to defend oneself because of certain obligations, but I fail to see how any information could vindicate this sort of behavior.

So… You’re not going to condemn the US-sponsored torture of an innocent man?

In general, it troubles me less than it does most of you.

Of course. You can’t make an omlette without breaking some eggs. I believe Stalin said that, too.

As for the “Bush has secret information” argument that usually gets trotted out as a last defense for an indefensible position, they let the guy go because they had nothing - secret or otherwise - on him.

Jack, how about just a blanket general condemnation of the torture of innocent people? You know, just so people don’t think all Republicans are bloodthirsty fiends. ;)

I see you all needed me to get this discussion going, so I can play the skunk at the garden party.

AP - Yes, torturing innocent people is always odious. I am against it in all cases. If this guy is innocent and he was tortured by the Syrians I oppose that.

The key is innocence.

I suspect in this case, there might be a lot of politics at work. When I looked up this case on Google, I found a lot of slick webpages. I don’t know all the facts in this case, but I do see that this is being used to discredit relatively robust responses to terror. And I don’t believe that we can extend American legal protections to the whole world. Terrorists can use our legal systems against us. It is a fine line to walk.

You know that if you had absolute advanced knowledge that the 9/11 terrorists were planning to attack the planes, the only crime you could have got them on was visa charges. Maybe you could have deported them back to Saudi and they would have appeared to be innocent and persecuted because of their faith and national origins. The problem with terrorists is that they hide in the population and don’t seem threatening until they do their evil deed. Unlike ordinary criminals, they don’t have the usual material motivations that we trace in crime.

Prosecuting terrorist is like going after the Mafia, only harder because infiltrating the inner organization is harder and they don’t leave a paper or money trail. It is often almost impossible to get convictions on the real charges, so the authorities are stuck with things like tax evasion. It looks like harassment.

I don’t know if Mr. Arar is innocent or not. I don’t know what the Syrians did. I don’t believe there was a direct connection between what the Syrians did and what we wanted, since the Syrians are not exactly on our side in this conflict. It is a legal case and a diplomatic case between the U.S. and Canada. We don’t have enough information to pass judgment.

I also have a problem with dual citizenship. My daughter is a Brazilian citizen by birth, but she doesn’t carry dual citizenship. It creates an ambiguity and no man can serve two masters. Mr. Arar always calls himself a Canadian now, but he evidently also remained a Syrian citizen. That choice is what made it possible to deport him to Syria.

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Jack-

Thanks for your comments, you have what it takes to get discussion going around here…

As for your content, I agree with you in some aspects. America’s situation is difficult as we allow personal freedom, which can be exploited by anyone wishing to cause harm. You are correct that we cannot judge this man as terrorist or innocent Syrian engineer, but that’s not why I bring these types of stories in. My point is that we need to be aware of the incredible power the government already possesses in being able to ‘disappear’ any particular person. Not to mention additional measures which are already in the works like Secure Flight. Not to mention in the writings of the Department of Homeland Security, evangelical christians are categorized as possible terrorists. (I’ll see if I can find a link for that, I just read it this week.) Such things do not exactly bode well for the future of religious freedom in America.

Nice to see you approve of Extraordinary Rendition. FYI, the CIA believes that 50-70% of all those arrested are completely innocent without any ties whatsoever to a hostile entity. Nice way to spread Freedom.

I don’t believe there was a direct connection between what the Syrians did and what we wanted

But it is a fact that the Bush administration sends detainees to other countries for interrogation, which usually includes torture. Do you just doubt the connection in this particular case, or are you saying you’re in complete denial?

All Administrations and authorities in most countries have at times sent people to other countries where interrogation method might be more robust. This doesn’t necessarily mean torture. Interrogators in a home country will almost certainly be more aware of cultural nuances. Insider cultural knowledge allows one to get information when none seems to have been given. For example, if I was talking to someone from the city where I grew up, a few questions can establish his bona fides (or not). I would also be more likely to be able to cajole, persuade or shame him into giving me what I wanted and I could always play the good cop. We are brothers. I understand why you didn’t want to tell the Americans, but you can just tell me one little thing.

