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Tomgram: How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side

Tomgram: How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side: "If you don't mind thinking about the Bush legacy a year early, there are worse places to begin than with the case of Erla Ósk Arnardóttir Lilliendahl. Admittedly, she isn't an ideal 'tempest-tost' candidate for Emma Lazarus' famous lines engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. After all, she flew to New York City with her girlfriends, first class, from her native Iceland, to partake of 'the Christmas spirit.' She was drinking white wine en route and, as she put it, 'look[ing] forward to go shopping, eat good food, and enjoy life.' On an earlier vacation trip, back in 1995, she had overstayed her visa by three weeks, a modest enough infraction, and had even returned the following year without incident.

This time -- with the President's Global War on Terror in full swing -- she was pulled aside at passport control at JFK Airport, questioned about those extra three weeks 12 years ago, and soon found herself, as she put it, 'handcuffed and chained, denied the chance to sleep… without food and drink and… confined to a place without anyone knowing my whereabouts, imprisoned.' It was 'the greatest humiliation to which I have ever been subjected.'"

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