Month: January 2004

Let’s not be hasty

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Outside the Beltway pointed out this Matt Yglesias post on what we should really do with this $1.5 Billion that we’re apparently spending because it’s an election year to ‘strengthen marriage’: I think the president really ought to consider establishing a Cabinet-level Federal Dating Service or something. It could be like Friendster and a goofy … Read more

What exactly is “Islamofascism”?

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Could someone define “Islamofascism” for me? The words gets used a lot, especially on pro-war blogs. Here’s what I don’t understand. Is it supposed to be: 1) a unified ideology or movement to some degree, in the way that Communism and Naziism and Fascism were? Or 2) Arab/Muslim + violent atrocities + enemy of the … Read more

Another Side of Howard Dean

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Via Instapundit, USA Today has published a letter from Howard Dean to Bill Clinton in 1995 urging him to take unilateral action in Bosnia. I think your policy up to this date has been absolutely correct. We must give, and have given, this policy with our allies and with the United Nations every opportunity to … Read more

Arar #8: Guilt and Innocence, part A

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Preliminary question: does it even matter whether Arar was guilty or innocent? If his allegations are true, what the government did was illegal and immoral regardless of guilt or innocence. But I think if he’s innocent it’s that much worse, and that much more likely that this has happened before and will happen again.

So, let me summarize the evidence as best I can. I’m listing the claims and counter-claims in the order they appeared in press accounts, since that may be relevant in determining sources’ credibility.

This is a very very long post, so I’m going to leave my conclusions about Arar’s guilt/innocence and about why he might have been suspected even if innocent for a separate post. And if you don’t have time to read the whole thing I recommend items #3, #7, #8, and 9.

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Dean Redux

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Not so long ago, I wrote:

Dean has a strong base, but he turns a heckova lot of people off (myself included). It’s not at all clear that he can overcome this insta-hate, and reach out beyond his current followers. . . . The polls tell the story: Dean, more than probably any other candidate, depends on grass-roots momentum. But his momentum is fading . . . Dean’s playing defense for the first time, and I’m not sure he has it in him.

In comments, I added:

Frankly, Dean hasn’t really been tested yet. The easiest place in the world to be as a candidate is to be the up-and-coming outsider (Wes Clark, I’m looking at you). Until recently, Dean has had the luxury of being in that position. . . . Now that Dean has had a couple weeks as the clear front runner, we’ve seen him either stumble or crack (depending on your personal view of the man). It hasn’t been pretty.

I went out on a limb, and predicted that “[t]he worm has turned. Dean has peaked. Clark is going to be the Democratic nominee[.]” Now, I could very well be wrong about Clark being the nominee. But there’s growing evidence that Dean may, in fact, have peaked.

You saw it here first, folks.

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Temporary Power-Up.

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It won’t last, but it looks like the links generated by Katherine’s excellent Maher Arar posts have pushed us over into Marauding Marsupial territory for the first time. Katherine rules! (pause) OK, question for the more experienced bloggers reading this: it’s been two months since we started, more or less. Average daily traffic 948, last … Read more

Do Not Displease The House of Tatas

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I contemplated posting on the increasing chaos in Southern Iraq, but thought better of it. I mean, really, Iraq is sooo November 2003. Onward to the things that really matter: From Slashdot (which cites Reuters): “the estate of J.R.R. Tolkien won a cybersquatting case against Alberta Hot Rods, a Canadian-based operator which registered jrrtolkien.com and linked it to its commercial celebrity Web site[,] before an ICANN arbitration panel.”

The Slashdotters, of course, don’t link to the panel’s actual decision. We Obwingers, however, revel in pointless detail. So here it is, in all its ICANNy goodness.

Now, for the meaningless digression: The Tolkein arbitration was handled under the auspices of the World Intellectual Property Organization, which has quasi-sorta-jurisdiction over many domain name disputes. WIPO’s rules allow the holder of a valid trademark to seek relief against a cybersquatter through a quick-and-dirty arbitration proceeding.*

Doesn’t always work as planned, though. Because WIPO is an international organization, an arbitration panel can consist of people from around the world. Many of these people don’t speak English as a first language (shocking!). This can lead to some, well, unusual decisions. Such as: Tata Sons Limited v. D&V Enterprises.

