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January 14, 2004

Comments

The main question that remains for me is: why on earth would the U.S. do what it did unless they had some compelling evidence? That's the million dollar question.

You are now up to post 16, but I'm only up to your current post - 9 - so without the benny of knowledge of your future posts, i'll posit an answer to this question.

Because they wanted to. Because they could.

I'm a big lefty too, but how cool is it to be able to ship someone off to a foreign country to get tortured into giving you information you want? Can you say power trip? Invincibility? Hubris?

To understand this perspective, you have to get inside the heads of the current regime in DC - they remain virtually untouchable, even by pols on the same side of the aisle! (e.g. John McCain, Bob Barr) I'm sure it helps them (Bush, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, etc) not to be bothered too much by principle, or morals, or anything like that, but c'mon folks, could anyone really claim to be surprised by a simple deportation? Of a Canadian, much less?

I mean, for the past couple of years in the U.S., we've had mainstream politicians and press folks and think tankers extolling the virtues of torture, America's right to it, and justifying it in any number of ways - in whole books sometimes! I've read it - it's unbelieveable - it's unthinkable - but it's been happening. Thus, I'm not surprised by the horror of this case, and I would not at all be surprised by the lack of seriousness with which this situation would be treated at a U.S. port of call. Shoot - I wouldn't even doubt if it was seen as a 'practice run' for the U.S. government's new terror policies. The game has changed in the U.S. to be sure. The right wing holds a lock on everything. The tide of anger is rising. The War on Iraq saved Bush's ass this time, but by 2008 we might once again be having class riots in the U.S.

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