Abu Gonzales: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

From the New York Times.

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 -- In an embarrassing turnabout, the Department of Justice backed away Wednesday from a denial by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales of responsibility for the treatment of a Canadian who was seized by American authorities in 2002. The man was deported to Syria, where he was imprisoned and beaten.
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Asked at a news conference on Tuesday about a Canadian commission's finding that the man, Maher Arar, was wrongly sent to Syria and tortured there, Mr. Gonzales replied, "Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria." He added, "I'm not aware that he was tortured."

We're not responsible...

I'm not aware...

What a load of bull feces. Just for the record who is Maher Arar and where has he been the last five years?

Maria C. LaHood, Mr. Arar's lawyer at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, called Mr. Gonzales' comments "unbelievable."

"I had hoped that they would actually step up and say, `We made a mistake, we accept the report's findings, we clear Mr. Arar's name and we apologize,' " Ms. LaHood said.

Mr. Arar, now 37, is a former telecommunications engineer who was born in Syria but did not live there after his teenage years.

In September 2002, as he changed planes at Kennedy International Airport in New York on his way home to Canada, he was detained because his name was on a terrorist watch list. His name was included on the basis of incorrect information from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he was linked to Al Qaeda, the commission found.

Let always remember that our police and intelligence gathering agencies are completely infallable -- don't let a little glitch like this undermine our confidence in these fine people. It's not like bad and inaccurate information has ever put us in any awkward or embarrising positions in the past, right Colin?

The attorney general's comments caused puzzlement because they followed front-page news articles of the findings of the Canadian commission. It reported that based on inaccurate information from Canada about Mr. Arar's supposed terrorist ties, American officials ordered him taken to Syria, an action documented in public records.

Ah, but there is an excuse -- you see the right hand of our war on common sense (Gonzales), and our left hand (Michael Chertoff) simple didn't exchange memos on which innocent person their predecessors (Ashcroft and Ridge) have had waterboarded. And why should they anyway?

On Wednesday, a Justice Department spokesman said Mr. Gonzales had intended to make only a narrow point: that deportations are now handled by the Department of Homeland Security, not the Department of Justice.

[All snark aside, let's assume for a second that Gonzales deserves the benefit of the doubt that Arar didn't receive - and take him at his word that he honest didn't know and that the DOJ had nothing to do with it. OK, fine. Is there a single serious person who doesn't think that he should have fucking known?!!! Isn't this like - his freaking job - and stuff?) And what does the terrorist scumbag innocent man in question have to say about it all?

Asked about Mr. Gonzales's remarks, Mr. Arar said in an interview on Wednesday with National Public Radio that American officials had sent him to Syria despite his protests that he would be tortured there.

"The facts speak for themselves, you know," Mr. Arar said. "The report clearly concluded that I was tortured. And for him to say that he does not know about the case or does not know I was tortured is really outrageous."

Thank God we haven't already had cases like that of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr aka Abu Omar (who was apparently kidnapped by the CIA in Italy and sent to Egypt where he claims to have been tortured until they discovered he knew nothing and was released) or that of Pultizer Prise winning AP photographer Bilal Hussein (who has been held incommunicado by U.S. Forces in Iraq for the last five months - despite clear indications that he had helped other reporters escape from insurgents - not the reverse as the military contends).

Praise JESUS - we are so lucky we haven't had a couple dozen people die in custody from mistreatment, people who hadn't received a hearing or a lawyer and whom we have no way to confirm their whether they had just planted an IED or failed to yeild to a cross walk sign.

I'm so glad BushGov is on the case, I'll just bet you bin Laden is shaking in his cave right now.

[Except that he's now under the protection of a treaty between the Taliban and Pakistan and doesn't need to live in a cave anymore, isn't likely to get "picked up in a random sweep" and be extremely rended to anywhere except a nearby hot tub!]

Heckuvajob, Bushie!

Vyan