For years there have been rumours that Stephen Harper knew that some of our soldiers in Afghanistan were torturing the prisoners they captured. Or did nothing to stop others torturing them. But didn't do anything about it, because he just didn't care, and always enjoyed the pain of others. And the truth about what happened was covered up, or lost in the fog of war. But now at last that scandal may be coming back to haunt him.
When I think about what Stephen Harper and his sinister thugs might have been up to in Afghanistan. And how we'll never know what really happened, because the Cons have shutdown the judge's panel.
The Conservative government decided to shut down a panel responsible for vetting documents on the handling and treatment of Afghan detainees, a newly released letter indicates.
The June 15 letter from two former Supreme Court judges on the panel says they were advised by the government after the recent election “that it is unlikely” the document review process would be renewed, even though they had examined only an “initial” cache of records.
So the great document search into torture turned out to be nothing but a FARCE.
When I think about how most Canadians probably don't give a damn because they tuned out the Afghan War a long time ago. And the how the words "Canada" and "human rights" don't go together anymore.
I say thank goodness for Amnesty International, which is celebrating its fiftieth birthday.
I've always admired the organization. I tattooed its logo on my arm when I was fifteen. I love the way it fights for the rights of political prisoners all over the world. And how it champions all kinds of other human rights causes that would otherwise receive little or no attention.
From the rights of Gypsies to be treated with respect and dignity.
To the rights of girls in Nicaragua to live free from sexual violence.
Lawrence Cannon has a lot of bad days eh? But some are worse than others. The horror. The humiiation.
First he rushes out to say that the Harper Cons aren't worried at all about what the Americans might have said about them in the Wikileak cables.
Cannon stood before reporters Monday to condemn the unauthorized release of a quarter-million diplomatic cables, while vowing that none of them relating to Canada would be outrageous enough to damage what he called one of the best relationships in the world.
Shorter version: They can screw us, but we'll still blow them. Because of course that's Harper's "independent" foreign policy. They lead, we follow... on everything from climate change to Afghanistan.
Which was bad enough eh?
But what really shocked me was how after licking his lips so lasciviously, the shambling stooge had nerve to rise in the Commons and announce that his lips were now SEALED.
The Bloc leader rose to twice directly ask the Foreign Affairs Minister—”oui ou non?”—whether Canada had indeed transferred children to the Afghan intelligence service. Twice Mr. Cannon thus stood and notably avoided offering anything like a direct response.
So we still don't know what happened to those child prisoners. Or whether we handed them over to the Afghan police rapists, or the National Directorate of Security torturers.
"The use of harsh interrogation techniques [on children] and forced confession of guilt by the Afghan National Police and the National Directorate of Security was documented," according to the UN report. The report is silent on which countries detained those children.
Or whether we've been violating international law. Again.
"International law is dead clear that when a person is under 18 and in the hands of the Canadian military...You can't treat them like an insurgent. You have to treat them as a child who's been forced into war against their will."
Or why we're staying on in Afghanistan except to keep on blowing the Americans. And following them to moral ruin.
Oh boy. Lawrence Cannon says his lips are sealed.
But I know a Con sucker stooge dancing dog when I see one....
In the darkness that is Afghanistan the truth comes out slowly.
Three years ago, Canadian troops built a temporary post near Lora. When they immediately came under fire from insurgents, they bulldozed much of the hamlet, flattening houses, water pumps and surrounding orchards, the villagers and local elders say.
“There were 10 families who had houses there that were totally destroyed, and mulberry trees were taken out by their roots,” Mr. Hamid said in a recent interview in Kandahar city. “They destroyed all these things, and we are unable to replace them.”
Mr. Hamid, the grape farmer, said his wheat harvest was burned in the fighting. He and other villagers filed for compensation through the district administration. He was told the foreigners had accepted the claim, but said he never got any money.
A month later the Canadians moved in the bulldozers and demolished his farm and more than 600 of his vines, he said. “I did not make a complaint for the houses because no one can hear my voice,” he said.
We had to destroy the village to save it. Why does that sound so familiar? Oh yeah, I remember.
So what else don't we know? How is that Afghan detainees and torture investigation going?
Almost four months after a special committee of MPs was created to examine 40,000 sensitive Afghan detainee documents, not a single page has been cleared for public release.
Wilfert declined to guess when the first documents might finally be tabled in Parliament for public consumption. But he said committee members are seized with a sense of urgency, well aware that the process could be disrupted by a possible spring election.
Right. So when can we expect Stephen Harper to tell us what he knew about all of the above?
I don't know, because in the moral darkness that is Con Canada the truth is the ENEMY...
But what I do know, now beyond all doubt, is that when it is finally revealed.
It's one of the most famous pictures of Canada's mission in Afghanistan. It shows members of the secretive JTF2 unit escorting three detainees off a plane at Kandahar airport, and handing them over to the U.S. military.
The date was January 21, 2002. And the picture caused an uproar in Parliament. There were fears the detainees would end up in one of the CIA's secret torture dungeons.
As a result the decision was taken to hand detainees over to Afghan authorities, notably that country's brutish National Directorate of Security (NDS). The one staffed by many former KGB agents.
But now the Wikileaks have revealed that nothing really changed. Because the CIA was running the NDS.
It’s the second-last line in a report of a March 8, 2008, meeting with Amrullah Saleh, at the time head of Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security. And it casually notes that until 2009, the entire budget of this secret police force was provided by America’s Central Intelligence Agency.
As the New York Times, one of the handful of newspapers first given the documents by the non-profit group WikiLeaks put it: “For years, the CIA had essentially run the NDS as a subsidiary.”
Which leads to the obvious question.
Did Ottawa know this? If so, that could explain why the Conservative government is so adamant about keeping its files on the detainee issue secret.
If ministers knew at the time that their elaborate attempt to stay on the right side of the Geneva Conventions was a ruse, they would be in contravention of Canadian and international law. They could be prosecuted.
And that’s an incentive to keep things quiet.
You know, I realize that many Canadians don't care about any of the above. They'd rather not know. Just like they don't care about the fate of a Canadian child soldier who has been locked up and tortured for eight years in a place like Guantanamo.
But I believe that a country that doesn't ask questions about human rights, or one that is afraid of the truth. Or one that settles for lies or the silence of the Cons.
Isn't much of a country, and is heading for a very dark place...
And that's all I have to say. Because it's so obvious eh?
Well cock a doodle do me. I see the Cons have chickened out, and are cut and running from the Afghanistan torture and rape scandal. And no wonder.
Canada was faulted by military allies in Afghanistan over the secretive manner with which it handled detainees in the early months of its Kandahar mission, The Globe and Mail has learned.
One of the complainants was British Colonel Dudley Giles, a senior military police officer with NATO's International Security Assistance Force the 40-plus nation coalition fighting insurgents in Afghanistan. In August of 2006 he brought his concerns to the Canadian embassy in Kabul, saying Canada was stonewalling on providing basic information on the Afghans it was capturing.
"According to Giles, when he contacts Canadian [officials] in Kandahar, 'their first response to requests is 'Why do you want to know?' followed by 'We know what you want, but we won't give it to you.' "
It just keeps getting worse every day, and if the chickens lose any more feathers they won't be able to fly lie anymore.
For more on why we need a public inquiry, and why we should be outraged, you should really read Dave. And Boris. As I've said so many times before, the Cons can run but they can't hide. And the truth will set us FREE...