I do have some doubts about the facts of this case because of our dicey relations with Syria, but I just don’t know.

People have, in my opinion, an affirmative duty to help fight terrorism. If the Canadian authorities picked me up at an airport, I would answer every question they asked me truthfully and to the best of my ability because I want to help them stop the bad guys. I don’t know if this guy was as cooperative, but he should have been.

We have legal protections in place to protect the innocent. In an imperfect world, it is not always possible to determine innocence with full certainty. Therefore, we set the threshold high. We know that means that some of the guilty get away with their crimes and it is the price we are willing to pay to protect the innocent. Lately, the process has become more important to some people than the goal. As they seem to see it, we should have a level playing field between the guilty and the authorities. It’s like a game. In that game people like OJ Simpson, Robert Blake and probably Michael Jackson win. If you had to bet your life on whether they were guilty or not, which way would you bet?

It is bad enough when a few celebrities can get away with murder. It is worse if we extend all this to foreign terrorists and their sympathizers. The goal is to protect the innocent. The goal is to protect the innocent. I say it twice because we seem to have forgotten. The innocent are also those who have the right not to be blown up by terrorists.

Jack, do you work for the Government?

All Administrations and authorities in most countries have at times sent people to other countries where interrogation method might be more robust. This doesn?t necessarily mean torture.

C’mon, Jack. Everybody knows it does. Heck, Congress just recently voted to block appropriations for renditions because assurances from other countries that they won’t torture detainees are “a farce.”

The House voted 420 to 2 yesterday to prohibit the use of supplemental appropriations to support actions that contravene anti-torture statutes. The measure’s co-author, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), singled out renditions, saying “diplomatic assurances not to torture are not credible, and the administration knows it.”

Under Clinton, they only sent guys who had been indicted off for torture, now Bush is sending off people merely picked up on suspicion.

If the Canadian authorities picked me up at an airport, I would answer every question they asked me truthfully and to the best of my ability because I want to help them stop the bad guys.

That might work for a white guy with the Canadian authorities, but it would be different in the States. Last year, I walked through the metal detector at LAX before the security guy waved me through, and got yelled at and strip searched. Despite the intimidation, I remained calm the entire time. I was cooperative and I didn’t blow up until after they told me I could go. It didn’t make any difference how cooperative I was, and I can only imagine what it would have been like if I was an Arab.

BTW, the detector didn’t light up and I’m a big ol’ cracker traveling with my equally pasty-white wife and 2 year old boy, so it had nothing to do with profiling - the security guy was just an asshole super-patriot.

And my sister and her family just had a similar experience flying into LAX, but my brother-in-law’s hispanic, so that might have had something to do with it…

I’m all for security, but it’s just totally out of control. I hate flying into the US.

I do look pale, but I have been subject to the special search at airports (although never a strip search) three times. My blond haired daughter got the full treatment, as has my reddish haired son. One of us has been searched almost all the times we have traveled. I don’t know what sets off the alarm bells. We are well behaved and experience travelers, who know what not to carry and how to act. Clearly you don’t have to look Arab or be a foreigner. I think the whole profiling scare is overblown. It has become conventional wisdom, but may be more a matter of perception. If I were Middle Eastern, my disproportionate number of searches would surely seem to have been motivated by bias. As it is, everyone dismisses it as bad luck.

A while back, somebody on this blog was complaining about profiling and I went to one of the sites that purported to chronicle the cases of discrimination. There were some that looks valid, but many were just the interpretations that could have had many explanations. It is similar to the situation with voting in Ohio or Florida - a lot of anecdotes, but no real evidence.

And I don’t believe that torture is always the reason for rendition. We always hear the argument that torture doesn’t work to get information, but various culturally based techniques do

Wow - this is literally mortifying. Only in this country could a group people get so up in arms over the exposure of a breast on TV and turn around and stand idly by as an innocent man is picked up in one of our airports and sent to another country to be tortured for 10 months. Moral majority my ass. I expected the usual apologists, but the level of ho hum dismissal is really mind blowing:

‘We commonly deport people to their countries of origin for various reasons.’

