Steyn on Edwards
 

That was a good debate asskicking. But the funniest remains, "I knew John Kennedy, and you are no John Kennedy."

ETA: I guess he said "Jack Kennedy," didn't he?

Now Playing on the Outrage Channel?
 

I was aware of the Italian case, and had heard of this one, but wasn't aware Germany was trying to prosecute.

You have to expect even an ally to be pissed if your government agents secretly kidnap one of their citizens and haul him off to be tortured for a few months. Especially if it was a "mistake."

From the article:

"Around the time of Masri's release, U.S. diplomats privately informed Otto Schily, then Germany's interior minister, that a German citizen had been mistakenly detained under the CIA's program of 'extraordinary renditions,' or the extrajudicial abduction of Islamic radicals who are secretly taken to allied countries for interrogation.

"In December 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in a meeting in Berlin that Masri had been 'erroneously taken.' But Rice and other U.S. officials have denied any fault or responsibility in the case."

I've always been really glad that its not my job to make decisions about programs like the "extraordinary rendition" program. I think I'd probably have authorized it and then have to live with cases like this on my conscience. When we know it was a mistake, we should at least have the decency to throw a few million dollars at the victim to settle the case -- like we're doing with the Canadian citizen.

S_A_M

[confidential to Ty] or vice versa [/confidential to Ty]

Now Playing on the Outrage Channel?
 

Agreed. And I also wouldn't like to be the German prosecutors either.

But at its heart, this situation make me wonder why, instead of spending all of our diplomatic good will trying to go to war with Iraq, we didn't spend some diplomac time on arrangements with the intelligence agencies of our allies to give us options that don't require kidnaping people off of the streets.

Now Playing on the Outrage Channel?
 

Huh. I had seen that the Canadian government is compensating him, but the last I saw, the US was nowhere near apologising, much less offering compensation.

Must have run out of doughnuts
 

British thwart more terrorism, the old fashioned way (you know, with investigation, intelligence and law enforcement).

According to NPR:

• The Bush administration formally refused the Canadian government's request to remove Maher Arar from a terrorist watch list.
  
  In 2002, Arar was en route to Canada when he was detained by U.S. officials in New York and sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned for more than a year and endured severe beatings.
  
  At the time, Arar, a Syrian-born software engineer, was living in Ottawa, Canada. Maria LaHood, one of Arar's attorneys, says her client is a victim of extraordinary rendition — where terrorism suspects are sent to third countries for interrogation.
  
  An exhaustive investigation by Canadian officials found that Arar had no terrorist ties; he has been completely cleared by the Canadian government.
  
  Last week, U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff sent a letter to Stockwell Day, Canada's minister of public safety, in which they said they have other information about Arar that led them to their decision to keep him on the list.
  
  The three men sat down to review the information on Arar. Later, at a press conference, Day said there was "nothing new" in the U.S. dossier on Arar that would justify keeping him on a terrorist watch list.
  
  For his part, Arar says he'd like the U.S. government to acknowledge its mistakes.
  
  "An apology would be basically on my wish list," Arar said. "Given the history of the U.S. government, it is unlikely this will happen."

An unlucky veteran with friends in high places.
 

Joshua Sparling, the veteran who Slave tells us was spat at by antiwar protesters at the Mall on Saturday, has had unfortunate run-ins with the antiwar left before. As Fox & Friends and Michelle Malkin reported, when Sparling was recovering at Walter Reed Hospital, he got a Christmas card with a death wish in it:

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger...91257/sick.jpg

Note the messy handwritten, the sort you would expect from unkempt hippies. Also, the name "Miguel" isn't even really American.

What are the chances that the one veteran spat at by antiwar protesters is also the one to receive this sort of Christmas card?

But Sparling's media-covered abuse at the hands of the antiwar crowd doesn't stop there. Last spring, Sparling's father described how he was insulted at an airport while in a wheelchair:

• We arrived at the airport at 4:30 pm for a 5:10 flight. When we arrived there was no wheel chair, no one at the SPIRIT counter and no security. I looked for a SPIRIT employee for ten minutes. Joshua said, “Dad I’m going to miss my flight, just get me to the gate and they can help us there.” Northwest gave us a wheel chair, but we still had no security. Security would not let us through because we had no boarding pass. We informed them that SPIRIT had our boarding pass and asked that he please let us go to the gate with him and he could verify it, or get someone from SPIRIT and they could give it to him. The security guard said, “You are no different than any other passenger with no boarding pass - no go.”
  
