Robert Scheer: An administration's descent into barbarism

[n2doc]

An administration's descent into barbarism
Robert Scheer
Wednesday, September 20, 2006


WHAT AN outrage for President Bush to invoke the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in his address to the United Nations, a day after a Canadian government commission accused the United States of rendering one of its citizens to Syria for torture. Did no one on his staff inform the president that Article 5 of that declaration explicitly states "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment?" For those, such as Bush, who regard torture as a variant of college fraternity hazing, it would be instructive to consider the fate of Maher Arar as revealed in that devastating Canadian judicial report released on Monday. Arar, a Canadian citizen and engineer who had fled repressive Syria two decades earlier as a teenager, was seized by the FBI at JFK airport and "rendered" to the government of Syria for nearly a year of being whipped with a "shredded electrical cable until he was disoriented" -- that is, when he was not confined to his coffin-size cage.

The United States transported Arar to the very same Syria which Bush has been condemning since his first days in office, and as he did again on Tuesday, calling Syria "a crossroad for terrorism." So, will anyone in that somnambulant White House press corps dare ask the president why he would turn over a prisoner to such a government? And an innocent one at that?

Yes, innocent. On Monday, the Canadian justice who headed a 30-month investigation of this case concluded that, "I am able to say categorically that there is no evidence that Mr. Arar has committed any offense." The judge employed characteristic Canadian restraint in concluding in his damning three-volume, 822-page report that "The American authorities who handled Mr. Arar's case treated Mr. Arar in a most regrettable fashion. They removed him to Syria against his wishes and in the face of his statements that he would be tortured if sent there. Moreover, they dealt with Canadian officials involved with Mr. Arar's case in a less than forthcoming manner." To put it a bit more bluntly: U.S. officials lied to their Canadian counterparts and never revealed that Arar was "rendered" to Syria precisely to be tortured.

In fact, the outsourcing of torture, as U.S. Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., exposes so brilliantly on his Web site, has been the official and all-too-common practice of this president since 9/11. Foreign citizens have been stolen off the streets of even close democratic allies of the United States and sent to be tortured by regimes otherwise branded as fascist by this president.

more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2006/09/20/EDG6PKDTN01.DTL

[TahitiNut]

1. There's nothing DECENT about this administation.

:dunce:


:evilgrin:

[n2doc]

2. yeah yeah, corrected the spelling

damn you, english language!

[AntiFascist]

3. Sounds like Bush has joined his axis of evil, what a snake! n/t

[Captain Hilts]

4. Eleanor Roosevelt is whirling in her grave. She'll get even. nt

[babylonsister]

5. When will enough be enough for someone with some

influence to do something?

by Steve Young

If President Bush needs clarity to interpret the Geneva Conventions anti-torture provisions - and he really means it - the next visitor to the Oval Office should be Maher Arar, a Canadian computer consultant who was labeled - wrongly - as a dangerous radical and "an Islamic extremist individual."

If Congress needs to hear what being held without due justice under CIA cover as it is now, the next person they need to interview is Maher Arar, who was taken by U.S. authorities and secretly rendered to Syria, where he was "...beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months," said a report focusing on Canadian intelligence

If John McCain, Lindsay Graham, John Warner and Colin Powell need to confirm what they've believed all along about how wrong-headed and criminal the Bush Administration's desire to continue their definition of legal interrogation, the next persons they need to break bread with is Maher Arar and his wife - a university economist - who were placed on al-Qaeda "watchlist," without any justification.

If Hannity and O'Reilly truly want to inform their listeners and Fox News fans of what the president's "clarification" really asks for, then the next person they need to interview is Maher Arar, who will tell them that "an innocent Canadian was tortured, his life was put upside down, and it set him back years and years." That is if he can get that out before he is interrupted by a litany of talking points by the host.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_steve_yo_060919...

Borrowed from here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x236367

[KoKo]

6. In the meantime the MSM doesn't give this coverage. It's dead to them

so the average American will never know. They might be lucky to see a print story on the backpages...If they are lucky. Only readers of "San Francisco Chronical" and the internets will know it exists.

One more atrocity to add to the list. When will anyone do something about these criminals. But if the PEOPLE don't know...who will apply enough pressure? :banghead:

[Supersedeas]

7. Arar and al-Libi should both be considered as test cases!!

The Cable News Pundits and Whores ought to be required to at least mention their names.

But serious debate is not what 'television news' intends to communicate...almost forgot.

[young_at_heart]

8. What is the bottom line? What's behind this torture business?

"Outsourcing" of torture....what has this country come to?

[KoKo]

9. K & R!

[glitch]

10. Implies they were ever NOT barbarous. Is there any evidence of that?

Good article, k & r