USA anti-terrorism kidnappings & Nazi Gestapo tactics--one & the same?

The Coffee Shop
1

So how far is too far? That our government is doing this really, really bothers me: what is to stop them from basically kidnapping anyone they decree a terrorist, with or without proof? How are we any different from the Gestapo of the 1930s–rounding up whoever we feel like w/o any due process or even viable proof? I am more & more disgusted with this administration. Thrown to the Wolves

**By BOB HERBERT **

Published: February 25, 2005

OTTAWA

If John Ashcroft was right, then I was staring into the malevolent, duplicitous eyes of pure evil, the eyes of a man with the mass murder of Americans on his mind. But all I could really see was a polite, unassuming, neatly dressed guy who looked like a suburban Little League coach.

If Mr. Ashcroft was right, then Maher Arar should have been in a U.S. prison, not talking to me in an office in downtown Ottawa. But there he was, a 34-year-old man who now wears a perpetually sad expression, talking about his recent experiences - a real-life story with the hideous aura of a hallucination. Mr. Arar’s 3-year-old son, Houd, loudly crunched potato chips while his father was being interviewed.

“I still have nightmares about being in Syria, being beaten, being in jail,” said Mr. Arar. “They feel very real. When I wake up, I feel very relieved to find myself in my room.”

In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

“I used to ask God to help them,” he said.

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If that’s so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism.

And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, a sometimes-clownish outfit that seems to have helped set this entire fiasco in motion by forwarding bad information to American authorities, is being criticized heavily in Canada for failing to follow its own rules on the handling and dissemination of raw classified information.

Official documents in Canada suggest that Mr. Arar was never the target of a terror investigation there. One former Canadian official, commenting on the Arar case, was quoted in a local newspaper as saying “accidents will happen” in the war on terror.

Whatever may have happened in Canada, nothing can excuse the behavior of the United States in this episode. Mr. Arar was deliberately dispatched by U.S. officials to Syria, a country that - as they knew - practices torture. And if Canadian officials hadn’t intervened, he most likely would not have been heard from again.

Mr. Arar is the most visible victim of the reprehensible U.S. policy known as extraordinary rendition, in which individuals are abducted by American authorities and transferred, without any legal rights whatever, to a regime skilled in the art of torture. The fact that some of the people swallowed up by this policy may in fact have been hard-core terrorists does not make it any less repugnant.

Mr. Arar, who is married and also has an 8-year-old daughter, said the pain from some of the beatings he endured lasted for six months.

“It was so scary,” he said. “After a while I became like an animal.”

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.”

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

2

what is to stop them from basically kidnapping anyone they decree a terrorist, with or without proof?

The good will of our government, of course. We’ve outgrown the need for Constitutional restrictions on the powers of law enforcement. Your thinking is, like, so outdated.

Our civil servants are all Good Guys in White Hats.

3

who will protect us from the protectors?

4

I would rather see them just place a discreet bullet to the head after interrogation. If they are wrong, nobody to talk about it. If they are right, no messy trials. Mossad, baby!

7

Is this anything new? The gov’t has always been able to arrest and “hold” people that they deem to be a “national security threat”. That’s about all they have ever needed.

Just because someone writes a new article about it doesn’t make it a new issue.

9

The other difference is that he was sent to another country where they knew he would be jailed, beaten and tortured because they thought they could get some kind of confession out of him. They let Jordan and Syria do their dirty work. This would not have been as major an issue if they had simply held him in the US. There was no legitimate reason to send him there. He is a Canadian citizen. Unfortunately, the Canadians handled this just as poorly as the US and may have had a hand in his deportation.

Dawn

10

There is no doubt that the situation is a poor excuse for “justice” (I had a hard time even writing that with quotes around it), my point was that while someone just now wrote another article on this I’m sure the same thing has happened to countless other people in the past. Those just haven’t been the subject of this person’s article.

I’m not trying to condone the behavior, I’m just not that surprised that it occurs.

12

This has been in the news here in Canada since he was deported and there is a major investigation going on now that he has been released. This is huge news and everyone needs to know about it or else it will happen more often. I really don’t think it happens as much as you seem to believe, but, even if it does, it’s still worth talking about. I believe the only way to prevent the government from overstepping it’s boundaries is for the people to keep it in check.

Dawn

13

“What’s new is that we used to be gauranteed speedy access to the courts.”

Non-U.S. citizens have never had a right to speedy access to the courts.

14

I don’t think we should ignore it, but to attribute it to just this administration is shortsighted.

16

As opposed to blaming it on Clinton? Please.

17

Shortsighted there too. People have been “incarcerated” for national security reasons for longer than Clinton, Bush jr and sr, Reagen, etc. This practice is not new and to blame it on the administration of the day as something new is not correct. They are part of the problem as they are allowing it to occur, but it has occured in the past and will in the future.

