There is nothing about torture that is good or positive. The act itself is one of the most brutal and heinous that humans have ever committed. The affect on a society that condones torture is one of rising fear and brutality. The information (if it can be called that) gained under torture is so suspect as to be worthless. Perhaps the worst aspect is that torture, once accepted is used not only on enemies or bad people, but innocent victims as well.

On Monday the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of one such innocent victim of torture, Mr. Maher Arar, a Syrian born Canadian citizen. In 2002 he was returning to Canada from a trip abroad. At a stop over at JFK Airport he was detained by the US Government and held in solitary confinement for two weeks without access to an attorney. Mr. Arar was then deported, not to his nation of citizenship, Canada but, to Syria and put in the hands of the Syrian intelligence services, who are well known for their torture activities.

"Originally posted at Squarestate.net"

This was done after the criminal Bush administration had declared Mr. Arar a member of Al Qaeda without any sort of due process of law. He was a victim of “extraordinary rendition” to a country known to practice torture and against the tenets of the Torture Victims Protection Act, international law and U.S civil law. Mr. Arar was held in Syria for nearly a year where he was tortured into a false confession of attending an Al Qaeda training camp.

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Dick Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington, pressured the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2005 to quickly approve a torture memo that authorized CIA interrogators to use a combination of barbaric techniques during interrogations of "high-value" detainees, despite objections from senior DOJ officials, according to emails written by James Comey, the agency's former deputy attorney general.

In the emails, Comey also wrote that then Attorney General (AG) Alberto Gonzales was "weak" and had essentially allowed Cheney and Addington to politicize the DOJ. The emails can be found here: Documents: Justice Department Communication on Interrogation Opinions.

"The AG explained that he was under great pressure from the Vice President to complete both memos, and that the President had even raised it last week, apparently at the VP's request and the AG had promised they would be ready early this week," Comey wrote. Gonzales "added that the VP kept telling him 'we are getting killed on the Hill.'"

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