Suing Rumsfeld

[Note: this post has been updated with clearer details.]

A former US Navy SEAL is filming a documentary in a faraway land about an ancient civilization, the kind of thing you watch at 3am on the History Channel. He is arrested in that country because the yahoo policemen that pull over the taxi in which he was riding one day discover washing-machine timers, which bomb-makers can use as timing devices. He is thrown in prison and held without counsel or hearing for 55 days, until his family makes a big enough stink by suing the government that is holding him. Suddenly, law enforcement decides that the former US Navy SEAL is not, after all, what they were calling an "imminent security threat" [CNN.com] and releases him, a spokesman crowing that this showed "the effectiveness of our detainee review process."

A shocking, shocking story. We should find those f*&%kers and bomb them.

Oh, wait, it was us.

The former US Navy SEAL in question is an American named Cyrus Kar. He is in his mid-40s, a part-time college professor, and is of Iranian descent. He was in Iraq making "a documentary film about Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who wrote the world's first human rights charter." [CNN.com] Oh, the irony, it would make a great documentary. But my sarcasm digresses me. He was originally pulled over by Iraqi police. When he asked to contact the US Embassy, he was instead turned over to the US Military, who put him in one of their Iraqi prisons for 55 days.

I read about this on CNN.com, but a quick Google search of Cyrus Kar yields even more details from sites all over the web. (Would it surprise you to know that Bill O'Reilly-- who thinks that all film-makers are pinkos, appartently-- decried Kar as a "lefty" who is getting "legitimacy" by having his story covered by the mainstream press? And how does making a documentary film about ancient civilizations make you a Hollywood liberal?) The more shocking details of his treatment by US soldiers, even after explaining repeatedly that he was an Armed Services vet, include having his head slammed into a concrete wall.

And let us not forget that the FBI also raided his Los Angeles home and searched it, after they had determined that whatever they found in that cab was the cabbie's, and they continued to hold him for nearly seven weeks after that, despite having cleared him of suspicion. Go down into your storm cellar, have your kids bring you food twice a day, and stay there for seven weeks and tell me that's no big deal.

So, now he is suing Donald Rumsfeld. "In addition to Rumsfeld, the defendants include Army Gen. George W. Casey Jr., commanding general of the multinational forces in Iraq, and Maj. Gen. William H. Brandenburg, who was in charge of detainee operations in Iraq at the time of Kar's detention." [CNN.com]

Well, the administration, using their news minions at FOX News, is going to jump all over this guy and rip him to pieces, like they did Cindy Sheehan and, well, anyone that gets in their way at all.

But it will be very hard to deny the charges when the person you detained and treated questionably is a former US Navy SEAL, and a film-maker. (They will deny them, and they might even make it look easy, but it's going to be tricky.)

I wonder if the judge can award that Rummy has to give up that smarmy smirk as part of the damages.