CanPOW - Torture Edition

[Wezil]

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[ShaneWalter]

I don't get it....

[Asher]

It's making fun of the opposition(?) not wanting to hear certain testimony, or something. Not really following it.

[Wezil]

Actually it's getting difficult keeping track of what party is hiding what these days.

Before it's over I think the Libs and Conservatives are both going to wear the **** from this.

The Libs for doing nothing on their watch and the Conservatives for covering it up on theirs.

[Flubber]

Actually it's getting difficult keeping track of what party is hiding what these days.

Before it's over I think the Libs and Conservatives are both going to wear the **** from this.

The Libs for doing nothing on their watch and the Conservatives for covering it up on theirs.

I believe you are correct. Some crap will splatter both parties. Howver there is a part of me that just doesn't see this as a huge election issue that will resonate at all. Ok so Canada gave over prisoners to the supposedly legitimate government authorities who then routinely tortured such prisoners. I probably should care more about this.

[Asher]

It's really hard to care about it considering what's done is done, and the kind of guys they round up and send over there aren't really types we have sympathy for.

[Riesstiu IV]

All I'm getting out of that comic is how beavers are a bunch of pussies.

[Wezil]

I believe you are correct. Some crap will splatter both parties. Howver there is a part of me that just doesn't see this as a huge election issue that will resonate at all. Ok so Canada gave over prisoners to the supposedly legitimate government authorities who then routinely tortured such prisoners. I probably should care more about this.

It begs the question "WTF are we doing there?" if we lower our standards b/c we don't like the Taliban or b/c we think/know they are doing bad things to us. It is rather difficult to claim we are trying to drag Afghanistan out of the middle ages when we round people up and knowingly hand them over to torture. Also, keep in mind, if what Colvin is saying is true, not everyone we rounded up and turned over were even Taliban. Torture of innocents hardly helps our cause.

Secondly, we have signed international agreements saying we wouldn't do this sort of thing. I don't think we get a pass.

Politically - I have no idea how big this could get. Polling shows the public overwhelming believe Colvin over the government (in all provinces except AB ) and the document trail now leads to MacKays office. Torture is not a Canadian value so I wouldn't underestimate the damage this could do.

[Asher]

Torture is not a Canadian value so I wouldn't underestimate the damage this could do.

Have you never watched the CBC? Or listened to CBC Radio? Or looked at what the CRTC does for us?

The Canadian government specializes in torture and Canadians pay for it willingly.

[Wezil]

Masochism doesn't count.

[Wezil]

Imho, an excellent piece on where we are on this issue.

OTTAWA — When Cabinet ministers were attacking diplomat Richard Colvin’s credibility and denying his warnings about the Afghan torture of detainees handed over by Canadian soldiers, it wasn’t a fair fight.

Mr. Colvin triumphed because he had spent 18 months on Afghan soil, visited its prisons and talked to detainees. The ministers were merely engaged in political bluster.

But now Mr. Colvin’s credibility is being pounded by military brass with top-level Afghanistan credentials, a tri-general counteroffensive that demands the government free up the secret correspondence that is said to support the diplomat’s incendiary testimony.

The front that opened on Wednesday in this theatre of political war included testimony from past and present generals, including that phenomenon of personality, former chief of defence staff General Rick Hillier.

Gen. Hillier was, as expected, a blast of charisma before he unleashed an angry defence of troop behaviour and professionalism in restraining themselves when dealing with Taliban prisoners still coated with fresh explosive residue from trying to kill Canadian soldiers.

But the most damning testimony came from Lieut.-Gen. Michel Gauthier, an Afghanistan commander Mr. Colvin avoided because he wasn’t a nice person.

A grinning Gen. Hillier said that was the one true statement in Mr. Colvin’s testimony. Gen. Gauthier was “very difficult to deal with” as a by-the-book taskmaster and, having interviewed him in Kandahar, I agree he can be pompous and prickly.

But, as Gen. Gauthier testified while showing a rare hint of emotion, that doesn’t justify an MP alleging on national television that he’s a war criminal for knowingly transferring detainees to be tortured.

