Why isn’t America talking about Cyrus Kar?
I first heard about Cyrus Kar last week while listening to NPR. Since then, I’ve kept an eye open for stories on such media sites as CNN.com. Most of the information I’ve found about the strange case has been from foreign media and blogs.
Any American media references appear to be mostly after this past weekend and I’m amazed to note that while CNN.com has no searchable references, the right-wing biased Fox News does. This North Carolina paper’s site only had a sentence on the subject.
And yet, this is the tale of an ex-Navy Seal who was arrested in Iraq simply for being in the wrong cab at the wrong time. This is a right-winger American film-maker on a personal journey to research a former Persian king who supported civil rights who was arrested simply because the trunk of the taxi he was in had washer timers, commonly used for bomb-making in the Middle East. He was held in a 5′x7′ cell without due process even after the FBI informed his family that he had been cleared of suspicion after passing a polygraph test.
“Saddam Hussein has had more due process than Cyrus Kar. This is a detention policy that was drafted by Kafka.”
I just don’t understand why a bigger deal isn’t being made of this. I thought we were supposed to be fighting for freedom and liberty and all of that. I thought we were supposed to be bringing freedom to these other countries. Not only are we out of control in treating the citizens of other countries like non-entities, we have begun stripping the rights of Americans.
What kills me is the argument so many people give that if you haven’t done anything, the FBI or the CIA or whoever is enforcing the Patriot Act, won’t be knocking down your door to haul you away to some prison where they’ll be able to hold you without telling you why and without letting you talk to lawyers, family, or friends indefinitely. Cyrus Kar didn’t do anything wrong. He was just taking a taxi, the wrong taxi…
Who’s next? Your neighbor? You? Me?
Why aren’t we talking about this? Why are we letting it slip into the back pages of the paper to be forgotten by the time we read the comic pages?
Tags: Cyrus Kar, NPR, Fox News, detainees, Iraq, FBI, innocent, Civil Rights
