I got the impression that the action specifically being objected to was America’s use of torture, not the practice of deporting people to the wrong country. Somehow I don’t think the OP would have reacted quite the exact same way to a report of a Syrian being deported to Canada for being an illegal immigrant, instead of back to Syria. Although I hear tell those Canadians are mean sumbitches.
Please tell me this isn’t the first you’ve heard of this. This judicial report is only confirming what a number of people have suspected for years. Maher Arar’s case is something I want to shove in the face of every idiot who thinks they can defend their freedoms by throwing them down the crapper.
Innocent my ass! Every one of these detainees we’ve been ‘tough’ and ‘alternative’ on has confessed to something eventually. The success rate is astonishing, and the only explanation possible is that we’re only disappearing people who were actually guilty of wanting to kill your family. Subsequently, when we release them, who can deny then that we are their liberators? The system works, people.
Wuh? 
Your quotation from RTFirefly suggests rather the opposite.
Perhaps I should clarify. RTFirefly’s post seemed to suggest to me that while he was experiencing outrage fatigue from other news items that this was the first he’d heard of this particular incident.
Quite frankly I hope you’re correct rather than I. This shit with Maher Arar went down in 2002, and the possibility that it went down the media memory hole and didn’t resurface until now depresses me.
John Mace is a good guy. The accustation that he is an apologist (in the new, perjorative sense of the word) as well as unable to think for himself is absurd. One thing I assure he would never do is pop into a thread just to take a dimbass random potshot at a poster who wasn’t even involved in the thread at the time.
It is often a good idea to look at what someone is actually saying rather than just see their username and switch into prejudicial mode.
If you have an example of John Mace posting eight consecutive posts apologizing for Bush, how about you trot it out.
John’s a good guy, even though I seldom agree with him. I think it’s unfair to label him as an unthinking Bush apologist.
Back to the OP, if this doesn’t outrage you, then I have no respect for you as a human being. How the US can justify extradicting someone to a country other than what he is a citizen of is beyond me. It’s bad enough that the US tortures detainees, some of whom are innocent. It’s worse to send them overseas for the super deluxe torture treatment. The Bush administration has plenty to answer for on this one.
Sure, they’ll confess to 'purt near anything we ask 'em to! One of 'em took the Lindburgh baby.
See, if we’d had the authority to pull these ‘fraternity pranks’ as Limbaugh calls them, we could have saved the Lindburgh baby.
What I don’t understand about this is why there isn’t more of a reaction against this. I don’t know a single person who isn’t aghast and deeply ashamed by these relevations. These actions are impossible to defend on any level - yet they continue to occur. Why?
Is it because politicians are afraid to alienate “Joe Six Pack” - because they assume he’s supportive of anything that’s “tough on terror”? Is that why they’ve not taken action?
Is it because the Republicans rule congress and they are hard-wired not to turn on their own? (Democrats have no trouble doing it).
For the same reasons they hated us in various decades.
The networks would never do it, but I’d like to see them do a demonstration of waterboarding on network TV. Get a volunteer to go through it and then ask him if he thinks it is torture and if he thinks the US should be practicing it. Maybe get ABC to do a commercial free special on this.
I think that’s why he has such respect among his regular opponents. He’s the most thoughtful of the Bush apologists on the board. I’ve always admired that.
Orbifold: I’ve heard about this case numerous times over the past few years. But now we have definitive testimony to his innocence.
Re John Mace: John is an honest debater. Lord knows we’ve got our share of Shodans and Starving Artists who are going to take the knee-jerk pro-Bush, pro-GOP position and argue it with no regard for honesty. If he argues the Administration side of things more than you like, whether out of sincerity or as a devil’s advocate, what’s wrong with that? If the Administration is wrong, then our arguments ought to be able to refute the best pro-Administration arguments that can be found. And the Shodans of the world certainly aren’t going to come up with those arguments.
Pfft. How’s those tax cuts helping you out, Dave? I don’t read the lefty blogs - the news carries outrages enough without my needing to have someone pre-parse it for me.
As for the rest, I’ve seen to many of John’s posts that begin with “I’m not a Bush apologist” followed by a Bush apology for me to actually see it any other way.
-Joe
Ditto the sleep deprivation, the hypothermic techniques (keeping a prisoner naked in a cold room and periodically throwing buckets of cold water on him), the stress positions, the whole nine yards.
Maybe Karl Rove could volunteer to demonstrate that they’re not torture, by allowing these techniques to be practiced on him.
This week, on a very special episode of Mythbusters…
Hey, they did Chinese Water Torture one time…
There are several things in this case to be outraged about:
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The guy was captured on US soil and was denied due process.
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The guy is a Canadian citizen and yet he was deported to Syria.
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The guy claims he was tortured.
We know for a fact that 1 and 2 are true. At this point, we don’t know for a fact that 3 is true. I saw an interview with this guy (I think on 60 Minutes), and if I had to put money on it, I’d say he was tortured. But he’s going to have a tough time proving it. It’s hard to imagine a legitimate reason for extraditing this guy to Syria, so I’d say it is very likely that he was tortured, which I do not condone.
As for the OP’s concern about the legislation pending in Congress, we have 2 active GD threads about that subject, so anyone interested can go there and participate in the debate.
BTW, thanks mhendo, Doors, Contra, and Bob.
I also would certainly not call John Mace a Bush apologist. That’s really just ignorant, or narrow-minded. Probably both.
I despise the Bush administration as much as anybody, but the thing I appreciate about John’s posts is not that he unthinkingly covers for those lying crooks, but that he carefully examines the usual mindless Bush-bashing for its acutal veracity. He’s helped make Bush criticism on this board become a lot more accurate and a lot less hysterical.
Let’s face it, a lot of Bush-bashing is really out there in terms of reality. Cutting through the crap to get at what the administration has truly fucked up is highly valuable. Thank you, John Mace.
Not sure I agree with #1.
There is no due process right to enter the United States for a citizen of any other country, as far as I know – I welcome correction on this point. If he had been here, and was arrested and deported, then I’d agree with you.
#2 is the huge problem here. I haven’t the slightest idea why he would be sent to Syria if he was a Canadian, except, as has been suggested, so the Syrians could beat the shit out of him.