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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: stockman_scott who wrote (45851)	5/11/2004 7:34:04 AM
From: Crocodile	Respond to of 89467

Re: this part of "An Ugly Prison Record": Friedman's column was headlined, "Restoring our honor," but the abuse of prisoners surprises nobody who reads newspapers or scans the Internet. Americans have been mistreating and torturing their fellow Americans in their own lock-ups for decades. What honor is there to restore? Scott, Good article. Pretty much what I've been thinking over the past couple of weeks as the whole porn-torture thing has been exposed at Abu-Ghraib. And yet, day after day, we keep hearing it proclaimed that "This is not the American Way". Well, I'm not at all sure of that. Take the example of the Canadian couple from Ottawa who went down to NYC to see an exhibit at MOMA a few weeks ago (story reported in the Ottawa Citizen newspaper on 27 Apr 2004). While sitting in a park eating bagels, they were attacked , the man knocked to the ground and his face ground into the gravel, then handcuffed and dragged off to jail, strip-searched, and then thrown into cells with a bunch of crack-addicts -- all because some undercover cops thought they looked like people who might possess marijuana. At first, the tourists were denied the right to call their families, although the woman was eventually allowed to call her sister (a police officer in Ottawa). However, the whole episode cost this couple $5,000 to get release from jail. The man had himself tested for drugs right after the incident, and the results (not surprisingly) came up negative -- so, basically, the cops were just a couple of lying thugs who attacked an innocent couple for no reason. Needless to say, this incident hasn't made a very good impression on Canadians.... but is this kind of treatment "unusual"? Is it new? [For a reference to the whole story of the above, see links at bottom of this post]. I think not. Almost 20 years ago, I attended a convention in NY state. A couple of friends from another area of my province were coming to the same convention. One of the women is an artist and was bringing a selection of her art (just prints of her animal sketches) to the convention to sell. She had checked and gotten all of the necessary paperwork and authorizations in order to do so well ahead of time, etc... so she wasn't anticipating any great delay when crossing the border, but she set out early in the day just in case there were any snags. When she and her friend got to the border, they were questioned separately (she said it was more like an interrogation), then both of them were thrown into empty cement cubicle rooms with slotted windows and held for the whole day without any reason given for their incarceration. In total, I believe they were held for at least 10 hours in these cells before finally being allowed to continue on their way. No explanation for the bizarre treatment. They said that, if they hadn't have paid so much for the display space at the convention center, they would have turned around and gone straight home. For those who don't know better, such incidents as the above are a hell of a lot more common (and have been for decades) than most Americans realize. Bizarre, overdone, heavy-handed, and illogical treatment of detainees seem to be some kind of an American tradition. If such forms of intimidation, obnoxious and over-zealous law enforcement techniques, etc.. are an everyday event in the U.S., then why on earth would Americans be even slightly surprised at what transpired at Abu Ghraib? **Reference to the story about the Ottawa couple who were mistreated, incarcerated and ripped off for $5,000 on a trip to NYC to see a museum exhibit -- reprinted from the Ottawa Citizen. mapinc.org