If ever there were a case that should turn the public against the Bush Administration's push for broader powers to suspend due process and continue to torture terror suspects, it is the story of Maher Arar, a Canadian computer engineer who found himself caught up in post-9-11 law enforcement paranoia.
Arar was a victim of the secret "rendition" program President Bush only recently acknowledged--a process by which terrorism suspects have been "disappeared" to other countries notorious for torturing prisoners during interrogation.
Arar, who was exonerated on Monday by a Canadian government commission of any ties to terrorism, spent a year enduring beatings in a small cell in Syria, before he was released.
The Canadian government blames the United States for withholding information from Canadian authorities, and sending Arar to Syria without notifying his family or the Canadian consulate, and for ignoring Arar's objections that he would be tortured. And, of course, there is the matter of his innocence.
Stories like Arar's show how much freedom we sacrifice under Bush's war on terror. This is not the kind of country most of us want to live in.
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