War on Terrorism

Extraordinary Rendition

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No matter your politics you should be outraged by this:

That’s all they had: guilt by the most remote of computer- generated associations. But, according to Attorney General John Ashcroft, that was more than enough to justify Arar’s delivery to Syria’s torturers.
Besides, Ashcroft added, the torturers had expressly promised that they would not torture him.
Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it “extraordinary rendition.” As one intelligence official explained: “We don’t kick the s — out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s — out of them.”
This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained.

Read Maher Arar’s story here.
Brad Delong thinks this is worth an impeachment and Brian Weatherson wonders how many conservative bloggers will condone this behavior and thinks that the perps should at minimum spend time in jail.
I’ll go along with Brad on the impeachment idea.

Ignore the Evidence?

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Richard Perle produces a jewel:

Two of President George W. Bushmilitary advisors said that the US inability to find illegal weapons in Iraq means little.
“I don’t think that you can draw any conclusion from the fact that the stockpiles were not found,” Pentagon advisor Richard Perle said…

Hmmm…many of us might think that you can draw some conclusions like: 1) there were not any stockpiles and 2) it is more likely that the administration really did lie when justifiying the war.

Transparency

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The bush administration could go a long ways in blunting its opposition by at minimum maintaining even the woefully poor previous levels of transparency. They, as the champions of freedom, would do even better if they broadened public access to government records and activities.
According to the Washington Post this does not appear to be the direction they have chosen:

…the Bush administration seems to be going in the other direction. The administration has been unusually successful keeping its policy deliberations out of public view, and millions of government documents — including many historical records previously available — have been removed from the public domain.

That the bush administration appears to feel an increasing need to hide the details of its activities from the public, even after the fact, seems to confirm that there is indeed something to hide.
Via Secrecy News.

Joy to the World

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Well, maybe. The Philosorapter wanted us to take out Saddam in Gulf 1 but now he’s not as happy as he might have been then:

So no, I’m actually not in ecstasy about Saddam’s capture. It’s not that I don’t despise the guy, and it’s not that I don’t recognize how wonderful it is that he’s history.

Go read the whole thing to see what’s bothering Winston.
Via Nurse Ratched.