The National Spot is doing its best to take the heat off the Son of Perdition over the Afghan torture scandal. Today it offered up a claim by Michael Coulombe, a top official of CSIS, that Canadians would be okay with torture if it meant saving Canadian lives.
Implicit in Coulombe's fantasy is that torture generates reliable intelligence, something the Americans have tried and thoroughly debunked long ago. Torture is what you use to elicit confessions, not intelligence. Even the Khmer Rouge knew that dipshit.
What Coulombe is also spinning is the idea that torture has somehow saved Canadian lives. Too bad he didn't seem to have any specifics to back that up but, then again, that wasn't the point of his remarks, was it? He doesn't want to try to make the case for torture, he just wants to confuse the issue.
One cardinal achievement of the FBI during the Bush years was to prove, conclusively prove, that standard interrogation techniques consistently yield high-grade, actionable intelligence while coercive, even illegal CIA and military techniques yield precisely whatever the interrogator/torturer wants to hear.
Showing posts with label torture scandal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label torture scandal. Show all posts
Monday, May 10, 2010
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Let's Remember What the Afghan Document Fight is Really About
Yes there's an issue of Harper's secrecy fetish. Yes there's an issue of the supremacy of the House of Commons. Yes there's a question of contempt of Parliament. There are all those issues and they're all important but let's not overlook what's really in issue here.
The fundamental question concerns Canada's role in the treatment and apparent torture of suspects, Afghan nationals our forces detained and subsequently handed over to that country's brutal national security service.
The fundamental question arises out of a morass of contradictory and irreconcilable statements made by political leaders, military leaders, diplomats and others. Some say we acquiesced in the torture of our detainees by their security services. Others say we deliberately handed some over to the Afghan thugs so they would be tortured to elicit intelligence. Whether we indifferently handed them over or deliberately handed them over is a fine point and has real significance but, either way, our leaders may be complicit in torture and that's a war crime.
The fundamental question is whether our military or political leaders committed war crimes. Along the way this fight has acquired an unsavory partisan political dimension - both sides at various times and in various ways trying to wring advantage out of it. We on the opposition side need to be principled and disciplined enough to stay on issue, focused on the fundamental question. The Canadian public will quickly enough resent us if we don't. On these things you're suspect enough as it is without fueling unnecessary cynicism.
It's important, absolutely critical, that we ascertain whether we in fact committed war crimes or whether our leaders did that in our name. If it happened but we fail to unmask it, how on earth are we ever to stop it, to change course?
They say if you sleep with dogs you get up with fleas. In this case we're the eager-to-please junior partner to the senior partner that gave the world Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo. When you look up to someone like that you may come to emulate their behaviour. You may even pick up their bad habits.
Our senior partner has a well-deserved and deeply sullied reputation as a torturer. That doesn't mean that we have to accept their standard or their ways whether in the political or the military arena. To the contrary, by virtue of knowing what they have done, the extent and course of their depravity, it is incumbent on us to ensure that our honour is intact. When credible allegations are presented that our honour has been stained by our own leaders it is our duty to get to the bottom of them. And that is what this document battle is all about. If we lose focus on our purpose we don't stand a chance of succeeding. If we fail, our country, our military and our parliament will be the poorer for it.
The fundamental question concerns Canada's role in the treatment and apparent torture of suspects, Afghan nationals our forces detained and subsequently handed over to that country's brutal national security service.
The fundamental question arises out of a morass of contradictory and irreconcilable statements made by political leaders, military leaders, diplomats and others. Some say we acquiesced in the torture of our detainees by their security services. Others say we deliberately handed some over to the Afghan thugs so they would be tortured to elicit intelligence. Whether we indifferently handed them over or deliberately handed them over is a fine point and has real significance but, either way, our leaders may be complicit in torture and that's a war crime.
The fundamental question is whether our military or political leaders committed war crimes. Along the way this fight has acquired an unsavory partisan political dimension - both sides at various times and in various ways trying to wring advantage out of it. We on the opposition side need to be principled and disciplined enough to stay on issue, focused on the fundamental question. The Canadian public will quickly enough resent us if we don't. On these things you're suspect enough as it is without fueling unnecessary cynicism.
It's important, absolutely critical, that we ascertain whether we in fact committed war crimes or whether our leaders did that in our name. If it happened but we fail to unmask it, how on earth are we ever to stop it, to change course?
They say if you sleep with dogs you get up with fleas. In this case we're the eager-to-please junior partner to the senior partner that gave the world Abu Ghraib and Guantanimo. When you look up to someone like that you may come to emulate their behaviour. You may even pick up their bad habits.
Our senior partner has a well-deserved and deeply sullied reputation as a torturer. That doesn't mean that we have to accept their standard or their ways whether in the political or the military arena. To the contrary, by virtue of knowing what they have done, the extent and course of their depravity, it is incumbent on us to ensure that our honour is intact. When credible allegations are presented that our honour has been stained by our own leaders it is our duty to get to the bottom of them. And that is what this document battle is all about. If we lose focus on our purpose we don't stand a chance of succeeding. If we fail, our country, our military and our parliament will be the poorer for it.
Sunday, March 07, 2010
Maybe the RCMP?
When opposition parties of the past thought the government of the day was up to no good, they would meet with the Commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and ask the force to investigate. Harper even used the tactic with a compliant (and subsequently disgraced) Commissioner in order to successfully skew an election his way.
So, why don't Iggy and Layton and Duceppe hop OC Transpo to Alta Vista for a sitdown with the current Commissioner?
Oh dear!
That would mean sitting down with the RCMP's first civilian commish, a veteran Tory fixer and lifelong bureaucrat, Harper appointee, Bill Elliott.
