U.S. Administration tries to spread the blame

Recently, ex-CIA operative Michael Scheuer suggested that Canada was complicit in the extraordinary rendition of Maher Arar to Syria. This strikes me as a gross oversimplification of what happened. Until such time as he is willing to say who was complicit and what they did, we cannot take his words seriously; without concrete details, it is only an attempt to spread the stain around in the hopes that people won't notice it where it's darkest.

I would like to encourage him to name names, so that we may prosecute those responsible to the fullest extent of the law, for participating in such an act is clearly a crime in Canada, regardless of their position. I'd also like to take some of the newspapers of record in this country to task for dismissing his claims out of hand. Instead, they should be calling on Mr. Scheuer to tell us who in the Canadian government and/or security services participated in Mr. Arar's extraordinary rendition so that we can expose them and drag them and their actions out of the shadows and into fresh air and sunlight so they may decompose.

In the meantime, it is hard to take him (and his former agency, and his country) seriously when they continue to hold another one of our citizens, taken as a child soldier, prisoner under conditions that are clearly in contravention of Western norms of justice, not to mention the certainty of daily torture, in Guantanamo Bay. Even ignoring the fact that the "special" court system set up by the U.S. at Guantanamo clearly fails to meet even token requirements for a legitimate trial, the falsification of the evidence against him makes any attempt by the U.S. to portray his trial as having any legitimacy no more than a gossamer veil over the empire's naked paunch.

Name names and say what happened, Mr. Scheuer.