Herbert: It's Called Torture

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28herbert.html?hp=&pagewanted=print&position=

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.

[sellitman]

1. Is Anyone paying attention?

Do you have to call yourself Liberal to care about this stuff? Shouldn't the worms on Free Repugnic be just as incensed? What am i missing?

[ixion]

2. IOKIYAR

that seems to be the way things work these days.

Doesn't really matter what you do, as long as you have a little 'murikan flag on your lapel and a dorky yellow save the troops magnet on your car next to your 'W' cult sticker.

Truly, we have crossed over through into the looking glass. :crazy:

[primavera]

3. How are Repukes going to justify this?

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."

Keep your eyes peeled, people. If Markey's bill doesn't make it to the floor for a vote, we need to make sure the country knows about it. If Repukes speak against legislation banning torture, the needs to become one weighty fucking albatross around their necks.

[Briar]

4. It is great that Herbert gets what is wrong with all this

but I fear he is in an ineffective minority (along with most real liberals in the US). "Protecting American citizens" seems a sufficient excuse for what is happening - that and revenge, and a spreading and deep-rooted (and rotting) islamphobia. It didn't start with 9/11, I suspect...this attitude was bred over decades of "law and order" brutalism that applauds capital punishment, shrugs with indifference at the number of people in American prisons and quietly applauds when "bad guys" are beaten, raped, or murdered. Human rights are routinely denied to millions in the American penal system (and out of it: denying convicted felons the right to vote for life doesn't seem to outrage many either), so why should Americans get upset when foreigners suffer to ensure their own safety?