Vyan

Wednesday, October 24

Rohrabacher *Hearts* Torture

In a hearing with Canadian national Maher Arar who was mistakenly apprehended at JFK airport and rendered to Syria where he was tortured for months until it was finally discovered that he was an innocent man - Dana Rohrabacher attempts to justify what was done to Arar. To him arresting people and deporting them to countries besides their own which participate in barbaric practices is a "reasonable" response to the "slaughter" of 9-11. Y'see the only thing they did wrong was that Arar was innocent, not that kidnapping and torturing people is wrong. Always!



Rohrabacher attempts to make the arguement that what happened to Arar must have been simply "A mistake" similar to that a "Friendly Fire" incident, and then continues to justify the U.S. action by saying that such incidents may be unfortunate - but they are a natural result of committing out troops to military action, and that if we failed to do this others would suffer. He then states that "No innocent person" should have to suffer through what Arar describes, and then likens the state as "gruesome a the tyranny" of communist political prisoners.

Never does he consider the irony that he himself has just admitted that America has sunk to the level of communist tyranny. We have become the Iron Curtain and the Banana Republic where innocent people can literally be "Disappeared".

Yet, Arar is far from the only innocent person to have been caught in this "Terror Net", many of whom have confessed to anything they were told to say after weeks and months of torture - one of those people was Ibn Sheik al-Libi, another was Curveball, both of whom contributed to creating the false impression that Iraq was maintaining WMD's and WMD programs which has so far led to the death of far more Americans than were killed on 9-11.

Another irony that Rohrabacher never acknowledges.

Vyan

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I think you're off a tad in your analysis. Communist tyrannies *intentionally* torture innocent people. Rohrabacher, on the other hand, has apologized to Arar, has said that Arar should be compensated, and he's admitted that apprehending Arar was a mistake.

The real question is, does this Arar incident mean the United States should end the practice of apprehending suspected terrorists? Or does it indicate that we should no longer believe the Canadian government when it tells us that people like Arar are terrorists?

Rendition and other similar programs may be good or they may be bad, but we shouldn't just end them because of one mistake, however tragic it may be. The reason that the Arar case is so prominent is because it is so rare.