Appearing on CNN last night, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice urged caution about arming the Syrian rebels. The Obama administration has already suggested it will help its Gulf Arab allies do so, but yesterday the Pentagon walked back the suggestion, with a spokesman telling reporters the U.S. focus “remains on economic and diplomatic pressure.”

Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that the U.S. has less knowledge about the Syrian rebels fighting against Bashar al-Assad than it did about Libyan rebels during that country’s uprising against the dictator Muammar Qaddafi. In the Libyan case, the U.S., through NATO, provided air support but didn’t directly arm the opposition. Reacting to a statement from Mitt Romney that suggested helping allies to arm the Syrian rebels, Rice said some advocates of arming the rebels had not thought through all of the consequences:

Wolf, even in Libya, we did not take the very exceptional decision to arm the opposition. And in Syria, we know much, much less about the nature of this opposition. It’s not coherent. There’s not a unified command and control. It’s a series of different groups in different cities. There’s, clearly, also an extremist element that is trying to infiltrate elements of the opposition.

So to argue that we ought to be arming the opposition is a very consequential statement. And I don’t think that those that are advocating that have fully thought through the consequences.

That would mean that we are conceding that the only option is to see the further militarization, to see an intensified regional war, which is hardly in our interests or in the interests of our allies and partners in that neighborhood.

Watch the video:

Rice’s words of caution were preceded by similar warnings yesterday from the Republican Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Rogers (MI), who told CNN: “I’m not sure arming is the right answer here, mainly because we’re just not exactly sure who the bad guys are and who the good guys are right now in Syria. So you don’t know who you’re giving weapons to.” Top U.S. officials have already acknowledged that they believe, for instance, that Al Qaeda in Iraq is behind some of the anti-government bombings in Damascus.

The proposed U.S. plan, which was at least publicly walked back by the Pentagon, called exactly for the U.S. to provide information on rebels who could be reliably armed. The original report on the U.S. plan, from the AP, said that “some intelligence analysts worry that there may be no suitable recipients of lethal aid in the Syria conflict.”

After a massacre of civilians on Friday night in Syria — including dozens of children — which the U.N. strongly hinted was perpetrated by government forces, presumptive GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney blamed the Obama administration for not taking decisive enough action against the Syrian regime.

The plan Romney and his aides proposed to deal with the crisis, however, sounds a lot like the one Obama administration officials discussed with press just a few days before. “The United States should work with partners to organize and arm Syrian opposition groups so they can defend themselves,” the campaign said in a release on Sunday. On CNN this morning, top Romney aide Andrea Saul echoed the call, saying that Romney would “work with our allies to help arm the Syrian opposition.” Watch it:

If all that sounds familiar, it might be because, three days before the Romney statement, that’s exactly what Obama administration officials told the AP they were setting a plan in motion to do. The AP reported:

[T]he Obama administration is preparing a plan that would essentially give U.S. nods of approval to arms transfers from Arab nations to some Syrian opposition fighters.

The effort, U.S. officials told the Associated Press, would vet members of the Free Syrian Army and other groups to determine whether they are suitable recipients of munitions to fight the Assad government and to ensure that weapons don’t wind up in the hands of al-Qaida-linked terrorists.

As for the goal of pushing for a transition in Syria, the New York Times reported on Saturday — the day before Romney’s statement — that ” President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad.”

The Romney campaign “doesn’t want to really engage” on foreign policy issues. Perhaps that’s because so many of his proposals sound like what the Obama administration is already doing — albeit with more hawkish bluster. Last month, Vice President Biden, while criticizing Romney’s “loose talk of war,” noted that, other than the rhetoric, the policies were the same: “Governor Romney has called for what he calls a ‘very different policy’ on Iran. But for the life of me it’s hard to understand what the governor means by a very different policy.”

When Maher Arar arrived at New York’s JFK airport in 2002, he was only supposed to change planes and continue his journey from visiting relatives in Tunisia back to his home in Canada. But the routine layover was a fateful one: while briefly on U.S. soil, Arar was snatched by authorities, kept incommunicado and away from lawyers for two weeks, then shipped to Syria. Arar endured a year of captivity and alleged torture at the hands of the brutal Syrian regime. Now, after the Canadian government formally apologized to him five years ago, rights groups are demanding that the U.S. do the same.

Three American groups that oppose torture — the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Amnesty International USA, and the Center For Constitutional Rights — delivered a petition with 60,000 signatures to the White House this week demanding an apology.

In 2007, the Canadian government admitted Arar had been mistakenly pinpointed as an Al Qaeda ally, apologized, and compensated him.

President Obama ended the “extraordinary rendition” program in 2009 and Politifact noted that the Obama administration “has announced new procedural safeguards concerning individuals who are sent to foreign countries” but some rights groups claim those safeguards aren’t adequate.

Citing the requirement for “remedy and redress” in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the U.N. Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment — which prohibits knowingly transferring detainees to countries, like Bashar al-Assad’s Syria, that engage in torture — the letter campaign (PDF) asked signees to themselves apologize and then demand the U.S. do the same. An Amnesty press release said:

“It was so painful,” Maher Arar said of the beatings he endured, “that I forgot every enjoyable moment in my life.”

Released without charge and allowed to return home to Canada, Maher Arar received an apology and compensation from the Canadian government for its role in his treatment. But the U.S. government has failed to apologize or offer Maher Arar any form of remedy – despite its obligation to do so under the UN Convention Against Torture and other human rights treaties.

The letter campaign emphasized that additional steps need to be taken for accountability in the Arar case, including more explicit prohibitions on transfer, not relying only on diplomatic assurances about the treatment of detainees before transfers, ending discrimination in “no fly lists” and investigating and prosecuting those who broke the law.

Amnesty also released an infographic — using a mock-up of Arar’s 3-foot-wide, 7-foot-high and 6-foot-deep Syrian cell — highlighting the numbers around his detention: 12 days of incommunicado detention in the U.S., 351 in Syria while enduring torture, and 0 charges filed against Arar. However, there is no figure for the “number of people like Maher Arar subjected to the U.S. government’s ‘extraordinary rendition’ program.” That number? The Amnesty infographic boldly states, “UNKNOWN.”