Tata Sons, Ltd. is a large Indian utility company. D&V Enterprises owned a website named “bodacious-tatas.com,” which provided (one presumes) all manner of bodacious tatas for one’s viewing enjoyment. Tata Sons, Ltd. claimed that a person seeking out its utility may confuse D&V’s bodacious tatas with its utilities. It sought to take control of D&V’s “bodacious tatas.com” domain name.

At this point, you may be thinking that one would have to be pretty damn drunk to confuse a utility with a purveyor of bodacious tatas. That thought, however, did not enter the mind of the WIPO arbitration panel. Its ruling reads, in part:

TATA, without any vestige of doubt, constitutes a famous (or, in international parlance, well known) mark . . . . As to goodwill, the Panel accepts the Complainant’s submission to the effect that the name “TATA” has consistently been associated with the goods and services of, the “House of Tata”. . . . the name “TATA” has acquired considerable goodwill.

. . . .

The Complainant contended that the use by the Respondent of the impugned Domain Name is aimed at taking a ‘cash-ride’ on the Complainant’s image and status. Thus, the unauthorized adoption of the Domain Name has resulted in the Respondent deriving, or attempting to derive, monetary benefit by trading on the reputation and goodwill held by the Complainant. The Panel accepts this contention . . . . [and awarded the domain name to the House of Tatas]

Erm, yes: when I think of Tatas, I think of the “House of Tatas,” an Indian utility company.

You can’t make this stuff up.

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Learning all my holy moves doing some research.

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A random comment by Reader praktike reminded me to note that this Monitor-With-Obsessive,-Luskin-Like-Blog-Stalking,-Snarky-Emails-and-Carping-Criticism Adopt-A-Journalist program really does seem to be taking off (timeline here – some other info here). Just note which Democratic candidate you’re voting for with each email you send out, guys, that’s all I ask. Much obliged.

I can hear their ukeleles playing

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Possibly it’s due to the two beers I’ve had tonight, but the only thing that pops into my head from this Kos Diary story that suggests that Dean is about to get the crucial Jimmy Carter endorsement is “Why the heck isn’t Dean getting endorsements from Democrats that have actually, like, won Presidential elections?” Granted, … Read more

Haiku-a-lypse Now

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M.C. Masterchef states: “looks like I need to start commenting more. Gimme another haiku thread to work with and I’ll reach my quota real fast.” Witness, now, the wish and the command becoming one. Cold January Bosses to warmer homes go I’m wearing no pants This is your depressed Haiku open thread.

O-Kay, Then.

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Not that I’m the sort to agree with Max Sawicky on much (although I do try to be nice about disagreeing with him), but I can certainly see why he decided to title his post about the WaPo article on Norquist the way he did. Norquist’s kind of intensity is just a tad unnerving, and … Read more

Just to add to my bitterness*…

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…Argus is obviously much more on top of Uzbekistani affairs than I am right now. Go check him out. Moe *This is synthetic bitterness for comic effect. No actual bitter was used in the making of this post.

Guess it’s over, then.

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Fafblog endorsed Dean. I’ll call up Bush and tell him the bad news; somebody else call the other eight Democratic candidates, ‘kay? I can’t trust myself to not crank call Kuchinich out of spite. (pause) On the bright side, the Ninja googlebomb lives on. UPDATE: mc_masterchef asks for haiku’s warp and woof – Let us … Read more

Arar interlude

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Pretending I’m a reporter again was too fun, so I did one more Google News search. There’s an article about Jean Chretien in the National Review that mentions the Arar case. I was interested in what a right wing magazine’s take on it would be, wondering if they’d give a plausible defense of the administration … Read more

A New Category

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In an attempt to get the blogrolls under control, I have instituted the Commentator category, representing the blogs of those who regularly post to the threads here. I’ve moved some and added a couple, including Catsy’s and praktike’s; feel free to use this thread to point out if I haven’t moved your blog to this … Read more

Arar #5

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Last one for the day. These quotations are from a Toronto Star article on November 21, 2003, p. A13. I can’t find a link: U.S. Attorney-General John Ashcroft publicly washed his hands of the Maher Arar affair yesterday, saying his department acted within the law because it accepted Syrian assurances the Ottawa man would not … Read more

Arar #4

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1. From another Washington Post story on the Arar case, from November 5, 2003: Officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the Arar case fits the profile of a covert CIA “extraordinary rendition” — the practice of turning over low-level, suspected terrorists to foreign intelligence services, some of which are known to torture prisoners…. … Read more

Plame Expressed as a Logrithmic Equation

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From the write up of the Sixty Minutes’ interview of O’Neill: Not only did O’Neill give Suskind his time, he gave him 19,000 internal documents. “Everything’s there: Memoranda to the President, handwritten “thank you” notes, 100-page documents. Stuff that’s sensitive,” says Suskind, adding that in some cases, it included transcripts of private, high-level National Security … Read more

Arar #3

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Here’s a useful timeline of the case from CBC News.

