Delayed do to yesterdays blog

   With every passing day, I ask myself if the U.S.
 leadership could sink any lower than it already has.

   The answer always seems to be, yes…
 and this makes it very difficult to appreciate
 “Democracy” as we still like to call it.

   Apparently, innocence of wrongdoing doesn’t get
 you off the hook with American counter-terrorism
 units.   To torture individuals now, a name like
 “Arar” and the appearance of a potential “terrorist”
 can get you in a bad situation really fast.

   Thursday, our lawmakers offered an apology to a Canadian
 citizen deported by U.S. counter-terrorism officials to
 Syria where he was imprisoned and tortured.

   They called on Bush to apologize to Maher Arar,
 a Syrian-born software engineer banned from entering
 the U.S. despite having been cleared of links to
 terrorism by the Canadian government.

   Arar was arrested in New York on a layover, in 2002
 on his way home to Canada from a holiday when he was
 taken into custody and deported to Syria.
 He was tortured over a year’s time and spent
 time in the Damascus jails.
    “The America I see and hear about today
 is not the same America I admired when I lived
 there from 1999 to 2001,” he said.



   The White House said it had no plans
 of issuing an apology to Arar.

    Just so we're straight,.. It is now OK for the U.S.
to kidnap Canadians, send them to Syria and torture
them for years if we THINK they are terrorists.

    Canadians hate us for crying out loud,
  and why shouldn’t they?  

    Our country made a mistake and has
 been unwilling to own up to it.

   Our relationship with world leaders will continue
 to take a hit and it wouldn’t surprise me if this
 is the first of numerous nations that choose to
 dissociate themselves from the U.S.



   The 2008 elections can not come soon enough.
 I am positive that any man, woman, child or animal
 could replace the President and do a better job than
 he is at this juncture.
 President Bush is a pathetic excuse for an “American”
 and it is beyond me why some so-called “Patriots”
 continue to support the fool.


   President Bush destroyed America’s reputation,
 he made it difficult for the U.S. to remain
 an admirable nation.

   The world looks at us and thinks we are evil, greedy,
 intolerant, hateful and hypocritical. True or not, the world
 no longer regards us as trustworthy and many people
 would rather not associate with our country.


   It isn’t just the illegal wars, the violation
 of privacy rights, the revising of our Constitution
 and the polarization of American politics that is
 an issue.  Countries are becoming skeptical, defiant,
 irritated, and combative with the United States.

    Reuters is reporting that Ecuardor is demanding the U.S.
 allow them to build a base on our soil in exchange for a renewed
 lease on Ecuardorian soil for our military.

  Correa refused Washington’s lease on the Manta air base,
 it expires in 2009 and happens to be a vital region for
 counter-narcotics surveillance operations on Pacific
 drug-running routes.

    “We’ll renew the base on one condition: that they let
 us put a base in Miami — an Ecuadorean base,” Correa said.

    “If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers
 on a country’s soil, surely they’ll let us have an
 Ecuadorean base in the United States.”


    This is a serious issue, Ecuadorians want Americans out.
 They, like many countries, now question the validity of U.S.
 foreign policy.  The U.S. reputation has taken a major hit
 with President Bush as our leader.
 We no longer command the respect we once did.


   All we can do now is wait for the President to declare
 them a terrorist state so that we may ‘liberate’ them.



Ref...  Reuters: An innocent man’s detention and torture..