It's a sad day when we have to look to our neighbors to the north (lovely as they are) for an example of how to run a free, responsible country—or how to act when you get caught not running a free, responsible country.
Last week, Maher Arar was exonerated of any connection to terrorism by the Canadian government. This is significant because he has spent the preceding 10 months in Syria being tortured for his alleged links to terror. Arar was traveling back to his home in Canada by way of the United States, when he was picked up at JFK and, through the magic of extraordinary rendition, delivered to a country with more lax standards on hurting people to get information. There, they set about extracting the knowledge that Arar did not have, and we're guessing it was none too pleasant. And while an apology may be cold comfort, it puts Arar ahead of the unknown numbers of U.S. and foreign nationals being held in CIA "black sites" around the world and at Guantanamo Bay without access to lawyers or the evidence against them. It's clearly awful if we're doing this to U.S. citizens, but how long are other countries going to stand for us doing it to theirs?
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The real question is when are the American people going to wake up, and start the process of getting rid of this administrations people.