Understatement of the Year Award

Goes to Condoleezza Rice.

"We have told the Canadian government we do not think this was handled particularly well … and we will try to do better in the future," Rice said while testifying before the House of Representatives foreign affairs committee.

So ... let me get this straight. Rice has admitted that they didn't handle it well, but continues to deny that he was tortured in Syria:

Rice told Delahunt she was "aware of claims" that the engineer, who made his home in Ottawa, was tortured while imprisoned in Syria.

This is possibly the most egregious lie I have ever heard uttered by a politician on either side of the border. Syria's record for treatment of people in custody is well known, and it seems unlikely at best that the United States officials involved in Arar's handover to Syria were unaware of what was in store for Arar.

When pressed further, Rice pulled an Oliver North-esque comment out:

"my memory of some of the details has faded."

If Rice were Pinocchio, her nose would have impaled someone in that room after telling that whopper.

On Morality and Politics

One has to wonder about the state of "morality" in our government - especially among our politicians. It seems to me that the priorities and compass are royally screwed up right now.

While Republican family values keep on showing up in the courtrooms, and Democrats pussyfoot around legal equality for GLBT citizens in the United States, we find a government which is using "executive privilege" to invade citizen's privacy arbitrarily, and send people off knowingly to be tortured.

So, let me get this straight - granting legal equality to law abiding citizens is a bad thing, but torture is a good thing? Since when?