A Shot Across Iacabucci's Bow?

Ottawa University law professor Amir Attaran may have thrown a wrench into the gears of Harper's determined, perhaps desperate efforts to conceal documents pertaining to torture of detainees captured by Canadian forces and handed over to Afghan captors.

Professor Attaran claims he's seen the documents and they're unequivocal. He maintains they show detainees were handed to the Afghans for what Michael Ignatieff politely refers to as 'enhanced interrogation' in order to extract intelligence from them.

There are some fascinating dimensions to Attaran's gambit. He says the documents exist. He says they show a deliberate policy of torture. In other words, Professor Attaran is telling the public that retired Justice Frank Iacabucci will be receiving unredacted documents that plainly show we had a policy of using Afghan government thugs to torture detainees to extract intelligence.

But wait, there's more!

What's also implicit in Attaran's statement is that we did this, we duly recorded the fact and that information was conveyed through channels to Ottawa. People in Ottawa knew and that means they'll be accountable for their actions once they knew. Who would that be? Almost certainly it would include senior officers at the Defence Department and, unless they're willing to throw themselves on their swords, the knowledge trail would likely skip right over the Laurier Bridge to Parliament Hill.

But wait, there's even more!

How did a law professor come to see these unredacted documents when the Harper regime has them so securely under lock and key? The most likely explanation is that someone inside thought they needed to be leaked and was willing to risk the consequences to prevent them from being buried. Who, what, when? I would expect professor Attaran has already had his first sit down with the RCMP. We know that Harper doesn't like upstarts telling the public the truth he doesn't want them to hear.

And, you guessed it - even more.

Now most of you kids are probably too wet behind the ears to recall a guy named Daniel Ellsberg and what became known as the Pentagon Papers. Ellsberg was a Pentagon analyst who leaked rafts of documents showing that the Pentagon knew Vietnam was unwinnable. That was quite the scandal. The American newspapers had a field day with that. The point is, once this sort of stuff is leaked, the genie is forever out of the bottle.

I'm guessing that Attaran was shown these documents by someone of conscience unwilling to let them be buried. That suggests the documents Harper is struggling so fiercely to bury have already fled the coop and may be circulating in public.

My bet is that Amir Attaran has fired a shot across Justice Iacabucci's bow. He's just told Frank Iacabucci and Stephen Harper and all those safely-retired generals that they've lost control of these documents and, if they don't release them, someone else just might. And, if Attaran's accounts of what's in these documents is right, that kids may be game, set and match.

If Frank Iacabucci was supposed to be Stephen Harper's beard, he just got trimmed.