Last night, a man named Cyrus Kar was on Nightline. Kar was in an American prison in Iraq because a cab he was in had bomb timers in the trunk; the cabbie subsequently confessed, but Kar and his cameraman (he was in Iraq legally, with all the proper paperwork, doing a documentary) were in jail for 55 days. Both American citizens, they were held without charge and without the chance to talk to the embassy, a lawyer, or their representatives in Congress and the Senate. After 49 days, Kar was officially cleared of the crime, and six days later, he was released. During the time he was in prison, his family didn't know where he was until the Red Cross visited, because the government wouldn't let him call his family. His sister works for the Red Cross and the Red Cross employee that visited Kar knew her, which is how the word got out.
Incredibly, Kar doesn't bear too many grudges against the government. He understands that they did what they had to do. Or so he says. But I think he made a great point about what's happening in Iraq. He said that if we're trying to make it a Democracy, then we have to lead by example. How can we realistically expect Iraq to transition to a democracy when we're ignoring the very rules of democracy ourselves?
Start from the bottom up with their criminals. I know they're terrorists, but our homegrown terrorists never forfeited their rights to a fair trial. To a lawyer. And I know they're not American, but we're trying to export American ideas to a country that had a Saddam Hussein justice system. Like Kar says, it'd be great if we could lead by example, instead of saying "Do as I say, not as I do." Then again, politicians are really, really good at that.
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