Please read this story.

[Rex Kickass]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/opinion/25herbert.html?

[southsider2k5]

Can you post it for us non-signerupers?

[Rex Kickass]

"Thrown to the Wolves"

Bob Herbert column 2/25/05 NY Times.

 

If John Ashcroft was right, then I was staring into the malevolent, duplicitous eyes of pure evil, the eyes of a man with the mass murder of Americans on his mind. But all I could really see was a polite, unassuming, neatly dressed guy who looked like a suburban Little League coach.

 

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If Mr. Ashcroft was right, then Maher Arar should have been in a U.S. prison, not talking to me in an office in downtown Ottawa. But there he was, a 34-year-old man who now wears a perpetually sad expression, talking about his recent experiences - a real-life story with the hideous aura of a hallucination. Mr. Arar's 3-year-old son, Houd, loudly crunched potato chips while his father was being interviewed.

 

"I still have nightmares about being in Syria, being beaten, being in jail," said Mr. Arar. "They feel very real. When I wake up, I feel very relieved to find myself in my room."

 

In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

 

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

 

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

 

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

 

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

 

"I used to ask God to help them," he said.

 

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If that's so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism.

 

And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a sometimes-clownish outfit that seems to have helped set this entire fiasco in motion by forwarding bad information to American authorities, is being criticized heavily in Canada for failing to follow its own rules on the handling and dissemination of raw classified information.

 

Official documents in Canada suggest that Mr. Arar was never the target of a terror investigation there. One former Canadian official, commenting on the Arar case, was quoted in a local newspaper as saying "accidents will happen" in the war on terror.

 

Whatever may have happened in Canada, nothing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn't intervened, he most likely would not have been heard from again.

 

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.

 

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

 

"It was so scary," he said. "After a while I became like an animal."

 

A lawsuit on Mr. Arar's behalf has been filed against the United States by the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York. Barbara Olshansky, a lawyer with the center, noted yesterday that the government is arguing that none of Mr. Arar's claims can even be adjudicated because they "would involve the revelation of state secrets."

 

This is a government that feels it is answerable to no one.

[Texsox]

Oops. Sorry. How about a nice souvenir Statue of Liberty and Torture, the home game?

 

Mistakes happen. Maybe if we have to beat and torture some Canadians to keep ourselves safe, we have to.

I honestly don't know how he was caught up into this and if perhaps he is guilty and we just couldn't put a case together. I feel sorry for the guy and do believe we may have over reacted a bit in our post 9/11, we are being attacked from every where thoughts.

 

BTW, he's Canadian, how much torture could it have taken to make him talk? I hope he told them he was Muslim so he could get the US military lap dances and leather bondage treatment.

Edited February 25, 2005 by Texsox

[southsider2k5]

Wait a minute, so on one hand we are saberrattling the Syrians to stay out of Iraq and Lebanon, but on the other we are using them as torturers for hire? How does that work? Its not like are terms with them that are condusive to using them to interrogate out problems for us.

 

Something doesn't add up there. If the country had been say Turkey or Afganistan, I could see it, but Syria? The only country less believable is Iran.

[Texsox]

Wait a minute, so on one hand we are saberrattling the Syrians to stay out of Iraq and Lebanon, but on the other we are using them as torturers for hire?  How does that work?  Its not like are terms with them that are condusive to using them to interrogate out problems for us.

 

Something doesn't add up there.  If the country had been say Turkey or Afganistan, I could see it, but Syria?  The only country less believable is Iran.

 

Syria has been linked to this for a long time. Here is one article I remembered. I think we had a thread on it a while back.

 

US accused of ‘torture flights’

Stephen Grey

AN executive jet is being used by the American intelligence agencies to fly terrorist suspects to countries that routinely use torture in their prisons.

 

The movements of the Gulfstream 5 leased by agents from the United States defence department and the CIA are detailed in confidential logs obtained by The Sunday Times which cover more than 300 flights.

 

Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out “torture by proxy” — a charge denied by the American government.

 

Some of the information from the suspects is said to have been used by MI5 and MI6, the British intelligence services. The admissibility in court of evidence gained under torture is being considered in the House of Lords in an appeal by foreign-born prisoners at Belmarsh jail, south London, against their detention without trial on suspicion of terrorism.

 

Over the past two years the unmarked Gulfstream has visited British airports on many occasions, although it is not believed to have been carrying suspects at the time.

 

The Gulfstream and a similarly anonymous-looking Boeing 737 are hired by American agents from Premier Executive Transport Services, a private company in Massachusetts.

 

The white 737, registration number N313P, has 32 seats.

 

It is a frequent visitor to American military bases, although its exact role has not been revealed.

