Abducting the Innocent

Really the craziest idea to strike America's governing class in the 21st century has been that we could improve intelligence by wildly lowering the evidentiary thresholds required for various sorts of action. No more need to demonstrate probable cause. Coercived interrogations now permitted. Hearsay's in, confronting your accusers is out. The idea of all this, I suppose, is that it will generate more information. Which, of course, it will. Much more. But it will also be much less accurate information. Which brings us back to the tragic tale of Maher Arar:

When the United States sent Maher Arar to Syria, where he was tortured for months, the deportation order stated unequivocally that Mr. Arar, a Canadian software engineer, was a member of Al Qaeda. But a few days earlier, Canadian investigators had told the F.B.I. that they had not been able to link him to the terrorist group.

And guess what -- turns out they "had not been able to link him" to the terrorist group because he had nothing to do with terrorism. They kidnapped, deported, and tortured the guy all for nothing. And just imagine if he had "broken" under torture and "confessed" to his involvement in an al-Qaeda plot directed by the government of Iran. Just imagine how excited some folks in the OVP would be about that "information." And then off we go to war! To think you should run a country this way, you'd have to ladel an extraordinary level of stupidity atop the basic layer of crass imorality.

Comments

To think you should run a country this way, you'd have to ladel an extraordinary level of stupidity atop the basic layer of crass imorality

excellent sentence

Posted by flippantangel | September 25, 2006 9:32 AM

He did break and admit he had been training with Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, even though he'd never been there. Fortunately at that point we weren't yet looking at Iran.

Posted by SP | September 25, 2006 9:51 AM

To think you should run a country this way, you'd have to ladel an extraordinary level of stupidity atop the basic layer of crass imorality

To think you should run a country this way, you'd have to believe that the interests of the American wealthy can only be protected by constant sabre-rattling and khaki elections.

Posted by otto | September 25, 2006 10:01 AM

They kidnapped, deported, and tortured the guy all for nothing.

Well, that's not entirely fair: he had an Arabic name, after all.

Posted by dj moonbat | September 25, 2006 11:45 AM

Over at Obsidian Wings, there is a post about an amendment to the Torture Bill sponsored by Specter and Levin that will reinstate habeas corpus. This may provide an opportunity for the Democratic Party to redeem itself.

Posted by Pithlord | September 25, 2006 1:38 PM

From something I wrote last February:

"In my view, Guantanimo and Abu Ghraib are part of the ongoing culture war in the U.S. Partly it is about the culture of toughness, one group of people showing how much they are not "bleeding heart liberals." Partly, it's to intimidate enemies. But that doesn't go far enough either. The mere fact that the U.S. sponsors torture causes pain to one side of the culture war (you know who you are). And The Other Side likes that it causes you pain. It's meant to hurt you, plain and simple. They hate you that much."

Posted by James | September 25, 2006 4:34 PM

data and information are not the same things. we could save a lot of trouble by generating random data from text rather than having to torture people to get it, for example here is a sample from Psalms run through a markov chain baloneyizer:

Blessed is the Lord's doing: and it was made a covenant with my
glory. Arise, my glory; arise, psaltery and harp. Praise him with a
perfect spirit. I will clothe with confusion: the poor man, when he
came out of the woods are mine: the cattle on the low: and the King of
Glory shall enter into their own sword : neither let him deliver him:
let him save him, seeing he delighteth in him. For in him our heart
hath fainted away: thou art my God, who saved them, who had done great
things against me.

it might make sense if you really really wanted it to.

Posted by supersaurus | September 25, 2006 6:53 PM