Isn’t it great to know that the people running this country can’t even be bothered to read a memo regarding allegations of torture? Apparently memos addressed to Senior Military Officers and Foreign Affairs between 2006 and 2007 (16 in total) were never seen by Stephen Harper or then-Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay. Wow, I mean sure they have a lot of things to read and probably have somebody reading every piece of paper they get sent to deem whether it is worth their time, but anybody with half a brain should know that torture is really not okay, and after the 15th memo might decide to pass on the 16th one.

This leads to one simple conclusion – they read them and didn’t care. Scary!

At least the American’s have acknowledged that these things have happened in their recent history, Guantanamo is even being shut down. There are not many things in US Military Practice that I would want the Canadian government to copy, but this is one of them. Have the decency to admit when you have made a serious judgment error and do what you can to fix it. Don’t give a speech about how you never saw the memo, when there is record of 16 being written.
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Testifying before Canada’s national defence committee on the Hill two days ago (Monday, 9 February), Defence Minister Peter Mackay claimed that progress was being made in Afghanistan, albeit at a slower pace than would be ideal. Coupled with this unfounded rosy assessment of slow Afghan progress, Mackay also acknowledged a $331 million increase in Afghan war costs for this year.

Mackay’s insistence that progress is being made in Afghanistan goes against substantiated reports made by the British foreign ministry and President Obama’s new civilian proconsul for Afghanistan and Pakistan. The British now acknowledge that NATO forces are in a stalemate with Afghan insurgents. The new American administration prefers the term ‘mess’ in describing the situation. Both statements are true, unlike Mackay’s, but ultimately fail in describing the real problem in Afghanistan. The fact of the matter is that a majority of the Pushtan, a pro-Taliban ethnic group straddling the Afghan-Pakistan border that makes up about a third of Afghanistan’s population, will not stop fighting the established Afghan government until the Taliban is recognized as a legitimate force in Afghanistan politics. At least one British general has stated that progress cannot be made without making peace with the Taliban. The Taliban insurgency, which made more attacks against Western forces in the last year then in any other year of the war, has repeatedly shown that it cannot be stopped by military means.
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