Then he dropped the bomb. He told the special committee hearing that he has read and re-read the still-secret e-mail trail submitted by Mr. Colvin as the basis for his version of events. There’s nothing — nothing — in the contents that would alert the military or the bureaucracy to any concerns or even hints of detainee torture, he said.

Even worse, he testified, the responses showed only respectful support and gratitude for Mr. Colvin’s field reports and findings.

If the e-mails do not support his testimony, Mr. Colvin’s credibility is dead and those opinion polls showing the public believes him will collapse into powdery Afghan dust.

Now here’s the damnedest thing. Defence Minister Peter MacKay has decided the e-mail stream will remain a government-held secret.

That’s insane — and can only be explained if the documentation is being withheld until it can be unveiled at the moment for greatest government advantage. They’d better hurry because it sounds like a wounded Richard Colvin will release them with or without government approval.

Even without the documents on the table, you could almost hear the high-fives going around the Prime Minister’s Office as officials sensed the generals will turn the tide of public opinion.

And there was a slightly wide-eyed look to some Liberal and New Democrat MPs on the committee, as if they were contemplating the possibility they had fallen for a tall tale from a rogue witness.

It still defies belief that a 15-year oft-promoted diplomat, who now holds a senior position in Canada’s embassy in Washington D.C., would compromise his integrity and derail his career prospects by making up a story knowing it had serious international war crime implications.

But, lest we forget, Wednesday's testimony was from soldiers defending the military against charges of culpability in torture that were never levelled against them by anybody.

No one has suggested Canadian soldiers engaged in detainee torture and it was never up to them to conduct surprise inspections of prisons to ensure there was no abuse of prisoners.

The big debate remains the possibility of a government conspiracy to block torture warnings from being sent or being acted on in a timely manner.

That accusation will be aimed at David Mulroney (no relation to Brian) who was Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s guy on the Afghanistan Task Force. He will take the stand on Thursday to refute Mr. Colvin’s allegations that he tried to discourage written correspondence on the issue.

The stakes remain high.

If Mr. Colvin’s version of events is supported and proven, Canada may be guilty of war crimes by breaking international conventions.

But if Mr. Colvin’s version of events lacks supportive documentation and continues to be shredded by witness testimony, not only will his diplomatic reputation be destroyed, but opposition parties championing his case will be humiliated for being duped by one man’s vivid imagination.

http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/25/don-martin-generals-cut-into-colvin-s-detainee-testimony.aspx

We need to see those emails.

[Wezil]

Paul Koring and Steven Chase

Washington and Ottawa — From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Wednesday, Dec. 09, 2009 12:00AM EST Last updated on Wednesday, Dec. 09, 2009 7:58AM EST

The number of former ambassadors protesting the Conservative government's attacks on diplomat Richard Colvin is snowballing, with organizers saying the list will exceed 35 today and is headed for 50.

The initiative began days ago after more than 20 former diplomatic heads of mission banded together to speak out against Ottawa's response to Mr. Colvin's testimony on Afghan-detainee abuse. They warned that it threatens to cast a chill over the foreign service and they singled out Defence Minister Peter MacKay for having "savaged" the diplomat in public.

"It's quite amazing," organizer and ex-Canadian ambassador Gar Pardy said of the growing response from former top diplomats. "People just want to be part of it."

Furor over the matter boiled over in the House of Commons yesterday, where Mr. MacKay faced the first public calls for his resignation over allegations that Canadian-captured prisoners handed over to Afghans were later tortured.

Although Mr. MacKay has repeatedly insisted that not a single case of torture could be proven, he acknowledged through a spokesman yesterday there is "credible evidence" that detainees transferred to Afghan security forces have been tortured.

That acknowledgment marks a significant departure for Mr. MacKay who for years has repeatedly insisted that not a single case of torture could be proven. Yesterday, his spokesman confirmed that the "minister has not denied being advised of credible evidence" of post-transfer torture.

However, Mr. McKay still maintains no absolute proof exists, his officials said yesterday.

In Parliament yesterday, the NDP said Canadians no longer have confidence in the minister.