And here’s a Washington Post article from November 19, 2002, with more information on who approved Arar’s removal to Syria. (Thanks to reader Slartibartifast for the link.):

Then-Deputy Attorney General Larry D. Thompson, in his capacity as acting attorney general, signed the highly unusual order, citing national security and declaring that to send the man, Maher Arar, home to Canada would be “prejudicial to the interests of the United States,” according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity…..

A couple of questions/comments:

1) Based on these two DOJ web pages, the Deputy Attorney General is the second highest ranking person in the entire Justice Department.

(From the DOJ job description:“The Deputy Attorney General is authorized to exercise all the power and authority of the Attorney General….In the absence of the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General acts as the Attorney General.”)

So this was approved at a very high level. This cuts both ways. On the one hand, it is very upsetting to know that the second most important person in the Justice Department, acting as the Attorney General, would do this. On the other hand, it suggests that this power is reserved for unusual cases, not something that happens to everyone who is on the watch list and can be easily deported to a suitably nasty country. It also makes me wonder why they suspected Arar, and whether it was more than the unimpressive connections that Pyle cites.

(The article says “One U.S. official said yesterday that when apprehended at the airport, Arar had the names of “a large number of known al Qaeda operatives, affiliates or associates” in his wallet or pockets.” If that’s true it could have been a routine watch-list stop that became something more. I don’t think this would be acceptable even if Arar was guilty of something, or if he wasn’t guilty but they had good reason to believe it was. But it would be less flagrantly unacceptable.)

I do not know how unusual/routine it is for the Deputy Attorney General to act as the Attorney General. The thought immediately crossed my mind “why wasn’t Ashcroft acting as the Attorney General?” but for all I know the Deputy has the night shift, or Ashcroft was sick that week.

2) “then-Deputy Attorney General.” Larry D. Thompson is no longer Deputy Attorney General. He stepped down on August 11, 2003, and is now a visiting professor* at the University of Georgia law school.

His departure appears to have been voluntary–there’s a very complimentary press release here, including ‘quotations’ from Ashcroft:

“Larry was more than a Deputy Attorney General to me. He was my partner. He worked shoulder to shoulder with me at a time when history necessitated dramatic changes in the way the Justice Department did its job.”

(etc.)

Of course it’s possible that he was privately asked to resign over this case. (If so I wouldn’t have included that quotation in the press release, which really made me cringe. But that may be my bias showing through.) August 11 is before the story really broke. But it’s shortly after a human rights group reported that Arar was being tortured, and Arar’s wife asked Canada to recall its ambassador from Syria. (August 6th and 7th).

(There’s plenty of other good stuff in the Post story, which I may get to in a later post. Very much worth a read.)

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Class-blogging

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My “Terror in the 21st Century” class makes blogging both very difficult and very easy. Very difficult because there are 3 hours of class and 150 pages of reading every weekday. Very easy because I can write whole posts by excerpting the most interesting parts of my notes. For instance:

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Lefty Hawks reconsider the Iraq War

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In what has become a popular refrain — “I have no time to blog today/no time at all (hey hey) . . . ” — I have no time to blog today. Yet, as a left-leaning Blogohawk,* I feel compelled to note this article from Slate: “Liberal Hawks Reconsider the Iraq War.”

As for any “reconsideration” by this humble hawk, well: The aftermath of the Iraq war — particularly the discovery of a significant lack of WMDs and of an effective plan to deal with post-war Iraq — has confirmed my pre-war sense** that Bush inappropriately rushed into things. On balance, however, would I still have done what we (the coalition of the willing) did? I think, yes.

Those three words will have to hold the fort for me now. I’m off to less-exciting things.

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Arar #2

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Here you go, the fruits of my first googling. I do an awful lot of quoting–to make it clear what are my words and what are not, I have tried to italicize the text of all quotations.

1. The transcript of Arar’s November 4 statement to the media is probably the best place to start. Not surprisingly, it is graphic.

