The Good Terrorist

Luis Posada Carriles is not exactly a household name, but it should be. He's a terrorist, a mass-murderer who engineered the bombing of a civilian airliner, along with his good buddy Orlando Bosch. George Bush père was CIA director when the murders were committed, making him Posada Carriles' employer. His administration nixed Bosch's deportation in 1990. If Posada Carriles' last name were Almrei, say, or Jaballah, or Mahjoub, he'd be a headliner. But he's one of ours, see. And the people he killed on Cubana Airlines flight 455 on October 6, 1976 were "seventy-three dogs."

Bosch is now living a quiet and contented life in Miami. Carriles, however, who escaped from Venezuela where he was to stand trial for terrorism and sneaked into the US in 2005, is sitting in a New Mexico jail on immigration charges. Venezuela has demanded his extradition, but Bush fils isn't about to give up his anti-Castro freedom fighter, who has applied to become an American citizen.

Meanwhile, back in Canada, three men who have been held in jail for years on "security certificates," odious Star Chamber artefacts that have no place in a democratic country, are entering a critical phase in their more than two-month-long hunger strike. These men have not been charged with a crime, have not been permitted to see any evidence against them, have not even been allowed the routine access to their families that convicted murderers and rapists receive. They have been badly mistreated in prison--hell, let's call a spade a spade, tortured--denied medical care, and are now at the point of death.

All this is happening under the noses of the regular media, but not a whimper of outrage can be heard, except for the strong views of a couple of guests on CBC's The Current this morning. The fearless Globe & Mail, "Canada's National Newspaper," is against a security certificate when the person held under it is named Ernst Zundel, but stoutly defends them in the case of people called, well, Almrei, or Jaballah, or Mahjoub. Meanwhile, the starboard side of the blogosphere has already tried and convicted these guys--but it hasn't uttered a word about Posada Carriles.

And so the war on terrorism continues. Sleep tight.