1115.org

And guess what? The world didn’t come to an end. The terrorists didn’t win.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged on Wednesday that the United States mishandled the case of a Canadian engineer seized by U.S. officials and taken to Syria, where he and the Canadian government say he was tortured.

Rice, speaking at a congressional hearing, said the Bush administration has told Canada “that we will try to do better in the future.”

“We do not think that this case was handled as it should have been. We do absolutely not wish to transfer anyone to any place in which they might be tortured,” she said.

When asked whether the U.S. relied on diplomatic assurances from Syria that the engineer, Maher Arar, would not be tortured, Rice said she would respond later because her memory of certain details “has faded a bit.”

Let’s pause here for a second, and admire the view.

The possibilities are:
1) We relied on Syria’s assurances that he wouldn’t be tortured.
2) We never even asked Syria, we just shipped him over. (That’s the TWAT version of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.)
3) We asked Syria, they said “Are you kidding? Of course, we’ll torture him!”, but we sent him anyway (saying “Serve the bastard right!”).

So if Madame Secretary, Ph.D., is pulling a Buttercheeks over this and refusing to cop to (1), does she think that (2) or (3) are somehow better than (1)?

Back to the narrative now:

Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was detained by U.S. immigration agents on Sept. 26, 2002, as he stopped in New York en route home from a vacation. Days later, he was sent by private jet to Syria where, according to Canadian officials, he was tortured.

After nearly a year in a Syrian prison, he was released without charges and returned to Canada.

The Canadian government has apologized to Arar and agreed to pay him almost $10 million in compensation.

The Bush administration has not apologized. Arar’s name remains on watch lists that forbid his entry into the United States.

Saying that you want to try and do better is all very well, Dr. Condi, but what you’re not saying makes it clear how totally you don’t mean a word of what you said. (Sad how often that’s true.) You are still trying to pretend that the only problem here was transferring Ahar to a place where he was almost sure to be might be tortured. That everything would be perfectly okay if the Syrians had kept him in jail for one year without torturing him.

You might try taking a deep breath, and admitting that he should never have been arrested or detained or whatever you’re calling it this month. That he should never have been rendered or deported or exported. That he had never done anything wrong, that it was all one big mistake.

Oh, and if you want to put on a convincing pretense that you really mean what you said, Dr. Condi, you might start by asking yourself why his name is still on a no-entry list. You might want to do that before your memory fades even more.