He was about as not-guilty as a person could be, and they still tortured him.

Can this decision be appealed to the Supreme Court, or is that the final decision? (I am not a lawyer, obviously!)

This mistreatment began in our own country; the victim is a citizen of our northern neighboring country, which has accepted a share of the responsibility for what occurred. Repeat: this started in our country, not in some other country we are invading in order to fight "terrorism".

Yet there are those who would claim that when do invade a foreign country, even one whose religion is considered an abomination by many of our fundamentalists, we are there for the good of that country's people, and that we can help them "fix" their problems.

We cannot get it right in our own country, or even make any effort to fix an abomination, so how is it even conceivable that we could do good there, thousands of miles outside the reach of the rule of law, far from any accountability?

Can this decision be appealed to the Supreme Court, or is that the final decision?

Yes, it can be, and certainly Arar's lawyers will ask the Supreme Court to review it. They review only a tiny percentage of cases, so it's always hard to say they will, but given the magnitude of the issues and the split of the full panel, they might.

Sonia Sotomayor took part in the Oral Argument in this case and made statements suggesting she would have joined the dissent, but she didn't participate in the ultimate outcome due to her elevation to the Supreme Court.

. . . and Having No Shame Whatsoever when invoking "National Security" -- trumps absolutely everything.

But how does a culture misplace something as fundamental as shame ?

Yes, and they did it to demonstrate that they could, and that they could get away with it.

And now they have gotten away with it, there is (as Glenn rightly points out) absolutely no formal restraint upon them whatsoever. They can do anything to anyone at any time for any reason or for no reason.

The fatal foolishness of these rulings is that there is nothing to confine this criminality to "suspects" or to "criminals" or "non-citizens" or to other perceived undesirables; once the precedent exists it can only widen in its application, and you can be sure that it will.

Do these judges think they will never be the one being tortured? No doubt, but history says otherwise. They remind me of a poem by Steve Turner:

History repeats itself.
Has to.
No-one listens.

We are so fucked.

All arms of government united in slavish support of the King and his G-d-ordained doings! G-d bless him in his infinite wisdom and power, ruling over us and keeping us safe from those scary evildoers who would harm us!

Sorry, this country's fucked. These authoritarian sub-humans (made so by their own choice, robots to ideology) are incorrigible. The infection's too widespread. The pent up karma just gets bigger and worse. Get out while you can.

um, not when you take all this shit at face value...

hee hee hee

*only* if you subscribe to the 'they-know-better-than-we-do' school of subservience, can you find this 'reasoning' acceptable...

ho ho ho

*only* if you are a pantsload-patriot can you accept such 'wise' and 'judicious' capitulation to super-secret, super-powers which keep us baby-citizens super-safe ! ! !

ha ha ha

surely obama-the-wise is playing some eleventy dimensional game of tictactoe with the evil power elites, and he will soon burst forth from the phone booth with cape flapping to save the day ! ! !

ak ak ak

surely he will...

i leave kampers with a quote i'm not sure i bothered sheeple with before:

"Capitalism is the astounding believe that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone." John Maynard Keynes

(miami sound machine/primitive love/falling in love (uh-oh))

art guerrilla

aka ann archy

eof

...but unfortunately hardly surprising. The US has been pretty consistent in it's "laws don't apply to us, we can torture anyone we want" stance.

What is really sad, is how the mainstream is still accepting (and even embracing) this policy. As soon as someone is unlawfully kidnapped, he becomes a "terrorist" to the MSM. The past 8 years have been a witch hunt, where anyone can yell Terrorist! and then the spanish inquisitors appear and 'rendition' him away.

The coup took place in 1947 with the passage of the National Security Act.

I read a book in '96 warning that our courts would soon become an ineffective structural check on the executive (Terror and Taboo by Joseba Zulaika if anyone's interested). And now they won't be "enmeshed" in "an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy" where national security concerns are evoked.

Absolutely unbelievable, reading what happened to that man in my name makes me despair to the point of tears. And angry to the point of (dare I say?) violence.

(Don't worry I'll probably just smash a coffee mug later)

Because that would be fatal to the case.

Would Sotomayor have to recuse herself?

Because that would be fatal to the case.

I'm not 100% sure, but I don't think so, because she took no part in the outcome of the case, so it's not an instance where she'd be sitting in appellate judgment of her own ruling.

Those Canadians. Give this maybe-Terraist (maybe not) an apology and nine million dollars.

Not us, by gosh. Those Canadians have the luxury of living under the security we provide and not the responsibility to provide it. They have nine million dollars to throw around when it turns out something "unfortunate" has happened, because they didn't have to bear up front the costs of running rendition operations or maintaining foreign black sites for their protection, we 'Murikins provide those services for them. But those Canadians, safe in the Security we provide, get all high and mighty about "right" and "wrong" and go tossing around Nine Million Dollars at people we 'Murikins done saved them from.

We 'Murikins don't owe nobody nuthin'. They'll think twice before lookin' sideways at us again, that's for sure.

I particularly liked the dissenting judge's alliteration regarding our guys wearing hoods from now on.

Don't worry, Glenn -- we have a Supreme Court to protect our Constitution and our country from ill-advised decisions such as these, right? Surely they'll set this aright.