Posted on 02/28/2005 4:38:48 AM PST by Red6
"Extraordinary rendition" is the euphemism for seizing individuals and shipping them off to countries known to practice torture. By BOB HERBERT
As a nation, does the United States have a conscience? Or is anything and everything O.K. in post-9/11 America? If torture and the denial of due process are O.K., why not murder? When the government can just make people vanish - which it can, and which it does - where is the line that we, as a nation, dare not cross?
When I interviewed Maher Arar in Ottawa last week, it seemed clear that however thoughtful his comments, I was talking with the frightened, shaky successor of a once robust and fully functioning human being. Torture does that to a person. It's an unspeakable crime, an affront to one's humanity that can rob you of a portion of your being as surely as acid can destroy your flesh.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen with a wife and two young children, had his life flipped upside down in the fall of 2002 when John Ashcroft's Justice Department, acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government, decided it would be a good idea to abduct Mr. Arar and ship him off to Syria, an outlaw nation that the Justice Department honchos well knew was addicted to torture.
Mr. Arar was not charged with anything, and yet he was deprived not only of his liberty, but of all legal and human rights. He was handed over in shackles to the Syrian government and, to no one's surprise, promptly brutalized. A year later he emerged, and still no charges were lodged against him. His torturers said they were unable to elicit any link between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was sent back to Canada to face the torment of a life in ruins.
Mr. Arar's is the case we know about. How many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have?
President Bush spent much of last week lecturing other nations about freedom, democracy and the rule of law. It was a breathtaking display of chutzpah. He seemed to me like a judge who starves his children and then sits on the bench to hear child abuse cases. In Brussels Mr. Bush said he planned to remind Russian President Vladimir Putin that democracies are based on, among other things, "the rule of law and the respect for human rights and human dignity."
Someone should tell that to Maher Arar and his family.
Mr. Arar was the victim of an American policy that is known as extraordinary rendition. That's a euphemism. What it means is that the United States seizes individuals, presumably terror suspects, and sends them off without even a nod in the direction of due process to countries known to practice torture.
A Massachusetts congressman, Edward Markey, has taken the eminently sensible step of introducing legislation that would ban this utterly reprehensible practice. In a speech on the floor of the House, Mr. Markey, a Democrat, said: "Torture is morally repugnant whether we do it or whether we ask another country to do it for us. It is morally wrong whether it is captured on film or whether it goes on behind closed doors unannounced to the American people."
Unfortunately, the outlook for this legislation is not good. I asked Pete Jeffries, the communications director for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, if the speaker supported Mr. Markey's bill. After checking with the policy experts in his office, Mr. Jeffries called back and said: "The speaker does not support the Markey proposal. He believes that suspected terrorists should be sent back to their home countries."
Surprised, I asked why suspected terrorists should be sent anywhere. Why shouldn't they be held by the United States and prosecuted?
"Because," said Mr. Jeffries, "U.S. taxpayers should not necessarily be on the hook for their judicial and incarceration costs."
It was, perhaps, the most preposterous response to any question I've ever asked as a journalist. It was not by any means an accurate reflection of Bush administration policy. All it indicated was that the speaker's office does not understand this issue, and has not even bothered to take it seriously.
More important, it means that torture by proxy, close kin to contract murder, remains all right. Congressman Markey's bill is going nowhere. Extraordinary rendition lives.
This is absurd. So if we had sent this guy to GITMO or a US facility the same writer would be lecturing us about how we wrongfully hold foreign nationals in our prisons against their will and how we have no right to do so.
I have some questions myself.
1. He talks of "Due Process", is this an accurate statement to bring in since the individual was Syrian/Canadian and sent back home basically? Was there no due process?
2. Has it been determined as a "fact" that this individual was tortured, or is this a baseless assumption of the NYT where the terror susspect of course will state "Yes yes, I was tortured". Because if there is no torture this story goes away, and the premise of the whole story seems based on a weak foundation.
3. He claims we have made many people dissappear. Who are they? Who are these people we have made dissappear? Names? I'm not talking about some guy rotting in a prison who we know where he is but you just can't talk to him. Not those at GITMO either. He claims we made people dissapear (ie dead in gone)?
Red6
Terrorists beware.
Sort of like reading the NY Times...
Almost exactly like it, in fact......
You mean like the slaughter of 3,500 innocents on 9/11? Yeah, why not? After all, our enemies have no such moral misgivings. Are we supposed to fight that madness with calm words and group hugs?
It's amazing what rises to the level of torture these days. Apparently a water spot on your salad fork is cause for an international investigation. And heaven help you if you serve the chardonnay at room temperature!
It's a war. There are casulaties.
It's so easy to blame the government under Mr Bush - where are the facts. Trial by Opinion Editorial is not in our Constitution. It has been a given fact that, the news that we read today are based on Opinion rather than facts.
If the Candadian Governmet (a liberal governmetn) handed over its citizen to another government (the US governmet) -this person must have something awfully wrong - but this was not explained in this editorial.
One thing that this liberals should and must learn - is the US Government is the best in the entire world - and no one can deny that. If this is not the case - how come so many Europeans, Asians, with a total of 200,000 come and want to live here - not counting the illegals.
These guys who write derogatory remarks of our government need to spent some time in any other country - then they will realize that leaving the US was a mistake.
God Bless America.
Hey Bob Herbert! I just tortured myself reading your column. Who do I complain to?
<< many other individuals have disappeared at the hands of the Bush administration? How many have been sent, like the victims of a lynch mob, to overseas torture centers? How many people are being held in the C.I.A.'s highly secret offshore prisons? Who are they and how are they being treated? Have any been wrongly accused? If so, what recourse do they have? >>
Anyone doubt that "Liberalism" is a mental disorder.
This Herbert person is a psychopathological-projection-syndrome-suffering simpleton. A dangerous dullard of Al-Fredo Gore-Leone proportions!
And, least we forget: a treasonous and subversive fifth columnist of the kind -- speaking of "lynch mobs" -- that we not too long ago would have dragged to the nearest wall and lawfully and deservedly shot to death!
"acting at least in part on bad information supplied by the Canadian government"
Then maybe he should be angry with the Canadian gov't?
Who knows what the Canadians said?
The Justice Dept. might have acted too hastily in the wake of 9/11, but he needs more documentation on whether this is more than a few isolated cases.
If he wants to be angry at countries who send people back to where they will be tortured, he should direct his anger at Australia, any European country, any Asian country, Canada, in fact I don't know if there's a country on the planet that doesn't do this.
And to a much greater degree than the U.S.
If he would have told the truth...there would have not been any torture
Wasn't "extraordinary rendition" a policy begun by the Clinton administration?
Personally, I am bored with the MSM trying to give this dead horse traction.
While it may be news to the average Joe in Canada, (and I doubt it) it falls flat here, no matter how shrill the terrorists and their supporters in the media are.
I wonder how loud this gutless wonder would wail if the Islamonazis ever got hold of his boyfriend? Pansyassed traitor is what he is.
Another chapter in the long saga of the political Left acting as legal counsel for the enemies of America.
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