 

More is known about the Gulfstream, which has the registration number N379P and can carry 14 passengers. Movements detailed in the logs can be matched with several sightings of the Gulfstream at airports when terrorist suspects have been bundled away by US counterterrorist agents.

 

Analysis of the plane’s flight plans, covering more than two years, shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

 

Witnesses have claimed that the suspects are frequently bound, gagged and sedated before being put on board the planes, which do not have special facilities for prisoners but are kitted out with tables for meetings and screens for presentations and in-flight films.

 

The US plane is not used just for carrying prisoners but also appears to be at the disposal of defence and intelligence officials on assignments from Washington.

 

Its prisoner transfer missions were first reported in May by the Swedish television programme Cold Facts. It described how American agents had arrived in Stockholm in the Gulfstream in December 2001 to take two suspected terrorists from Sweden to Egypt.

 

At the time of what was presented as an “extradition” to Egypt, Swedish ministers made no public mention of American involvement in the detention of Ahmed Agiza, 42, and Muhammed Zery, 35, who was later cleared.

 

Witnesses described seeing the prisoners handed to US agents whose faces were masked by hoods. The clothes of the handcuffed prisoners were cut off and they were dressed in nappies covered by orange overalls before being forcibly given sedatives by suppository.

 

Linked here with more info

[Rex Kickass]

Funny how it works like that, eh?

[southsider2k5]

Nice to see Syria is willing to whore themselves out to the US.

[Texsox]

Nice to see Syria is willing to whore themselves out to the US.

 

Isn't that how we want the whole world to act towards us? We give you money, you agree and do what we say?

 

As this guy mentioned. He would say anything and sign anything to make the torture end. How reliable is this information?

[Rex Kickass]

Newsweek has got some stuff on this too this week.

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6999272/site/newsweek/

[kapkomet]

Every country whores themselves out to the US, except France and North Korea - who almost did, which is why we're all pissed off at them.

[Cerbaho-WG]

Accused of torture flights? It's a goddamn fact:

 

http://www.newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050214fa_fact6

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/opinion/25herbert.html?

 

 

Ever since William Safire left the Times they have had nobody at all worth reading. Just a bunch of leftist assclowns who sit around and pout about the plight of terrorists and those who support them. Either that or they sit around and cry about funding being pulled for needle exchange for IV drug users.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/opinion/26sat1.html

 

What a sad bunch of morons they are.

[KevHead0881]

Ever since William Safire left the Times they have had nobody at all worth reading.  Just a bunch of leftist assclowns who sit around and pout about the plight of terrorists and those who support them.  Either that or they sit around and cry about funding being pulled for needle exchange for IV drug users.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/26/opinion/26sat1.html

 

What a sad bunch of morons they are.

 

 

Yah, nothing but morons and assclowns at the NY Times. That makes sense.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Yah, nothing but morons and assclowns at the NY Times.  That makes sense.

 

I think they're going to use that as the tag line in their next marketing campaign.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

I think they're going to use that as the tag line in their next marketing campaign. 

 

 

At least that'd be truth in advertising.

[Texsox]

:headshake

 

Nice to see conservatives still trying to define news into their own definition. If it makes fun of liberals and says they're right, THAT'S NEWS! Everything else is just propaganda.

 

The Soviet Union had that style news. I guess Conservatives do like some Communist things, like a press they can control and the weak minded public that results.

 

Conservative wet dream. No one believes the press, only the GOP network. Judges cannot overturn any law. Just all Gop all the time. No ethics questions about Delay, no Watergate, no arms for hostages problems.

 

Conservatives think they need to their guns to protect them from the government, yet they are destroying the real things that prevent the government from turning on its citizens. The press and the checks and balances in our system.

 

Conservatives live in a country that they believe is half filled with pussy liberals as Nuke has said. Isn't that sad?

[southsider2k5]

As opposed to all of those socialist democrats who would rather have every decesion ever made at the government level vs taking away all private control of everything and we can tax the crap out of all behaviors that "we" decide are unpleasant and we can all have government insurance and wait 6 months to see a doctor and not have to worry about working because either the government will find us a job where we dont' have to work that hard because the job is guarenteed or if that doesn't work out we can live all of our lives on welfare and breadlines. Heck what I am thinking what jobs? The government is going to decide to restore the whole country back to its original pristine virgin forest state and shut down all of the factories and bulldoze everyone's houses so that the spotted owls have their original lands to live in and that way no one can pollute ever again. Also we wouldn't have to worry about evil conservatives ever expousing their views on God again because there would never be anykind of talk that could ever possibly make anyone feel unconfortable ever again because that is just mean. No religions, no laws, no borders, that will work, because then everyone will loose all need to hate anyone else because everyone will be completely and utterly equal under some cosmic nondiscript force, that isn't too involved as to make any person uncomfortable, yet just involved enough to give ease to those who do need to believe in something.