  My son started to cry uncontrollably and told the guard to go to hell. Another lady spoke up and said, “That’s what you get for fighting in a war we have no business in.” Madder and very emotional I asked, “Can’t you remember 9-11?” She responded that was just our excuse to be in Iraq when we should not be there and we deserved whatever we got. That is when my son really lost it. Three WWII vets were coming off flights into DC, gave my son a hug, and stood up to the lady and security guard. They stayed with my son until he flew out.

When he appeared on Hannity & Colmes after the protest, Sparling also said that several of the protesters were going to try to kill him. (For whatever reasons, the NYT missed this.) Actually, Sparling has made several media appearances since Saturday, adding further details to his account of last weekend. But he's not exactly new to the spotlight: Sparling has been on Hannity & Colmes several times before last weekend, as it turns out.

Nor were those Sparling's only brushes with fame. On one of his appearances on Hannity & Colmes last year, he described being the guest of Vice President's Cheney's wife for last year's State of the Union address:

• COLMES: How did he get chosen? How did it come about
  that last night he was in the gallery? Were you with
  him last night at the State of the Union address?
  
  SPARLING: Yes. As a matter of fact, I was sitting
  beside Vice President Cheney's wife.
  
  COLMES: Did you talk to her?
  
  SPARLING: Yes, I did.
  
  COLMES: What did you talk about?
  
  SPARLING: She's a very nice lady. And I can see, you
  know -- very, very kind-hearted family.

Sparling has also appeared at Oliver North's Freedom Alliance concerts as a "special guest," along with such other special guests as Ann Coulter. Not bad for an ordinary vet.

Meanwhile, many people are raising questions about the accuracy of the NYT's reporting, including Sparling, who denies that he spat back. Oddly enough, several other newspapers also covered Sparling fairly closely -- it's like everyone knows that bad things just happen to the man -- and saw no spitting. Perhaps the NYT didn't get the memo from the overlords of the vast left-wing media conspiracy telling everyone to keep quiet about it.

Other observers report that Sparling got a round of applause from the protesters for his service to the country, but maybe this was just a ploy so that he'd be off-guard later when they tried to spit on him.

Here's a picture of the crowd Sparling came with:

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger...5601/fonda.jpg

Classy. They don't look they were inclined to start anything.

Anyone wanting to read more about this Sparling fellow should start with Digby's blog and follow the various links. But the more you look, the worse it all gets.

Maybe he's just unlucky.

Now Playing on the Outrage Channel?
 

He's still on the terror watch list. We're not saying why. Maybe because he's pissed off at the US over his year long vacation in Syria?

NPR had a thing this morning about South Africans ending up on the list and South Africa being pissed off about it. One of the guys who got detained at the airport and kicked out of the US said he hadn't felt that kind of government scrutiny since apartheid.

An unlucky veteran with friends in high places.
 

You admit DU/Kos etc. are full of space fucks; why is it not possible one of them spit at this guy- oh wait- at the ground next to the guy?

How is your above post different than Penske's treat of Cindy S?

I mean you admit the guy is disabled, right?

For spanky
 

An interview with Juan Williams:Putting aside the new initiative to elevate mistrust in Washintgon, you, too, have a pronuciation problem?

An unlucky veteran with friends in high places.
 

Clearly the dirty antiwar hippies are so inept that they decided to spit at the one vet there with connections to Sean Hannity and Lynne Cheney, and who had already been victimized so many times by dirty antiwar hippies that he would be sure to be seen as a sympathetic victim. They just can't do anything right.

Another possibility is that vets are being spit on all over the place, without any attention from the left-leaning mainstream media, and it only came out this time because the hippies spat on a vet who'd been on Hannity & Colmes so many times.

How indeed?

For starters, I think I stuck to relating what Mr. Sparling has said and done. But that's just like Penske's treatment of Cindy Sheehan, right?

Are you suggesting that you have trouble taking seriously a report that begins with the line "This report can best be described as a middle finger of defiance aimed at the gloom and doom armchair generals in Congress, the media, and Fort Living room."?

You think maybe, just maybe, the "findings" of that report were driven by the authors' desire to say "fuck you" to the majority of Americans who recognize what a mistake this war was?

Shame on you. Next you'll claim that Curveball and Ahmed Chalabi were manipulating facts for their own gain.

Steyn on Edwards
 

2, on both. I wasn't particularly impressed with Edwards as a candidate. But the man was feared by the defense bar for a reason.

Now Playing on the Outrage Channel?
 

are you saying that you wouldn't torture a few Germans if they knew about a ticking time bomb?


Terrorist.