Snidely Turkey

Over the last few days, the Senate has met over a hotly contested bill and today they passed the measure that identifies us as…

The Bad Guys.

That’s right. We’re the bad guys. We’re foreigners who show up in dark clothes, wickedly giggling, with hoses and wires and no regard for humanity. Remember that guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark? That’s us.

What we’ve done is suspend habeas corpus for the imprisonment of foreigners. That means we can imprison people without any legal justification.

Here’s the deal. Picture yourself living in a different country. It doesn’t have to be Iraq or Afghanistan. Say, Italy. Your name is Bob and you moved there fifteen years ago because you got a little inheritance from your Aunt Winona and you decided to buy a small hotel there after you vacationed and fell in love with the place. It was easier to become a citizen (your Mom’s side of the family has relatives there), so you did. Not that you hate the U.S., but this is your place.

You build up a nice little clientele, and expand with a restaurant. You travel to other countries to buy items for your business. One day, some Turkish merchant ups the price on floor furnishings, and you decide to switch to a competitor. He doesn’t take it well and reports this to his brother, the governor of a small Afghan province. He promptly makes a call to Colonel Guano of the US Army, and then there’s a knock on your door.

You there – Bob. Yes, you. I’m taking you into prison. What? No reason. Just follow me. Got your birth certificate proving you’re a U.S. citizen? No? You’re screwed.

Think it won’t happen? On the same day the Senate passed the bill, this report appeared in the LA Times.

Federal Police Chief Apologizes to Deportee
From Times Wire Reports
September 29, 2006

The head of Canada's federal police force offered an unprecedented public apology to a man who was deported by U.S. agents to Syria after the Mounties mistakenly labeled him an Islamic extremist.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli admitted that his force had mishandled the case of Maher Arar, whom he described as an innocent man swept up in a search for terrorism suspects in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Arar, a 36-year-old Ottawa software engineer, says he was repeatedly tortured during the year he spent in Syrian jails.

Sorry guy. Hope you didn’t need your testicles for anything.