"The minister has on nine separate occasions told the House there is not a scintilla of evidence of mistreatment even as the entire country was shown evidence that torture did take place," said the NDP's defence critic Jack Harris. "Will he resign?"

Instead, Mr. MacKay's parliamentary secretary, Laurie Hawn, mouthed "bull****" as opposition MPs insisted the government knew of transfers to torture.

Knowingly transferring a prisoner to torture or abuse is a Geneva-Conventions-grade war crime.

Mr. MacKay has based his denials on information he said was handed to him by the advice of generals and senior officials within the Department of Defence.

Yesterday, General Walter Natynczyk said that he wasn't among the military officers who advised Mr. MacKay there was no evidence of detainee torture.

"I know that I didn't, so you would have to ask the minister's office in terms of who advised him," Canada's chief of defence staff said.

According to one senior military source, Mr. MacKay has never broached the subject with Gen. Natynczyk since he replaced now-retired general Rick Hillier more than a year ago.

As Mr. MacKay's office sought to justify the basis for the minister's long series of denials, spokesman Dan Dugas pointed to public statements by retired generals, including Mr. Hillier, who was chief of defence staff when Mr. MacKay made the first of his sweeping denials in November of 2007.

Although the "credible evidence" phrase with respect to transferred detainees has been used by ministers in the past, it was only to refer to what soldiers and diplomats were reporting from Afghanistan.

Detainee transfers have been halted at least five times since The Globe and Mail first published, in April of 2007, harrowing accounts of post-transfer torture and beatings. Mr. Dugas said yesterday that it would be incorrect to connect all halts of transfers with "credible evidence" of torture. Some might be for other reasons, he said.

However, the Minister's office came closer than ever to admitting that on at least one occasion, the evidence was so compelling that an Afghan prison warden was removed as a direct consequence.

" 'Credible evidence' is where you have an allegation supported by substantive evidence, such as that which was identified in November, 2007," Mr. Dugas said, referring to an instance in which a Canadian-transferred detainee pointed out to Canadian diplomats the electrical cables with which he claimed to have been beaten.

Mr. Dugas said "this evidence would not have been found, and the [prison] warden would not have been removed, if our government had not acted to improve the detainee transfer arrangement."

The shifting positions come two weeks after the long-simmering detainee-abuse issue was reignited by allegations from Canadian diplomat Richard Colvin that likely all prisoners captured by Canada in 2006 and 2007 were tortured after being handed over to the Afghans. But nearly 14 days of questions have produced little in the way of new disclosures on the matter from the Harper government.

Gen. Natynczyk, who appeared yesterday before a defence committee, contradicted the sworn affidavit of another senior Canadian officer who has detailed an instance of a post-transfer beating more than two years ago.

According to a soldier's field notes and the sworn affidavit of Colonel Steve Noonan, Canada's first Kandahar Task Force Commander, a Canadian-captured detainee was beaten by Afghan security forces before Canadian soldiers intervened and rescued him in June of 2006.

Gen. Natynczyk claimed the case wasn't one of a Canadian-transferred detainee being maltreated by Afghans because the man was never officially listed as captured, even though Canadian soldiers stopped, questioned, and photographed him.

Col. Noonan had been selected by the military to provide the sworn affidavit in the government's defence in the case. His affidavit of April, 2007, has never been corrected or withdrawn.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/protest-grows-against-tories-attack-on-colvin/article1393674/

Yep. the diplos love it when you call them "Taliban stooges".

Gotta love this political party.

[Wezil]

Now the General admits it is true.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/in-about-face-top-general-admits-canadian-captive-was-abused/article1394104/

[Asher]

Summary?

[Wezil]

McKay has been saying there is no credible proof a "Canadian detainee" has been tortured after being turned over.

Yesterday, a case was talked about where this seemed to have occurred and the General's explanation/testimony was that the individual in question was not detained by us prior to the abuse he received (not contested).

This morning the good General called a hastily convened press conference to "correct" his testimony. The individual was indeed detained and handed over by Canadians.

We now await Mr. McKay to come out and call the General a Taliban stooge.