Hello fellow Americans:
According to a compelling and deeply disturbing article in the current issue of The New Yorker, Jane Mayer tells the following story:
Aher Arar is a 34-year-old native of Syria who immigrated to Canada as a teenager. On Sept. 26, 2002, as he was returning from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities at Kennedy Airport in New York.
Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, was not charged with a crime, but was placed in handcuffs and leg irons by plainclothes officials and transferred to an executive jet. He was being taken, on the orders of the U.S. government, to Syria, where he would be tortured.
He did confess (who wouldn't?), but the confession under torture was worthless. Syrian officials reported back to the United States that they could find no links between Mr. Arar and terrorism. He was released in October 2003 without ever being charged and is now back in Canada.
The following are MY comments:
Any government that commits, condones, promotes or fosters torture is a malignant force in the world. And those who refuse to raise their voices against something as clearly evil as torture are enablers, if not collaborators.
How in the world did we become a country in which gays' getting married is considered an abomination, but torture is O.K.?
excon
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