Simply atrocious

President Bush this week made public calls for Syria to pull out of Lebanon or risk severe consequences. But New York Times columnist Bob Herbert reports that Syrians, who are on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism, apparently aren't so bad if our government thinks someone needs to be roughed up for a while:

"Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

"He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

"Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

"He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured."

You can read Herbert's whole column here. Do we really want our government acting like this?