2. The SF Chronicle editorial on the government’s basis for suspecting Arar is disputed. Anonymous U.S. and Canadian intelligence officials told The Canadian Post in December that they were “100% sure” that Arar had been at an Al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Here is a CTV summary of the allegations.

Excerpts: “The officials allege Arar travelled to Pakistan in the early 1990’s, then entered Afghanistan to train at the al Qaeda base known as the Khaldun camp.” (“Graduates” of that camp were involved in the 1993 WTC bombing and the 1998 embassy bombings.) “Arar, 33, says he confessed to travelling to Afghanistan only after being tortured in Syria. He now insists he’s never been to that country and that he’s not a member of al Qaeda.”

“He now insists” might imply that Arar has changed his story–but in his initial statement he denies connection with Al Qaeda, denies ever going to Afghanistan, and says that they tortured a confession out of him. I believe this was before the allegations by the anonymous intelligence officers; here is is the relevant quotation.

Then on the third day, the interrogation lasted about 18 hours. They beat me from time to time and make me wait in the waiting room for one to two hours before resuming the interrogation.

While in the waiting room I heard a lot of people screaming. They wanted me to say I went to Afghanistan. This was a surprise to me.

They had not asked about this in the United States. They kept beating me so I had to falsely confess and told them I did go to Afghanistan. I was ready to confess to anything if it would stop the torture. They wanted me to say I went to a training camp.

Pyle (the author of the SF Chronicle editorial) does not give sources for the explanation for Arar’s presence on the watch list. My guess is that they come from these passages in Arar’s statement:

They said they wanted to know why I did not want to go back to Syria. I told them I would be tortured there. I told them I had not done my military service; I am a Sunni Muslim; my mother’s cousin had been accused of being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and was put in prison for nine years.

and

They asked me about Abdullah Almalki, and I told them I worked with his brother at high-tech firms in Ottawa, and that the Almalki family had come from Syria about the same time as mine. I told them I did not know Abdullah well, but had seen him a few times and I described the times I could remember.

I told them I had a casual relationship with him.

They were so rude with me, yelling at me that I had a selective memory. Then they pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this.

I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that he had signed it for me — when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah’s brother, and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah.

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Maher Arar

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This article (via Brad DeLong, via Crooked Timber) is about the Maher Arar case. It outlines the basic story, which many of you will be familiar with: a Canadian citizen, changing planes at JFK, is deported to Syria where he is tortured for months and then released. (Arar is a joint Canadian-Syrian citizen but had not been to Syria for 16 years. I vaguely remember reading, though I do not have a cite for this, that the reason he’s a joint citizen is that Syria did not allow him to renounce his citizenship there.)

The article, an editorial by a Con. Law professor at Mount Holyoke, contains some new details, about exactly what happened to Arar,

So, they put Arar on a private plane and flew him to Washington, D.C. There, a new team, presumably from the CIA, took over and delivered him, by way of Jordan, to Syrian interrogators. This covert operation was legal, our Justice Department later claimed, because Arar is also a citizen of Syria by birth….

The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.

and about what the government’s basis for suspicion was.

The Syrians believed that Arar might be a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Why? Because a cousin of his mother’s had been, nine years earlier, long after Arar moved to Canada. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police reported that the lease on Arar’s apartment had been witnessed by a Syrian- born Canadian who was believed to know an Egyptian Canadian whose brother was allegedly mentioned in an al Qaeda document.

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O’Neill — InstaReaction

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For a more detailed analysis of the O’Neill story, see Katherine‘s post below. My InstaReaction to the Sixty Minutes’ interview was: 1. O’Neill is telling the truth, as he understands it, but 2. O’Neill’s truth does not necessarily accord with the generally-accepted definition thereof. In other words, O’Neill is credible without being believable. He definitely … Read more

The Big O

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Is it satisfying to have the former Treasury Secretary, who sat on the National Security Council, say many, many of the things I’ve said and thought about the Bush administration? You betcha. But what I’d really like is a month off from school and access to the 19,000 documents he gave Suskind. Failing that, here’s … Read more

Not all one thing. Never all one thing.

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OxBlog brings to our attention a Thomas Friedman Op-Ed about Turkey that should be read by anybody who walks around assuming that Islam itself is the enemy of the West, rather than fanatical elements inside of it. A significant portion of the text: I happened to be in Istanbul when the street outside one of … Read more