Isn’t This Good News?
Considering the alternative, and the usual hopeless incompetence in airline security, isn’t this a happy story?
But what happened to Jerry Wynn on American Eagle Flight 4518 on September 21, 2007 has forced him to consider what the War on Terror means to his own, individual citizen’s rights. He wants others to know it could just as easily happen to them.
Fine, they shouldn’t have mistaken him for a terrorist, and they should have apologized—but other than that, what did they do wrong? I would have been lying face down on the tarmac, my hands cuffed behind my back, thinking “Dudes, what took you so long?”
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.
Mark Jaquith said,
November 20, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
You’d be happy that a bunch of government agents were threatening to kill you? Happy that the same government who holds terror suspects in jail without charging them with a crime, the same government that tortures terror suspects and sends terror suspects to terror-friendly foreign countries for years-long unlawful detention and hideous torture now considers you a candidate for the same treatment?
What would you say if you were tortured? Would you still be cheering them on?
Bloodthirsty Liberal said,
November 20, 2007 @ 3:33 pm
One person’s torture is another person’s sexual arousal technique, I always say.
But we’re not talking about your fevered imagination, but about the facts of this case. The poor gentleman “abused” by the FBI would probably have cheered the real suspect being subjected to this treatment, as I hope he was. The only thing “wrong” was that he was incorrectly IDd—by the flight crew—as an accomplice. Face down on the tarmac is a good place to start sorting things out.
No one was redacted, renditioned, tortured, or detained for any longer than was necessary to determine what really happened.
Sorry, but I think that’s how it’s supposed to go.