Showing posts with label Torture Scandal 2009. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Torture Scandal 2009. Show all posts

Release the detainee documents!

So Harper thinks that Canadians are not concerned about the Afghan detainee torture scandal?

Well, Harper, if it's not important, release the detainee documents as ordered by the Parliament you locked up and prove it!

Degrading Canada

A while back Tom Flanagan nailed a phrase which I think may very well come to epitomize the entire reign of 'The Harper Government:'
It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be plausible.

As I outlined yesterday (Harper risks denigrating our soldiers) and as many others have done too, the Roveian theme that to investigate the growing Afghanistan detention scandal is to not support our troops is being repeated by the Conservatives at every turn.

I repeat what I said yesterday: The Conservatives run the risk of having their falsehoods be believed by Canadians. Their falsehoods about the Liberals is not what I mean. It's their falsehoods about who can be held responsible for any detainee torture. If it comes to pass that the scandal leads somewhere, the optics forced by Harper may lead Canadians to believe that our troops are responsible, when, in reality, the fault can be found back in Ottawa.

Maybe that suits Harper fine. Evading responsibility by blaming ours troops would be Harper's tactic. Better them than him, he figures. When backed into a corner, Harper will do anything. Such as when he used libel law to shut down questions over the Cadman Affair, prorogued Parliament to avoid a non-confidence vote, started to force a unity crisis over the Green Shift, accused a Prime Minister of supporting pedophiles... I almost expect to wake up one day and find our opposition parliamentarians arrested for sedition.


For one of the best take downs of this despicable tactic -- and I don't often do this -- go read Coyne.

Harper risks denigrating our soldiers

He is. If you aren't familiar with Harper's tactics on the Afghanistan detainee torture scandal read Impolitical, then Greg Weston and then come back.

Back?

Harper figures if he can negatively frame the opposition's efforts to uncover the truth as an attack on our soldiers, one of two things will hopefully (for him) happen:
1. Sufficient evidence will not "surface" and the matter will collapse, and his charge of "traitors" will stick on the opposition.

2. The Opposition will retreat out of fear of being branded as traitors, and Harper will get out of trouble.

However, if the matter continues forward, and Harper keeps up his fallacious straw man rhetoric that the opposition is blaming our soldiers for torture, then Canadians may come to believe that the soldiers on the ground are to blame, regardless of what is really found out, because of Harper's self-serving false narrative.

Harper is not constrained by decency. When his back is in a corner, he acts like a wounded animal, and will crash and burn institutions if he has too. That's his proven instinct.

It is important that the opposition gets to the bottom of this.

We need an inquiry with a broad mandate. The sooner, the better, because our soldiers deserve Harper's fog  cleared.

Colvin's emails may have never used the word torture, but...

...he certainly described its effects:
Of the [redacted] detainees we interviewed, [redacted] said [redacted] had been whipped with cables, shocked with electricity and/or otherwise “hurt”….detainees still had [redacted] on [redacted] body; [redacted] seemed traumatized.

Individual sat with his toes curled under his feet. When he straightened his toe, it could be seen that the nails of the big toe and the one next to it, were a red-orange on the top of the nail, although the new growth underneath appeared fine. When we asked him about his treatment [redacted] rather than Kabul, he became quiet. He said that [redacted] he had been “hurt” and “had problems.” However, he is “happy now.” He did not elaborate on what happened [redacted]. [Redacted] seemed very eager to please, very deferential, and expressed gratitude for our visit. General impression was that he was somewhat traumatized.
When we asked him about his treatment [redacted] he said he had “a very bad time. They hit us with cables and wires.” He said they also shocked him with electricity. He showed us a number of scars on his legs, which he said were caused by the beating. He said he was hit for [redacted] days….

He and others told [redacted] that three fellow detainees had had their fingers “cut and burned with a lighter”….When we asked about his own treatment [redacted] he said that he was hit on his feet with a cable or a “big wire” and forced to stand for two days, but “that’s all.” He showed us a mark on the back of his ankle, which he said was from the cable. [Note: There was a dark red mark on the back of his ankle.]
 The heavy lifting has already been done by Dawg's Blawg, Voice from the Pack and Contrarian.Go read.

Info commissioner calls Colvin's paper trail allegations 'disquieting'

In this issue of Embassy Magazine:

Allegations that senior staff in the departments of foreign affairs and defence ordered Richard Colvin not to write down information about Afghan detainees are "disquieting," says Canada's interim information commissioner.


In an exclusive interview with Embassy on Friday, Suzanne Legault said the allegations reinforce the need for legislation that would require civil servants to leave paper trails—requirements that simply don't exist right now.

...Each year the information commissioner publishes report cards on specific departments and their responses to Access to Information requests. Foreign Affairs has consistently received extremely poor grades over the past five years. The Defence Department has generally fared better, but has prompted its share of frustration by establishing a "Tiger Team" to vet requests on Afghanistan and refusing to divulge readily available information.


During the interview, Ms. Legault said the departments' records are "a huge concern" for a variety of reasons. One is that they are hubs of information and many other departments and agencies have to consult with them when processing ATIP requests they received.


In addition, she said, the war in Afghanistan is a major issue for Canadians and there have been long-standing calls—including, she noted, from the Manley panel—for more information from the government on the mission.

"Canadians want to know what's going on in Afghanistan," Ms. Legault said. "There has to be a flow of information to Canadians."

Ms. Legault said she has uncovered cases of officials intentionally not keeping records, but no proof that it is a systemic problem.

"Do I have a lot of evidence of it?" she said. "Not a lot."

However, the reality is that the information commissioner's ability to investigate such allegations is hampered by the fact there are no legal requirements to keep records. Rather, there is only a government-wide policy.

"It's a gap," Ms. Legault said. "There is no duty to create records."

There have been numerous calls for such legislation going back more than a decade, but successive governments have repeatedly sought consultation.

The current Conservative government also recently refused a series of recommendations on the subject put forward by the Commons' Ethics committee. In particular, the government said giving the information commissioner the ability to launch investigations would turn it into a quasi-judicial body, instead of an ombudsman.

Whether orders not to leave paper trails are systemic or not, however, Ms. Legault said Mr. Colvin's allegations—which she reiterated have not been proven—are "disquieting." She noted the NDP's call for a public inquiry, and said her office will be watching closely.

"We will see how it unfolds," she said. "We'll certainly keep a close eye on this."

A lack of a paper trail is going to allow for a lot of creative testimony, don't you think?

Not here, Over There!

Looking for me? This blog has been dead for quite a while. You can find my latest blog at https://korptopia.blogspot.ca/ My other social m...