Maher Arar Apology Petition - NYTimes.com Earlier this week, the White House received a petition bearing 60,000 signatures demanding an apology to Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who was the victim of one of the more outrageous abuses of power under President Bush. In September 2002, Mr. Arar tried to change planes at JFK Airport in New York. He was detained on the basis of a tip from the Canadian authorities claiming he was somehow involved with Al Qaeda. Mr. Arar denied any involvement with the organization and the evidence against him ranged from flimsy to non-existent. He appears to have done nothing more than eat shawarma at a restaurant with a man who may or may not have known another man who may have had a Qaeda connection. That didn't matter to the Bush administration. Mr. Arar was detained for two weeks, denied legal representation, and then "deported." Actually, he was sent to Syria. That's called extraordinary rendition, not deportation. He was arrested and tortured for a year, according to a Canadian commission that later investigated this outrage. The Bush administration either knew or should have known that would happen. The Canadians secured his release because the whole thing was based on false leads. After he was sent home, and after the investigation, the Canadian government apologized to Mr. Arar, cleared him of all terrorism charges and paid him $10.5 million. Did the United States own up, too? As David Cole put it in the New York Review of Books, "being American means never having to say you're sorry." The Bush administration refused to acknowledge its mistake or offer any apology. It kept Mr. Arar on a list that blocks his entry into this country. And the Obama administration has continued this policy. Mr. Arar filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts, but the Obama administration had it killed on a laughable national security claim. It has never apologized for his false arrest and torture. The apology petition, organized by Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, was delivered on the "anniversary of President Obama's 2009 speech on national security ...where he acknowledged that "all too often, our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight."" At the start of his term, Mr. Obama ruled out any effort to investigate Mr. Bush's lawlessness because he didn't want any distractions from his political priorities. I guess you could call that fear rather than hindsight.