Sorry for the Torture -- Let's Keep on Torturing

Maher Arar wasn't able to appear in person at a congressional hearing on his case because he's still on a US government watchlist. He was, however, available via videoconference. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) apologized personally, doing what the Bush administration won't do on behalf of the country. And then:

Republican Dana Rohrabacher also apologized, but said he would fight any efforts by Democrats to end the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby terror suspects are grabbed by government agents and taken to another country where local authorities may torture confessions out of them.

"Yes, we should be ashamed" of what happened in the case, Rohrabacher said. "That is no excuse to end a program which has protected the lives of hundreds of thousands if not millions of American lives."

Millions? I'm dying to know what the evidence for that is. Probably about as good as whatever bogus evidence it was that convinced them they should send Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured.

Comments

Hooray for Bill Delahunt and the Fightin' Massachusetts Tenth!

Posted by Ben Cronin | October 19, 2007 11:15 PM

Why is your boy DeShaun Stenvenson trying to score coke on his MySpace page?

http://blackvoices.aol.com/blogs/2007/10/18/deshawn-stevenson-hearts-lindsay-lohan-and-the-white-stuff/

Posted by Nordy | October 19, 2007 11:40 PM

As a native of the real O.C., I am ashamed that Rohrabacher represents the area where I was born.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | October 19, 2007 11:41 PM

Wait, you expect the likes of Rohrabacher to actually back up his whacko statements with ... evidence?

Matt, go for a walk outside for a bit. Time to set aside the keyboard for a little break, pal... The fresh air will do you good.

Posted by B00mer | October 20, 2007 12:30 AM

Oh, it was a sight. Rohrabacher asked Arar if he had children (he does--his son was young enough not to recognize him when he got back from Syria) & seemed to be arguing that we had the rendition program was needed to protect the little Arars from a terrorist attack.

Delahunt was great. Nadler was great. Markey of Massachusetts wasn't there for the hearing, but has been the leading opponent of rendition in Congress because Arar used to work in his district.

Posted by Katherine | October 20, 2007 1:30 AM

The evidence is that Meryl Streep said so! in the ad for that movie!

Posted by tatere | October 20, 2007 1:35 AM

Don't forget that Maher Arar's attempt to sue the US government for condemning him to a year of torture was thrown out by a federal judge on the grounds that the process of discovery might damage our foreign relations:

Brooklyn District Court Judge David Trager cited the need for national security and secrecy in making his decision, but also raised the possibility of Canadian complicity in the decision to send Arar, now 35, to Syria in 2002, where he was tortured for almost a year.
"The need for much secrecy can hardly be doubted," Trager wrote in an 88-page judgment. "One need not have much imagination to contemplate the negative effect on our relations with Canada if discovery were to proceed in this case and were it to turn out that certain high Canadian officials had, despite public denials, acquiesced in Arar's removal to Syria."

That's right folks, 'it'll make us and our co-conspirators look bad if we have to fess up' is now a viable defense in court. If you're the government, at least - I wouldn't try it otherwise.

P.S. The rest of the judge's reasoning - 'national security' is a canard, in this case as in the recent case of Khalid Al-Masri. Any possible secrets - about why or even to some extent how these people were illegally abducted and tortured is irrelevant. The only question is whether, which really doesn't seem to be a matter of much dispute. And yet the cases were thrown out.

Posted by Warren Terra | October 20, 2007 1:50 AM

If Mr. Rohrabacher has evidence that this program works, then we should have him renditioned to Syria to find out what it is. I'm sure Dana will be happy to comply, being the patriot that he is.

Posted by fostert | October 20, 2007 3:04 AM

There's an interesting op-ed in tonight's Wash. Post by Clinton NSC staffer Daniel Benjamin to the effect that the Clinton Administration provided FAR more safeguards against actual torture of the extrordinarily rendered than the Bush Administration has done ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/19/AR2007101900835_pf.html ):

"The guidelines for Clinton-era renditions required that subjects could be sent only to countries where they were not likely to be tortured -- countries that gave assurances to that effect and whose compliance was monitored by the State Department and the intelligence community. It's impossible to be certain that those standards were upheld every time, but serious efforts were made to see that they were. At a minimum, countries with indisputably lousy human rights records (say, Syria) were off-limits. Another key difference: Renditions before Bush were carried out to disrupt terrorist activity, not to gather intelligence or to interrogate individuals.

"Now, though, the Bush team seems to have dramatically eroded such safeguards. The administration has apparently sent someone to Syria, and Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, was evidently grabbed in Macedonia and interrogated in Afghanistan in a manner that sure sounds like torture. In light of this and other revelations, the criticism that the administration has 'defined down' torture looks pretty persuasive. It's probably a good bet that Congress or the next administration will reform the program, or abolish it outright."

One can at least say that this would be entirely in character for this administration.

Posted by Bruce Moomaw | October 20, 2007 3:19 AM

I've studied this extensively, & the Benjamin piece is a whitewash that shouldn't have cleared factchecking. We didn't render suspects to Syria under Clinton, but we did send them to Egypt, which has a comparable record of torture, & Egyptian human rights orgs. have reported that the people we sent there were tortured. Actually, after studying this issue for years, I don't know of a single case when we've sent a suspect to Egypt & they HAVEN'T been tortured.

The program was not as bad under Clinton--there were fewer suspects, there was more evidence against them, & it seemed to be more intended to get them in jail as quickly as possible as a deliberate attempt to have them tortured. But it wasn't so different.

I sent a letter to this effect to the Post.

Posted by Katherine | October 20, 2007 3:54 AM

He misspoke. He meant billions.

Posted by della Rovere | October 20, 2007 9:28 AM

Matt - recall Powells UN speech - That shows how torture "works," in the sense that al-libi provided false confessions of nonexistant Iraq-Qaeda relationship.

This "worked" to provide information for Powell to recite that would enable Russert to refer to Powell's "evidence."

Posted by Commment | October 20, 2007 9:47 AM

Er, by using a flow of logic similar to Rohrbacher's, since I have chosen to NOT become an evil genius with plans to nuke New York City, am I a hero who has saved the lives of over 8 million people?

Because they're all still there. 8 million of 'em. Even the Mets. And all just because I never built a nuke.

I'm so proud of myself.

Posted by jonathan | October 20, 2007 10:08 AM

Let's not forget that Dana's adventures with the muj would have got him hogtied and shipped back to the US a la John Walker Lindh. The lady doth protest too much.

Posted by pseudonymous in nc | October 20, 2007 10:46 AM

It'd be nice to do a little waterboarding on Rohrabacher, get him to admit to plotting to blow up the state of Texas, and announce that millions of lives have been saved.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 20, 2007 11:11 AM

Rohrabacher, who used to be a big-L Libertarian - a Party member - back in the day, is proof of what Bob Black once said: "Libertarians are just Republicans who smoke dope."

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 20, 2007 8:57 PM