 

Now do you see how bad those completely extremist overreactive rants sound?

 

Give me a break, please.

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

:headshake

 

Nice to see conservatives still trying to define news into their own definition. If it makes fun of liberals and says they're right, THAT'S NEWS! Everything else is just propaganda. 

 

The Soviet Union had that style news. I guess Conservatives do like some Communist things, like a press they can control and the weak minded public that results.

 

 

Conservatives live in a country that they believe is half filled with pussy liberals as Nuke has said. Isn't that sad?

 

 

I thought it was clear that I was referring to a bunch of leftist commentators who write drivel every day for what used to be a respectable newspaper. The mindless nonsense written by their EDITORIAL pages is indeed propoganda so dont try to twist around what I said to say I despise all media.

 

It's the left that embraces a Soviet style media. They run slanted stories, slanted polls, slanted editorials and when a network like Fox News comes on the air and presents things in a different perspective you on the left wet your pants and cry CONSPIRACY! Spare me. Like I often say about you and your ilk: "You can say anything you want just so long as you dont dare to disagree with them."

 

Dont whine to me about talk radio either. The only reason that right wing talk dominates the airwaves is because there is no market for leftist drivel out there and whenever it has been tried it has failed miserably costing the radio stations lots of money in lost advertising.

[Rex Kickass]

Sorry, but you are wrong.

 

Air America is growing at a very fast clip. And doing quite well, I might add.

[sox4lifeinPA]

Sorry, but you are wrong.

 

Air America is growing at a very fast clip. And doing quite well, I might add.

 

"perfomance enhancing" drugs are for cheaters...

 

 

Conservatives were just born big...

[sox4lifeinPA]

Speaking of Attorney Generals....

 

some of my favorite highlights from Janet Reno's tour of duty.

 

 

who could forget sweet, little Elian Gonzalez?

 

and who could forget, David Koresh?

 

the next two speak for themselves

 

 

 

 

John Ashcroft is no saint....but ain't no -----> *shudders*

 

[Texsox]

I thought it was clear that I was referring to a bunch of leftist commentators who write drivel every day for what used to be a respectable newspaper.  The mindless nonsense written by their EDITORIAL pages is indeed propaganda so dont try to twist around what I said to say I despise all media. 

 

It's the left that embraces a Soviet style media.  They run slanted stories, slanted polls, slanted editorials and when a network like Fox News comes on the air and presents things in a different perspective you on the left wet your pants and cry CONSPIRACY!  Spare me.  Like I often say about you and your ilk:  "You can say anything you want just so long as you dont dare to disagree with them."

 

Dont whine to me about talk radio either.  The only reason that right wing talk dominates the airwaves is because there is no market for leftist drivel out there and whenever it has been tried it has failed miserably costing the radio stations lots of money in lost advertising.

Leftist drivel?? Only a f***ing idiot would dismiss half the population. Only a f***ing moron would believe that only conservatives have half a brain. This country has thrived because of balances. Taking the best of all groups. Conservative and Liberal. Don't through away any groups ideas and input.

 

The right has been crying liberal bias and doing it's best to get slow brained morons to only believe what is favorable to the GOP. Nice deal when the suckers believe it. If GOPers look good, it's fair and balanced. If GOPers look bad, it's biased reporting. Spare me. Almost half the population voted for the Democrat in the last election, and in the previous three elections, more voted for a Dem than the GOP. Maybe they don't own radios, but I think they do. You tell me there is no market for moderate or liberal talk radio? Amazing, the propaganda is working. How about the GOP controlled media conglomerates are trying to keep moderates off the air so the skin heads can listen to Savage and Rush?

 

Why not cut out the middleman and just believe whatever Tom Delay tells you? :headshake

 

It's a shame you cannot respect any opinion not your own. When I talk with DEMs about my views on abortion, balancing the budget, cutting programs, which are very conservative, they listen. As soon as any GOPers sniff I'm not 100% conservative they immediately stop listening.

 

And PA, thank God none of those pictures happened in *YOUR* America.

[kapkomet]

Janet Reno looks so much like Mrs. Doubtfire it's not even funny.

[Texsox]

As opposed to all of those socialist democrats who would rather have every decesion ever made at the government level vs taking away all private control of everything and we can tax the crap out of all behaviors that "we" decide are unpleasant and we can all have government insurance and wait 6 months to see a doctor

 

Yeah, we couldn't possibly come up with a better system than Canada. I love GOPers confidence in America's abilities. :puke