Gott segne Amerika!

When the Islamofascists get tough, the Americans get . . . Amerofascist?

Nat Hentoff has an important column in the Village Voice that you need to read. F'rinstance:

In 2002, Arar, a software engineer and citizen of Canada, was kidnapped and flown by the CIA to Syria, where for 10 months he was held in an underground cell seven feet high, three feet wide, and six feet deep ("like a grave," he said). The persistent tortures he underwent finally forced him to make a false confession of connections to Al Qaeda.
On his release, Syrian officials admitted there was a total lack of evidence against him. Then, after a two-year inquiry and its 1,200-page report by a Canadian commission—in which the United States refused to participate—Dennis O'Connor, the chief justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal, said, "I'm able to say categorically that there is no evidence to indicate that Mr. Arar has committed any offense or that his activities constitute a threat to the security of Canada."

The official inquiry had determined that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had given the CIA unsubstantiated, brittle "evidence" that Arar was probably some kind of Al Qaeda supporter. And that's why, when he was changing planes at Kennedy Airport on the way back to Canada after a vacation in Tunisia, Arar was abducted by the CIA and sent to his native Syria.

On December 7, 2006, the commissioner of the RCMP, Giuliano Zaccardelli, resigned because he had mishandled the case, saying he had "made a mistake" in not being aware of the false information the RCMP had given the CIA.

In this country, you will not be surprised to learn, no one—at the CIA, the Justice Department, or in Dick Cheney's office of "dark arts"—has resigned or admitted any error at all.

Instead, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked at a press conference whether the Justice Department might at least offer Arar—who can't find a job and still suffers from the effects of his stay in the grave-like Syrian cell—an apology. Astonishingly, since Arar's ordeal has been reported in detail in mainstream American newspapers as well as in the foreign press, Gonzales actually said: "We were not responsible for Mr. Arar's removal to Syria. I'm not aware that he was tortured, and I haven't read the [Canadian] commission report. He was initially detained because his name appeared on terrorist lists, and he was deported according to our immigration laws."

(Hat tip: Mark Shea)