Germany has become the second European country to issue arrest warrants for CIA agents involved in kidnapping terrorism suspects for transportation to third countries where the suspects are abused and often tortured. German citizen Khaled El-Masri was snatched from the German border, flown to Afghanistan where he was beaten and tortured, and was then dumped in Albania five months later after the CIA realized they had kidnapped an innocent man.

Last year, Italy charged 23 CIA agents with the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric from the streets of Milan, possibly with the unauthorized help of Italy’s top intelligence agency. Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr was then sent to Egypt where he remains in prison amid allegations that he too was tortured. (For more on the Italian case, see BTC News coverage here, here, here and here.) The case was killed by an appointee of Bush ally Silvio Berlusconi but was revived under Berlusconi’s successor.

Neither the Germans nor the Italians expect any of the CIA agents to surrender or to travel to countries within the European Union where they might be subject to arrest and extradition, but prosecutors in both countries want to send a (belated) message that the CIA no longer has an unlimited license to kidnap and transship suspects from and through EU territory.

As is traditional for US officials when confronted with having invaded the wrong country or killed or tortured innocent people, the US has refused to make amends.

U.S. officials have not publicly admitted any guilt or responsibility. In December 2005, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged in a meeting in Berlin that Masri had been “erroneously taken.” But U.S. diplomats denied she had done so.

A year later, when asked by a reporter in Washington whether the United States owed Masri an apology, Rice declined to offer one. “We have tried to deal with this case in a way that is responsible and — you know, that’s all I’m going to say about this case,” she said.

“We have tried to deal with this case in a way that is responsible.” Well, you pretty much blew that opportunity when you gave the CIA free rein to snatch people off the street and torture or kill them. El-Masri is not the only such victim; Canadian citizen Maher Arar was arrested by US authorities and sent to Syria, where he was tortured, before being repatriated to Canada and cleared of any terrorist ties. The Canadian government proffered an official apology and a multi-million dollar settlement; the US government blames Syria for reneging on its good-as-gold promise not to torture Arar and has kept him on the US no-fly and terrorist watch lists.

The Senate is investigating the Arar matter, but unfortunately one of the Senators involved is Republican Arlen Specter, whose practice is to talk tough and fold early when confronted with administration atrocities. Although Specter is no longer in a position to impose his bluff-and-fold tactics upon the entire Senate judiciary committee, he still apparently enjoys the confidence of Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, his replacement as committee chair.

No one outside the Bush administration has any way of knowing exactly how many people the CIA has kidnapped, and of those how many were tortured or killed while in custody, and of those how many in addition to El-Masri and Arar were victims of mistaken identity or dime store intelligence. Given the large number of Guantanamo prisoners who have been released for lack of any evidence that they were involved in any anti-US activities, the chances seem good that the two innocent men we know about are not isolated mistakes. Given the administration’s insistence on immunizing US personnel against charges of war crimes or human rights violations under US law — something Specter fretted about and then supported — the chances seem even better; sooner or later, one of those mistakes will have his day in court.

So here we are, proud owners of a country that thinks nothing of implementing and refining practices championed by the Soviets, Communist China and other bastions of light and democracy. We own a country that cannot afford to take responsibility for mistakes lest it be forced to take responsibility for what it has done deliberately.

Here’s a suggestion for Senators Leahy and Specter. Introduce legislation to repeal the Military Commissions Act and strip the Bush administration and its factotums of immunity for whatever violations of the Geneva Conventions and US law they may have committed. Introduce legislation to explicitly outlaw the outsourcing of torture to countries that are in theory less scrupulous than the US. Introduce legislation explicitly guaranteeing the right of habeas corpus for anyone “detained” or arrested by any US agency. Stop worrying about whether or not the US had cause to ship Maher Arar or Khaled El-Masri off to Syria or Afghanistan to be tortured and start worrying about whether or not the US has any business shipping anyone anywhere to be tortured. Don’t let Alberto Gonzales spank you like his private monkey when you ask him for information about what constitutional perversions he has authorized. In fact, don’t ask him at all: tell him to give it up or face a subpoena.

The US has engaged in practices that should land us on our own list of human rights violators. If that’s acceptable to the Democratic Congress, spell it out so we can vote for people with less flexible moral compasses. If that isn’t acceptable, put it in writing. Stand up for this country and its Constitution or get the hell out of the way.

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