HOW IS THIS OUR FAULT?
A big story topping the news today is this tale of woe from a Canadian citizen who was allegedly tortured in Syria after being accused of terrorism and deported. The thrust of today's media coverage is that all of this is the fault of the United States. Of course, any wrong committed anywhere in the world is our fault. The 36-year-old software engineer says he was tortured in Syrian jails before being freed in 2003. A Canadian judge has ruled that he was innocent and cleared his name. And all of this is supposed to be our fault.
Wait just a minute here. Let's take a closer look at what happened. The facts speak for themselves:
* Canadian police identified this guy as a terrorist. It was their call...they did it. They passed the info along to the U.S., but they made the initial call about this guy. Fault: Canada.
* The judge that has cleared the man says the Canadian police made a number of mistakes and passed flawed information along to the United States. Fault: Canada.
* Police handed over the information without screening it for mistakes. Again, the fault lies with Canada.
So naturally, Canada is passing the buck and blaming the United States. After telling us this guy was a terrorist and that he was seen associating with another terrorist...what did they expect us to do? This was right after 9/11...so we picked him up and sent him to Syria for a little debriefing.
If he indeed is innocent, then the fault lies 100% with Canadian officials. But that's not what we're hearing today. Oh well.