Deport?

‘I do have some doubts about the facts of this case because of our dicey relations with Syria…’

But no doubts are raised as to why the US would send a man to a country that we have ‘dicey’ relationships with?

‘countries where interrogation method might be more robust’

Robust? That gets my Rumsfeldian Understatement of the Day Award.

You know, our system has been proven wrong again and again and again. It might our intelligence before the war, our predictions for the post war, or back here, how many people we continually find to be innocent after we’ve put them on death row. Yet, we continue to blunder forward as though there was no other solution. I know that people are people and that we will make mistakes. But do we have to make so many that result in dead or tortured people?

Here’s an idea: What if we didn’t send people to countries we KNOW use torture. Would that not solve the problem of torturing innocent people?

A traditional Norfolk koan may assist:

They couldn’t get the quality of person
They were looking for
To be their Chief Executive.
So they engaged a firm of headhunters
Called Machete Management.

“What is your person-specification?”
They were asked.

“The person we seek will be
Male, ambitious,
Unafraid of ICT,
A team player,
Good at networking,
Of unimpeachable moral probity,
Of swarthy complexion,
Able to demonstrate
A successful track record
In illicit arms dealing,
And a history of good standing
In the Muslim community.”

Machete Management
Conducted an exhaustive search
Of their much-admired
International database.

One week later,
They reported back.
“No such person exists
In the known world,” they said.
“But we have found
A alternative candidate
You may be interested in.”

“She is a Great White Shark
Of Hindu persuasion,
Brought up in an aquarium
In Northern Ireland,
Who likes pork and apple soup,
Takes bird-watching holidays
In the mountains of Kashmir,
And has never been involved
In any kind of business
Other than prostitution.”

“An additional recommendation
Is that she has a profound allergy
To new technology,
And is modest and retiring by nature.”

“How soon can she start?”
Machete Management were asked.
“She can start
As soon as she gets back
From Guantanamo Bay,”
They were advised.

I am curious about Jack’s use of Celebrities as a scapegoat. Nice way of bashing Actors AND Judges at the same time. Exactly which of them got away with murder?

Why is everyone so worried about profiling. I believe that we should do some profiling. Think: We know who most terrorists look like and we know that they are a small portion of the population. This means that the most effective random sampling technique would be to limit the population that will be sampled as to include the most number of potential terrorists. Last time I checked, an 70-80 year old lady is a highly unlikely candidate for a terrorist, yet last time I flew, they took an old lady aside for a more complete check.

Not profiling is a waste of time.

Aldous

OJ Simpson and Robert Blake might get together and look for the “real killers”. Maybe they can find each other.

If I were Middle Eastern, my disproportionate number of searches would surely seem to have been motivated by bias.

Jack, I never mentioned profiling as an issue. I said that, had I been Arab, my detainment would probably have been worse than it actually was.

But nice deflection from the topic of the Bush administration sending people picked up on suspicion to countries Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, et.al. know will torture them - innocent or not. You’re a pro. ;)

Jack made a VERY telling point — He Wrote:
In an imperfect world, it is not always possible to determine innocence with full certainty.

Excuse me, but the LAST time I looked, the principal is
INNOCENT UNTIL PROVEN GUILTY (beyond a reasonable doubt) — just when did that get changed?? I’d really like to know because I think of myself as keeping up on this sort of thing.

Actually I’m not suprized because this sort of attitude is expressed by people who belive that the loss of freedoms only applies to the “bad guys” (AS IN. “who cares if a terrorist has his freedoms denied??— Why should I care??” — ahhh, JUST WHO GETS TO DECIDE WHO THE TERRORIST IS?????)

So now I guess, according to Jack we now have to PROVE our INNOCENCE!!! Wow, to think I missed that one!