[WARNING: The Department of Homeland Security has determined that the following statements may include sarcasm, scorn, and material that casts the administration of President George W. Bush in an unfavorable light. Read on at your own risk.]
Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld, he who hath tailored the hugely popular and successful war in Iraq, is a dapper fellow. Having had occasion to observe the Generalissimo at his bully pulpit before his beloved journalists, I have been struck not only by the ease and panache with which the man (or cyborg?) handles himself but also by how fine his threads are. Rummy clearly knows and likes a good suit and enjoys getting dressed up. (It’s no wonder Dolly Parton has a thang for him.) But I do wonder how Dapper Don feels about getting dressed down. Or how he feels about the following suit, as reported by fashion writer Henry Weinstein of the Los Angeles Times:
Filmmaker Sues Rumsfeld Over Iraq Detention
A Los Angeles filmmaker today sued Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other high-ranking military officials, alleging they violated his civil rights, international law and the Geneva Convention by imprisoning him for 55 days in Iraq last year.
Mark D. Rosenbaum, legal director of the ACLU of Southern California, said the suit was the first civil action challenging the constitutionality of the detention and hearing policies of the U.S. government in Iraq.
Cyrus Kar, a 45-year-old Los Feliz resident, was freed a year ago just days after the American Civil Liberties Union sued seeking his release. His lawsuit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, says his imprisonment violates fundamental principles of due process of law.
“The abuses experienced by Mr. Kar — prolonged arbitrary detention without charge, the systematic denial of access to counsel, and the absence of any court in which to challenge the legality of his detention — are the norm for thousands of persons held in U.S. military detention in Iraq,” the suit asserts.
The document cites reports by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq, the International Committee of the Red Cross and Amnesty International.
“Human rights monitors note that the vast majority of over the 15,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq have never been charged, tried, provided counsel, or allowed to challenge their detention in court, and over one-fifth of them have been detained for over a year in this manner,” according to the suit.
In addition, the suit cites a 2004 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which said military intelligence officers of coalition forces admitted that “between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.”
Kar, a U.S. citizen and Navy veteran, went to Iraq 14 months ago to make a documentary film about Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who issued the world’s first human rights charter.
On May 17, 2005, he was stopped at a Baghdad checkpoint in a taxi. Authorities found a common component for improvised explosive devices in the trunk. The driver told military authorities that Kar and his cameraman were passengers and knew nothing about the devices, which the driver said he was bringing to his brother-in-law.
Kar also submitted to a polygraph examination and agreed to allow the FBI to search his house. They found nothing incriminating, but he was held for many weeks more in various prisons around Iraq, including the notorious facility at Abu Ghraib.
Even after he was cleared by a military court at Camp Cropper, Kar was held for another week. Eventually, the camp commandant gave him a letter stating that military judges found him to be an “innocent civilian” under the Geneva Convention.
While in confinement, the suit states, Kar was at various times hooded, restrained “in painful flexi-cuffs,” and “repeatedly threatened, taunted and insulted” by U.S. soldiers.
At one point, according to the suit, a soldier at Abu Ghraib slammed Kar’s head into a concrete wall.
“Mr. Kar was and remains traumatized by his indefinite and virtually incommunicado detention, in solitary confinement, by the U.S. military without charge,” the suit states. more…
Kmareka.com 
You liberals! Don’t you understand that 9/11 changed everything? Due process is just a quaint notion that no longer has any relevance in the Age of Endless War. How can we be expected to defend our freedom if we’re not allowed to lock up anybody we damn well please for any reason we damn well please? Instead of complaining, Mr. Kar ought to be grateful that the military authorities chose not to ship him off to Egypt to be tortured to death.
It is truly surprising to me that liberals have not sought to conjoin with their ironic blood brothers (conservatives) over policies undertaken by the Bush Administration. The liberal says, “we have rights that you cannot abridge or intrude upon dear government” while the conservative says, “the government has no place involving itself in such matters.” Ideologically buttressed by different ideals, the same conclusion can be drawn – the administration has done a great job of alienating both the liberal and the conservative.
It just would be nice if some liberals picked up on this.