Watching the joint House committee hearing on Maher Arar, who was kidnapped by the US and Candian governments and "rendered" to Syria where he was tortured for years before being released.
Canada has apologized and compensated him. The US has said that, while Mr. Arar DOES appear to be completely innocent of any wrongdoing, that We The People(tm) have done nothing wrong. Why? Can't tell you that. National security. Why have we kept him on the terrorist list? Can't tell you that, but no one ever gets promoted for taking names OFF a terrorists list.
The D/R breakdown is:
D: this shows that rendition is an ugly and probably unconstitutional and internationally illegal policy that should be stopped
R: rendition works, has prevented all the nines eleven that would certainly be going off every week without it and this was just one regrettable bad case
The O'Brien Moment came from comedian and amateur Neanderthal Dana Rohrabacher. Mr. Arar, unable to enter the US, is testifying via closed-circuit TV from Canada. In an effort to bring some "balance" to the debate, Mr. Rohrabacher asks Mr. Arar if he has any children (he does) and expresses gratitude that programs like rendition protected their mutual families.
That's right. Dana Rohrabacher invited a victim of torture to express gratitude for the program that had tortured him. Mr. Arar did not immediately respond, but a while later explained that he loved the US and that so did his children and the children of many others, but warned that if the US keeps treating people in this "extraordinary" manner, well, no love is unconditional.
Until there is no love but love of Big Brother.
Canada has apologized and compensated him. The US has said that, while Mr. Arar DOES appear to be completely innocent of any wrongdoing, that We The People(tm) have done nothing wrong. Why? Can't tell you that. National security. Why have we kept him on the terrorist list? Can't tell you that, but no one ever gets promoted for taking names OFF a terrorists list.
The D/R breakdown is:
D: this shows that rendition is an ugly and probably unconstitutional and internationally illegal policy that should be stopped
R: rendition works, has prevented all the nines eleven that would certainly be going off every week without it and this was just one regrettable bad case
The O'Brien Moment came from comedian and amateur Neanderthal Dana Rohrabacher. Mr. Arar, unable to enter the US, is testifying via closed-circuit TV from Canada. In an effort to bring some "balance" to the debate, Mr. Rohrabacher asks Mr. Arar if he has any children (he does) and expresses gratitude that programs like rendition protected their mutual families.
That's right. Dana Rohrabacher invited a victim of torture to express gratitude for the program that had tortured him. Mr. Arar did not immediately respond, but a while later explained that he loved the US and that so did his children and the children of many others, but warned that if the US keeps treating people in this "extraordinary" manner, well, no love is unconditional.
Until there is no love but love of Big Brother.
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SF Bay Area
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Re: The O'Brien Moment
Mon, October 22, 2007 - 9:01 PMAnd a follow up, from the WTF department. In the second half of the hearing we have experts mostly saying "we can't believe the United States is doing this kind of thing."
At one point, we get deep into the twisted legalese of what the administration believes it can and cannot do. It's the usual Guantanamo two-step, where you don't have any rights unless you're standing on US soil in which case...you don't have any rights BECAUSE you're standing on US soil.
Anyway, right at the end, one of the congressfolk asks a (non-partisan, just providing analysis) expert what would prevent the US from grabbing a foreign national standing in one of our airports (outside customs) and just hurling him into the Atlantic, having received assurances from the sharks that they won't eat him.
The expert hemmed and hawed and could provide only the most general "but that would be wrong" answer. "There would be some notion that extraordinary bodily harm on the part of a US agent would be wrong."
Yeah. That's why we send people to Syria.
The Syria thing is TOTALLY surreal. This guy is a dual citizen of Syria and Canada, resident of Canada. We sent him to Syria because we "received assurances" that he wouldn't be tortured. Assurances. From Syria. You know, the people we won't sit down and talk with because they're so untrustworthy? Yeah, that Syria.
The other thing is, when you are deporting someone off US soil and not specifically extraditing them (no charges existed against this guy in Syria), the DOI is supposed to send that someone to the country of their choosing unless doing so would detrimental to US interests.
He wanted to be deported to Canada. That's right. We had who we thought was a high-level terror suspect in custody and we thought that sending him to Canada would harm US interests but sending him to Syria would not.
We most pointedly did NOT send him to Syria to be tortured, because that would be illegal and because we received assurances from trustworthy Syria that he would not be tortured. We just thought Syria would be, you know, a better place for him than Canada.
I can hardly wait for the "I don't recall" follow ups from ex-Bushies. This was six years ago. By now, they may be ready to talk. To, you know, head off any prosecution any future administration might deem necessary to restore our credibility.
