It's called TORTURE.

[LynnTheDem]

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?

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?

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.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/28/opinion/28herbert.html?hp

[suffragette]

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

That line from the article says it all. They feel they are or should be above the law in this, in Section 102 of HR 418 and in all areas.

Still, there are those trying to hold them accountable.
What we can do is keep shouting about it and supporting those who are trying to bring justice back to our country.

From the article above:
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."
And from the CCR website:

http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/report.asp?ObjID=vRQgEt97ZX&Content=318

CCR, on behalf of Canadian citizen Maher Arar, sues Attorney General John Ashcroft and other U.S. officials for sending him to be tortured in Syria.

Said Michael Ratner, President of CCR’s Board of Directors, “Maher Arar’s case is not an isolated one. He is but one of many victims of the Administration’s acknowledged ‘policy’ of ‘extraordinary rendition.’ This case presents the first legal challenge to this policy in an attempt to end the practice of shipping persons suspected of terrorism to other countries for interrogation under torture in order to bypass international and domestic law.”

[LynnTheDem]

2. For me what hurts the most tho is the total lack of caring & outrage from

American citizens.

For half a century we've been shaking our heads and wondering "how the Germans could have allowed it to happen", patting ourselves on our backs for being so Pure and Good; and not a peep of outrage out of America over Gitmo and torture and extraordinary renditions.

Instead, we have Americans trying to JUSTIFY TORTURE. How the f*ck did we ever get so damn low.

[suffragette]

3. absolutely agree with you

Since I first read about this in the New Yorker, I've talked to people about it. Most people were completely blase about it. It's almost like people have divorced themselves from the government, understandably so given what the government has been doing. And so many people feel helpless in the face of the many outrages that unfold daily. It is overwhelming.
But, they are doing this in our name. We, the people, have to step up and actively denounce these actions whenever we hear of them, otherwise we have become those who "have allowed it to happen."