Syria's the New Siberia

You don't really need to find out what's going on
You don't really want to know just how far it's gone
--song Dirty Laundry, by Don Henley

The first conviction has been obtained in the 2004 detention and extraordinary rendition case of Canadian citizen Maher Arar. The New York Times reports the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Giuliano Zaccardelli, resigned Wednesday, making him the first official to face penalties because of the deportation of a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was jailed and tortured because he was suspected of being a terrorist.

The Canadians simply have no cool. Following the U.S. lead, the best way to handle this mess would be to award a "Medal of Freedom" and then quietly retire Mr. Zaccarddelli from public service. Our northern neighbors simply don't understand when someone has done a heckuva job.

Mr. Zaccardelli's position as RCMP commissioner equates roughly to our director of the FBI.. Not only did the commissioner err in mistakenly fingering Mr. Arar to U.S. authorities, but he compounded his mistake by trying to muzzle a reporter covering Mr. Arar's case.

Here's my take: Anybody can make a mistake, and a democracy is created to resolve mistakes in a fair and equitable maner. Since democracy is often messy, the courts must apply quaint concepts like habeus corpus and a reasonable presumption of guilt before issuing warrants and arresting suspects.

Nobody will question, nor do I deny, the right and authority of the U.S. federal government to arrest, try and convict (or not) terror suspects. But the problem with Mr. Arar's case is that this democratic process was bypassed, since the corpus was extralegally sent to Syria for torture. Mr. Arar was simply disappeared down that rabbit hole.

Usually, such a case would be called before a federal judge and the issue would be legally resolved. However, U.S. government policy is now totally rogue concerning the observation of federal law. Now, federal dunces can kidnap and ship people to Syria for torture. Mr. Arar was deported to Syria by American officials (after he tried to change planes in New York) because of false information they had received from the Mounted Police.

Bear in mind that this is the same Syria that GWB just today said he will not negotiate with because they sponsor terrorism. Of course, he would know, as it seems he partners with them over this nastiness when it's in our interest. I wonder how many millions of taxpayer dollars go to Syrian torturers for doing U.S. dirty work.

As though this were not enough, going back almost two years to the beginning of the case, one reads in a Toronto Star article, "U.S. Ruling Dismisses Arar Lawsuit," that Brooklyn federal Judge David Trager dismissed the case citing necessary secrecy and, "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."

And when did this newfound sensitivity toward Canada emerge? Moreover, when did cultural sensistivity trump an individual's rights to a fair trial? So, even before recent legislation provided a go-ahead for the dastardly rendition program, the Federal Court provided the GWB White House a whitewash for rendering suspects to third parties for torture.

In that same article, Arar eloquently said, "The court system is what distinguishes the West from the Third World. When a court will not act because of `national security,' there is no longer any difference between the West and the Third World." As we push on in Iraq, we'd be wise to reassess our policies in the light of Mr. Arar's words.