Some tactics in The War On Terror are upsetting, like the laughably mis-named "free speech zones dissenters are being forced into when Mr. Bush comes to town.

Some of the tactics in The War On Terror are just plain stupid, like the FBI's warning to be on the lookout for people reading the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Some of the tactics in The War On Terror are incredibly invasive, like Ashcroft's demand that every single hotel in Las Vegas give the FBI intimate details about their hotel guests, and the sneaky passage of several Patriot II laws with one hand while the other waved a victorious "We caught Saddam!" flag to distract the American Public.

I've read these stories over the last several months, and traded outrage for resignation. I even gave up writing about them here, because I got tired of people attacking me for being "Un-American." (I believe that the transformation of patriotism into jingoism, and its use as an election-year wedge issue will be one of Karl Rove's greatest and most destructive legacies.)

But in this K5 story was a link to the incredibly horrifying experience of Maher Arar.

This new tactic in The War On Terror left me feeling physically ill:

Maher Arar was about to change planes on his way home to Canada after visiting his wife's family in Tunisia when he was pulled aside for questioning. He was not a terrorist. He had no terrorist connections, but his name was on the list, so he was detained for questioning. Not ordinary, polite questioning, but abusive, insulting, degrading questioning by the immigration service, the FBI and the New York City Police Department.

He asked for a lawyer and was told he could not have one. He asked to call his family, but phone calls were not permitted. Instead, he was clapped into shackles and, for several days, made to "disappear." His family was frantic.

Finally, he was allowed to make a call. His government expected that Arar's right of safe passage under its passport would be respected. But it wasn't. Arar denied any connection to terrorists. He was not accused of any crimes, but U.S. agents wanted him questioned further by someone whose methods might be more persuasive than theirs.

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 fact that he was a Canadian traveling on a Canadian passport, with a wife, two children and job in Canada, and had not lived in Syria for 16 years, was ignored. The Justice Department wanted him to be questioned by Syrian military intelligence, whose interrogation methods our government has repeatedly condemned.

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.

[. . .]

Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it "extraordinary rendition." As one intelligence official explained: "We don't kick the s -- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s -- out of them."

This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained.

There's much more in the article, and it's required reading for anyone, regardless of political ideology, who believes in the principles upon which America was founded.

The screaming-heads on talk radio like to remind us that "as long as you're not doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to fear."

Well.

Maher Arar wasn't doing anything wrong. He was getting on a plane to go home to his family. I'd say he had quite a bit to fear.

When did this happen? Is this that great Freedom we're always told The Terrorists hate? If the government will take this man and ship him off to Syria -- SYRIA! -- to be tortured, on the flimsiest of evidence . . . what else will they do?

When do we say enough!? When do we finally stand up to Mr. Bush, Mr. Ashcroft, and the rest and tell them, "No! This is not how we do things in the United States of America!"

Will we wait until our doors are kicked in because one of our suspicious-yet-patriotic neighbors reported us to some secret government agency? Will it be when your husband "disappears" during a business trip, and surfaces at Guantanamo Bay four months later? What does it take, America!?

We've heard over and over again from supporters of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as supporters of Mr. Bush's foreign policies that we must stop terrorists from taking away our American Way Of Life. "They hate us because of our Freedom," Mr. Bush is fond of saying.

So is this a new tactic in Mr. Bush's War on Terror? Maybe if we just give our freedoms away -- our right to privacy, our right to peaceably assemble, our right to dissent -- to the likes of John Ashcroft . . . if we allow our Congress and Supreme Court to abandon their constitutional responsibilities to check and balance the Executive branch . . . if we sit idly by while The American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century seize the reins of American power . . . if we allow the basic rights upon which America was founded to be slowly but steadily eroded, if we allow the very things that set America apart from the so-called "Axis of Evil" to be taken away . . . maybe then The Terrorists won't have anything left to hate.

I realize that some who read this will simply dismiss it (and me) as the idiot rantings of a "Hollywood Liberal" who hates George W. Bush, but that misses the point: I never thought I'd live long enough to see the day when my government sent someone off to be tortured by a foreign country, and it happened on Mr. Bush's watch.

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