National Affairs Daily Edited by Tim Dickinson
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Gonzales: What? Me Torture?

9/21/06, 11:16 am EST

“Well, we were not responsible for his removal to Syria. I’m not aware that he was tortured.” — Alberto Gonzales, on the fate of Maher Arar.

Arar is the innocent Canadian citizen who was disappeared by American authorities in a U.S. airport, sent to Jordan, and then to Syria where he was tortured into making a false confession of training in Afghanistan — where he’d never been — and later kept in a coffin like dungeon for 10 months.

Gonzales reminds me of a corporate CEO disavowing knowledge that his subcontrators are using sweatshop labor. My guess: This is exactly how the administration has been able to deny that they render to countries that torture. They outsource the rendering to a middleman, in this case the Jordanians, who handle the dirty work of handing off the prisoner to the thugs in Demascus. We wink. We nod. But preserve at least a pretense of plausible deniability.

Tim Dickinson

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Comments

Ancon | 9/21/2006, 2:13 pm EST

People have been speaking out against the practice of extraordinary rendition, and going into great detail as to what happens to its subjects, ever since the Clinton era. Unless Gonzoles literally did not read a newspaper between 1996 and 2000 there is no way he could honestly be showing any surprise here.

Dr. Theobald L. Riechlight | 9/21/2006, 5:19 pm EST

Hell, we’re outsourcing all our jobs, why not our dirty work too.

Jed Clampett | 9/21/2006, 7:19 pm EST

you forget he’s a lawyer. He redifined torture so the administration would be able say they don’t torture.

technically, he’s right, they didn’t extradite Arar to Syria, they extradited him to Lebanon. Which doesn’t quite explain why they didn’t send him to his country of citizenship, but oh well. that’s how truth is dissembled… or is that dissassembled?

:D

hopefully soon, we’ll have someone who can dissassemble the dissembling and encarcerates those assembled to drain the treasury.

world is watching | 9/22/2006, 4:44 pm EST

all criminals will see KARMA one day

Jed Clampett | 9/22/2006, 11:08 pm EST

I’m afraid that seldom happens, the recent one I know of is Ken Lay.

C Co... aka I Smell Propaganda | 9/23/2006, 11:57 am EST

Not that Gonzales is a saint or anything, but really might not have known this guy was tortured. Not all law enforcement has direct rule from Washington and the people who arrested him don’t need excutive orders to do what they might have did.

TinFoilHat | 9/28/2006, 11:54 pm EST

Jed,
Lebanon? Are you sure? All the news reports say Syria. Please enlighten me.

Jed Clampett | 9/29/2006, 2:04 pm EST

per the canadian account, they sent the guy to lebanon who then transferred him to syria. so plausible deniability

TinFoilHat | 9/29/2006, 4:38 pm EST

Gotcha Jed. This thing along with being totally outrageous serves to illustrate a point we keep trying to make. Arar admitted to being Alqaeda while being whipped with jumper cables. He stated later “I would have admitted to ANYTHING just to make the torture stop”. Are you listening Warren, Cap, Hazlee? Torture is not only morally indefensible, it is also a completely INEFFECTIVE method of getting any real intelligence.

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