18

One thing people seem to consistently misunderstand about the nature of warfare is that the line that seperates the white hats from the black hats is very small.

Also, they both engage in the same activities more or less.

Basically, it is a succession of events where neither side is moral, neither side is right and both sides get hurt. It’s just what people do: Eat, make more people and fight. No matter how smart we think we are, we haven’t gotten any farther away from that than Zinjanthropus did.

19

I really don’t understand why every discussion has to turn into an “us vs them” argument. Lots of stupid and horrible stuff happens when democrats are in the white house and lots of stupid and horrible stuff happens when republicans are in the white house. There’s nothing wrong with bringing those things out in the open to be discussed no matter where you stand politically. But, for some reason, no republican seems to be able to say “Yes, that’s awful and it happened on our watch. Now, what are we going to do about it.”. (same for democrats - they’re just as bad - this is not an attack on republicans, just an observation about how stifled politics in the US is right now)

Dawn

20

I have always been told not to believe everything you read on the internet. The thing about this story that really stretches the credibility thread is, why would the US secrectly ship someone off to Syria? Syria is on the State dept list of countries that support terrorism, we don’t even maintain diplomatic relations with Syria. I don’t deny that the war against terror has caused some innocent casualties along the way, but this particular story just smells fishy.

21

You are so very wrong … there was big bright line between the Allied and the Axis forces in WWII. There was a big bright line between the Iraqi forces and the coalition forces in Gulf War I. There was a big bright line between the Iraqi forces (now terrorists) and the coalition forces in the most recent war. I concede that in war innocents get killed and atrocities are committed. However, I will not concede that both sides are morally equivalent when one side makes it a practice to kill innocents and commit atrocities while the other side works to avoid the killing of innocents and prosecutes and punishes those who commit atrocities. There is a huge difference … failing to recognize that only dooms us to sit quietly by and watch the next maniac kill by the hundreds of thousands because, after all, he really isn’t any different than we are. Give me a break!

22

The first post in this thread specifically blamed this administration. I was just saying that it happened before this administation and will happen after this administration leaves office.

I’m not protecting any republican/democrat. In fact, I think they both suck. Just trying to point out the fact that this problem isn’t just confined to THIS administration.

23

It’s remarkable to me that you cannot distinguish between the behavior of the United States government and that of Nazi Germany. It was the official government policy of the Nazi to exterminate people because of their ethnicity, religious beliefs, political beliefs etc. It is the policy of the United State government to (1) prosecute people that have broken written laws, (2) throw people out of the country that have violated the written immigration law in their manner of coming here, (3) throw immigrants or foreign nationals out of the country if they have violated the rules that are established for staying here, and (4) throw unlawfulful combatants into prison because they are unlawful combatants. These are very different things.

Even reading this article, it appears that the United States was provided information by the Canadian government that indicated that this individual was a terrorist. If this is the case, then the US can throw him out of the country. In fact, the federal government is supposed to throw people out of the country under these circumstances. The immigration statutes provide that you go back to your country of origin. These statutes have said this for a really long time. Moreover, these statutes have never required that an individual be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before being expelled from the United States. To do so would be unworkable. Besides, no one that is not an American citizen has the inalienable right to stay here (and US citizens don’t have the right to stay anywhere else). So, it appears that rather than being answerable to no one, the United States government was actually following the law when it acted the way that it did.

No entity composed of human being is perfect. If what this article says is true, then the federal government made mistakes. This is part of the human condition. The Justices Department should certainly review its procedures to limit the chance of mistakes of this type from happening again. Mistakes of a different kind allowed 19 terrorists to commit mass murder on 9/11. I’m glad this administration is actively hunting down the individuals that might be planning to kill me, my family and others that live here. The only way to prevent mistakes from being made is to not try to find terrorists that might be here or that might be helping those that are here. Is that what you want?

Of course, you are probably the kind of person that saw no evil in the USSR and idolizes Che the mass murderer.

24

“I have always been told not to believe everything you read on the internet.”

Unfortunately, Sid, this story is very true. He was deported to Jordan and then Jordan shipped him off to Syria.

Dawn

25

I’m not equivocating Nazi Germany with The US Government, but…

Before the Final Solution, official Nazi policy was either incarceration or deportaion of non-desireable citizens(in this case: jews, commies, queers, etc.). It was justified because the German population was convinced that these people were a danger to German society. Are we not guilty of the same things for the protection of our society? Are some of us now not justifying the internment of ameircan citizens of Japanese descent into concentration camps during WWII for the same reasons? Is this present case not an example of the same too?

I’m sorry, but I have to agree with Tom D on this. Just because were fighting on the “right” side doesn’t mean our tactics cannot possibly be considered evil.