The last several weeks have seen the development of the Afghan detainee story unfold in multifaceted directions.  First we had the testimony of senior level bureaucrat Richard Colvin, whom after serving a stint in Afghanistan and numerous other positions as an overseas diplomat and being “promoted” to the top intelligence position representing Canada in the United States, comes before the Special Committee on the Afghanistan Mission and describes what some of us had already known: torture is going on in Afghanistan. Several international organizations have already reported that the NDS (National Directorate of Security) was torturing or allowing the torture of detainees handed over by Canadian soldiers. Colvin places this on a backdrop of poor documentation and negligent attention to warnings from him to the Canadian government and senior military officials.

Upon confrontation in the house the government has switched their stance on this issue numerous times. They began by saying that there were no allegations of torture and, at least at first, lambasted Colvin as a rogue bureaucrat who could not be trusted. This wouldn’t have sat well with the always micromanaging Stephen Harper, whom I’m sure doesn’t want the opposition to get a foothold on anything, and the frame quickly changed from criticizing Colvin, to criticizing the credibility of the reports and not the person. This shifted again when Harper came back to referring to Colvin’s reports for a period of eighteen months as mere “evaluations.” In my honest opinion, this constant reframing of the governments narrative calls into question the complicity of senior PMO officials, ministers and even the Prime Minister. There are simply too many questions left unanswered here. We know that the Liberal Government signed a transfer agreement some weeks before losing the election in 2006/2007, but what about before then? What kind of agreement was in place before the Conservatives took power? I think a full scale inquiry dating back to the beginning of the war and our operations in Afghanistan is necessary so we can have a proper examination of the level of accountability that existed in regards to the transfer of detainees.
(more…)

Canadian soldiers and a captured Afghan insurgent

Disturbing allegations regarding the treatment of Taliban prisoners captured by Canadian forces in Afghanistan have resurfaced this week, after Parliamentary testimony by Richard Colvin, the second highest ranked member of Canada’s diplomatic service in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007.

Colvin appeared before a special Commons committee on Wednesday November 18, 2009 and steadfastly reaffirmed previous statements he has made that senior Conservative government officials and Canadian military personnel had been aware of serious allegations that Taliban prisoners had been subjected to systematic abuse since at least 2006, that such treatment was part of sanctioned government policy, and that those he attempted to raise the issue with made it clear to him that these charges were not to be brought to light at a time when Prime Minister Stephen Harper was attempting to persuade an increasingly skeptical public that Canada’s Afghan mission was being conducted in strict accordance with international law, particularly when dealing with captured Taliban fighters.
(more…)

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.
(more…)

I find myself dangerously knee-jerk in my defence of Obama. Sunday night’s CTV coverage of his interview with George Stephanopoulos failed to use the exact soundbite that would have justified Sandi Renaldo’s intro to the piece, in which she announced Obama was now waffling on the promise to prosecute torturers no matter how high up they were in the Bush administration. “See the naysayers doubting him before he even begins? CTV’s chosen snippet confirms nothing about waffling,” I immediately concluded, believing CTV was being unnecessarily critical.

Upon further research, there was indeed a quote that justified their intro. It should have been the soundbite: “My orientation’s going to be to moved forward,” Obama said. He will put the issue in the hands of his attorney general. The attorney general has to stay above politics and “uphold the Constitution,” Obama added, but his administration will focus on “getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past.” Will Obama turn a tolerant eye towards violations of human rights committed by Bush? Is Obama, in fact, a Canadian?

Will there be a Nuremburg for Bush? The question topped the list of citizen concerns on Change.gov last week, out of over 70,000 submissions. Outrage echoed throughout the world almost from the day Bush authorized waterboarding in Guantanamo Bay. A video of Bush’s admission to having personally chosen waterboarding from a proffered menu of torture techniques was shown Sunday night in television coverage around the world. The video was anathema to apologists of the practice who continue to defend Bush on the grounds that it was Dick Cheney who owned up to the authorization back in ’04, which put America on the list of 82 countries who practise torture.
(more…)