Gonzales has no shame

I have covered the case of Maher Arar before. You will remember that he was the Canadian citizen who the US government shipped to Syria in order that he might be tortured, despite the fact that Canada could find no link between Arar and any terrorist group.

Today Canada has offered to compensate Arar for it's role in his detention:

Canada's prime minister apologized to Maher Arar on Friday and announced the government would compensate him C$10.5 million (US$8.9 million) for its role in his deportation from the U.S. to Syria, where he was tortured while held in prison for nearly a year.

So the Canadians, who asked that the US keep Arar on a watch list but had nothing to do with his eventual torture, nevertheless, accepted that a dreadful wrong happened here and that Mr Arar deserves to be compensated.

However, the US are refusing to admit that they made a mistake here and, despite a Canadian investigation that totally cleared Arar of any involvement in terrorism, the US continue to keep Arar on their no fly lists.

Alberto Gonzales has written to the Canadian Authorities stating that they have re-examined the Arar case and concluding that Arar deserves to be on a US Watch List.

This is another example of the Republicans refusing to ever admit that they have simply got it wrong.

This video shows Senator Leahy questioning Alberto Gonzalez about the US's treatment of Arar.



What I find most spooky about this video is the cheap smirk that Gonzales has on his face. There is absolutely no sense of shame in Gonzales.

Lets bear in mind that no-one is disputing that Arar WAS tortured, and that he was tortured after the US sent him to Syria. As Leahy points out, he was sent to Syria specifically in order that torture would take place.

One would hope that given the dreadful set of events that occurred to a totally innocent man that the Bush administration would bend over backwards and be offering the kind of compensation that the Canadians have offered Arar. But, no. What the Bush administration offer is Gonzales and that fucking smirk.

No apology for torture, simply the repetition that Arar deserves to be on a Watch List.

The Canadian government have expressed their fury at the US position on this.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper again called on the U.S. government to remove the Ottawa telecoms engineer from any of its no-fly or terrorist watchlists and reiterated that Ottawa would keep pressing Washington to clear Arar's name.

"We think the evidence is absolutely clear and that the United States should in good faith remove Mr. Arar from the list," Harper told a news conference in Ottawa. "We don't intend to either change or drop our position."

The U.S. government has repeatedly insisted it has reasons to leave the 37-year-old on its watchlists. The issue has grown into an unpleasant diplomatic row between the world's largest trading partners and closest allies.

Glenn Greenwald had this to say:

Like the Jose Padilla case, it's difficult even to know what to say about this incident. I've written about it before, but one's anger is renewed each time there is a further development. There is absolutely no question that Arar is a completely innocent individual whom our government literally abducted and sent to be tortured -- for months, away from his family and everything he knew. Once this entire matter came to light, the administration simply dug its heels in further, insisting that national security required that his case be dismissed from our courts (which naturally obliged), and now -- almost out of spite and/or a pathological inability to admit error -- continues to keep him on its no-fly list.

Alberto Gonzales is almost spectacularly unfit for the post that he holds. Judges, he contends, are unqualified to decide terrorism issues that he says are best settled by Congress or the President. He has even gone as far as to say that Habeas Corpus is not guaranteed to every US citizen under the Constitution.

Gonzales represents everything that is wrong with the Bush administration. He has a total inability to ever admit a wrong, even when that wrong is staring him in the face, and a cheap smirk replacing what one would hope would be an act of contrition.

Make no mistake, the US government are not denying that Arar was sent to Syria on their instructions and that he was tortured while he was there. What they are refusing to do is to admit that they were wrong to send him there.

It is wrong to torture anyone under any circumstances, but when you can't admit that torturing innocent people is a wrong, then you really have lost all moral perspective.

Gonzales can't bring himself to even admit that it was wrong to torture an innocent. What we get instead is that inane, hopefully embarrassed, quasi pubescent, fucking smirk.

As I say, he so represents this administration that he could be their poster child.

tag: Arar, Gonzales, interrogation techiniques, Geneva Conventions, torture, Canada, Syria,