Days of wine and shackles

Do any of you remember when Khaled el-Masri told the New York Times, in January, that he had been picked up by American intelligence officers and sent to an Afghan prison for five months? He said he'd been shackled, beaten, photographed nude, and injected with drugs during questioning, and then suddenly dumped out of a truck in Albania to make his way home to Germany. The CIA had no comment on it at the time, and the White House administration was not talking. Right wing blogs went crazy saying that he was probably a terrorist, a liar, a Democratic plant and who knows what else. Guess what?

Rice ordered release of German sent to Afghan prison in error.

A German citizen detained for five months in an Afghan prison was released in May 2004 on direct orders from Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser, after she learned the man had been mistakenly identified as a terror suspect, government officials said Friday.

Within several months they concluded he was the victim of mistaken identity, the officials said. His name was similar to a Qaeda suspect on an international watch list of possible terrorist operatives, they said.

By then, Mr. Masri, 41, a car salesman who lives in Ulm, Germany, had been flown on a C.I.A.-chartered plane to the prison under a secret American program of transferring terror suspects from country to country for interrogation, officials said. At the prison in Kabul, Mr. Masri said, he was shackled, beaten, photographed nude and injected with drugs by interrogators who pressed him to reveal ties to Al Qaeda.

For reasons that are unclear, he remained for months at a prison known locally as the "Salt Pit." The case reached Ms. Rice in May 2004, officials said, and twice, over several weeks, she ordered him immediately freed. He was released in Albania on May 29, 2004.

Lies, lies, and damned lies. So the White House didn't know anything about it, huh? Would have looked bad during the election, so it was shoved under the carpet and this guy was given a bus pass. "Oh, sorry about the electrodes on the testicles there, old buddy. You know how it goes. See ya. And remember... Freedom is on the march!"

Like Atrios said, it sure makes you Proud to be an American, eh?