"Hey Bill, think you might have a look at this and see if Harper or MacKay or Hillier should be chucked into the Greybar Hotel?"
Okay kids, this one's for the lawn furniture, what do you think are the chances that would get anywhere?
So, why don't Iggy and Layton and Duceppe hop OC Transpo to Alta Vista for a sitdown with the current Commissioner?
Oh dear!
That would mean sitting down with the RCMP's first civilian commish, a veteran Tory fixer and lifelong bureaucrat, Harper appointee, Bill Elliott.
"Hey Bill, think you might have a look at this and see if Harper or MacKay or Hillier should be chucked into the Greybar Hotel?"
Okay kids, this one's for the lawn furniture, what do you think are the chances that would get anywhere?
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
No Wonder Hillier Has Dummied Up on Torture
Safely retired former general Rick Hillier recently said he hasn't been following the Afghan torture scandal. Yes, sure, and the sun isn't going to rise in the morning. There might be another reason for the Big Cod's laryngitis on Afghan torture and just what top Canadians knew about it. It might have something to do with the fact that the guy they've tried so furiously to discredit has decided to fight back and he's willing to name names and offer up documents we've only seen blacked out.
In a 16-page letter intended to rebut his critics' claims, Richard Colvin - who used to be Canada's second top civilian staffer in Afghanistan - has laid it out, chapter and verse. Yes they knew, at the top echelons of DND and as far up as the PMO, and they did nothing about it. Worse yet, he contends, when Afghanistan-based bureaucrats sounded warnings about the oh-so bent governor of Kandahar province, DND pushed back to defend the animal. He was their guy. From TorStar:
The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer. Colvin's disgust that Canada would support a "known human-rights abuser" was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.
But an uncensored version of the end-of-mission report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis.
"As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced," says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007.
"In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president [Karzai] who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure."
The uncensored report sheds further light on Colvin's testimony last month before a special House of Commons committee, where he stated the governor was considered a "bad actor" on human rights.
It also makes clear the division between the Canadian military, which supported Khalid, and diplomats, who became increasingly vocal about allegations of corruption, drug-running and prisoner abuse.
...The warnings about Khalid – whose brazen decision to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 – were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.
Concerns were serious enough to be raised at the highest levels of the federal government, foreign affairs and defence sources said.
A meeting was called in December 2006 in Ottawa to discuss the matter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth, attended the session, sources have said.
...throughout 2007 the warnings kept getting louder.
A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans.
One Afghan government official apparently pleaded with Canadian diplomats and police officers for Khalid's removal during a meeting in February 2007, said the source, who has seen a document outlining the meeting. The official made a direct request to Canada to intervene with the president, the source said.
It's no wonder Harper's MPs are boycotting the Commons hearings into this business. They must know the guys who sit at their head table have a lot to hide and even more to lose unless these hearings are derailed. It's too bad Hillier had to go all the way to Afghanistan to deal with scumbags when there were so many just a short walk away from his office right in Ottawa.
One thing seems pretty clear. If Colvin's allegations are true, and a steadily increasing number of officials are speaking to to say they are, then our prime minister is a lying piece of dirt and so are a number of his key deputies.
In a 16-page letter intended to rebut his critics' claims, Richard Colvin - who used to be Canada's second top civilian staffer in Afghanistan - has laid it out, chapter and verse. Yes they knew, at the top echelons of DND and as far up as the PMO, and they did nothing about it. Worse yet, he contends, when Afghanistan-based bureaucrats sounded warnings about the oh-so bent governor of Kandahar province, DND pushed back to defend the animal. He was their guy. From TorStar:
The new allegation is contained in a two-year-old report by Richard Colvin, the whistleblower foreign service officer. Colvin's disgust that Canada would support a "known human-rights abuser" was palpable and formed the most incendiary paragraphs of the report. References to Khalid were entirely blacked out in the version of the report publicly released to the Military Police Complaints Commission.
But an uncensored version of the end-of-mission report was shown for the first time to The Canadian Press on a confidential basis.
"As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced," says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007.
"In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president [Karzai] who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure."
The uncensored report sheds further light on Colvin's testimony last month before a special House of Commons committee, where he stated the governor was considered a "bad actor" on human rights.
It also makes clear the division between the Canadian military, which supported Khalid, and diplomats, who became increasingly vocal about allegations of corruption, drug-running and prisoner abuse.
...The warnings about Khalid – whose brazen decision to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 – were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.
Concerns were serious enough to be raised at the highest levels of the federal government, foreign affairs and defence sources said.
A meeting was called in December 2006 in Ottawa to discuss the matter. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's national security adviser, Margaret Bloodworth, attended the session, sources have said.
...throughout 2007 the warnings kept getting louder.
A foreign affairs source said a memo sent by Colvin in the winter of 2007 was searing in its criticism and indicated the governor was corrupt, dangerous, self-serving and deeply unpopular with Afghans.
One Afghan government official apparently pleaded with Canadian diplomats and police officers for Khalid's removal during a meeting in February 2007, said the source, who has seen a document outlining the meeting. The official made a direct request to Canada to intervene with the president, the source said.
It's no wonder Harper's MPs are boycotting the Commons hearings into this business. They must know the guys who sit at their head table have a lot to hide and even more to lose unless these hearings are derailed. It's too bad Hillier had to go all the way to Afghanistan to deal with scumbags when there were so many just a short walk away from his office right in Ottawa.
One thing seems pretty clear. If Colvin's allegations are true, and a steadily increasing number of officials are speaking to to say they are, then our prime minister is a lying piece of dirt and so are a number of his key deputies.
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