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...
He's already the most sinister and authoritarian Prime Minister in Canadian history. He has muzzled civil servants and members of Parliament. But the Con Torture and Rape scandal is KILLING him. The Copenhagen Climate Summit is making him look like a planet destroyer....and his Cons look like idiots. So now he's planning to shutdown Parliament? Rumours swirling around Ottawa suggest the Conservative government is thinking of shutting down Parliament until after the Olympics, killing some of its own bills but also ending the discussion of Afghan detainees that is nibbling away at Tory popularity. The rumours suggest that Parliament would return in March, when the Games are over, with a new budget that could be used to provoke an election. Shut it down until after what he hopes will be his Nuremberg moment at the winter Olympics.
Gosh. Wouldn't it be great if when Harper strutted waddled in he was greeted with a loud chorus of boos, just like he was last week in Montreal? In the meantime, I think the opposition can work with this one. Who said Parliament had to sit in the House of Commons? Who said we can't take it to the streets? Or find a million ways to embarrass those Cons. Who said a coalition isn't popular? The most popular plan is a formal agreement between the two parties to share power in a coalition government, if the opportunity arises. Two-in-five Canadians (42%) support this notion, including 64 per cent of Liberal voters and 70 per cent of NDP supporters
Could this be the start of a Canadian revolution that sweeps these Cons from power? It may be just a dream.
It's hard to believe that Stephen Harper and his planet destroying Cons could blow Big Oil even more than they already have. But apparently that's exactly what they are planning. The Conservative government has considered abandoning some of the greenhouse gas reduction goals set out in its 2007 green plan and allowing weaker targets for the oil and gas sector, documents obtained by CBC News suggest. The draft proposal suggests Canada should set new targets that would be lower than what was originally proposed by the Conservatives.
For example, the proposal suggests that the oil and gas industry would have to cut 15 megatonnes of emissions, rather than 48 megatonnes under its Turning the Corner plan. Can you believe these criminal klowns?
"The idea was to confuse the Canadian government, which set up a war room to positively spin their position in the debate even though everyone here knows that their position is a cruel joke."
No wonder the Americans don't want anything to do with them. It makes you wonder when the U.S. Secretary of Energy is embarrassed to have a public photograph taken with the Canadian Minister of the Environment. Holy Beaver. Has any Canadian government ever been so HUMILIATED? Have Canadians ever been so embarrassed ?
But then I guess we should have seen it coming after this ridiculous end of session newser.
When the screamer John Baird said this: First up, Baird, who delivers an upbeat recap of the session - jobs! families! crime! -- and reminds that now is not -- I repeat, *not* -- the time to Change The Course (tm). He then moves to more comfortable ground: savaging the Liberals for politicizing everything, from H1N1 to the Olympics. Boo, Liberals!
And the loose loser Cannon said this:
"We have restored Canada's international reputation." Oh really. Muahahahaha. Before reporters started asking about the Con Torture and Rape Scandal and they turned around and ran.
He then flees - in fact, they all do, being herded by the suddenly border collie-like moderator. Exeunt, pursued by pointed questions. Gawd. I've got to remember to save up my scorn. And my jubilation. Because the best is still to come...
Golly. Is that a Con limousine or a bumper car?
C'mon people. Before they turn our country into a cheap circus act.
Let's tell the world we're better than the Cons. And then give those klowns the HOOK...
Explain their chummy relationship with this well known torturer, the infamous former Governor of Kandahar Asadullah Khalid.
A former governor of Kandahar who is accused of personally torturing Afghans might have been removed from office as far back as 2006 if Canadian officials hadn't defended him, according to diplomatic memos that have never been made public by the Canadian government. "As far as I know, Canada has never suggested to (President Hamid) Karzai that Asadullah be replaced," says the memo, dated Oct. 24, 2007.
"In the one meeting where the subject was discussed, in July 2006, it was the president who raised the issue; Canada defended the governor, thereby ensuring his continued tenure." Defended him despite the fact he was known to beat and electrocute prisoners in his own private torture chamber. Defended him even though his brutality would lead to disaster. The warnings about Khalid - whose brazen decision as governor to display the battered dead body of a revered Taliban leader Mullah Dadullah to local Afghan media, before refusing to return it for a proper burial, triggered a massive bombing campaign in Kandahar city in the spring of 2007 - were heard loud and clear in Ottawa.
But still they did NOTHING. Oh boy. The other night I looked at some of the things the Harper Cons might be trying to hide.
Now add this sordid episode to the list, and ask yourself what kind of pattern is beginning to emerge.
They knew that torture was going on, but they buried Richard Colvin's warnings, and lied over and over again to Parliament. They kept a governor in office who was a well known human rights abuser. They insisted that prisoners should be handed over to Afghan intelligence agents, trained by the KGB, as SOON as possible. The moment a detainee was captured, Fraser said, he had to notify his boss in Ottawa, Lt.-Gen. Michel Gauthier.
"As soon as I got a detainee, I would phone him," Fraser said, adding the question he got back was: "How fast could we get them to hand over to the Afghan authorities?"
While making sure that the Red Cross would not get to see those prisoners for as LONG as possible. Then ask yourself if this doesn't sound like a conspiracy to enable torture. And could this be what the Cons are so desperately trying to cover-up? Because they know they could be charged with WAR CRIMES. You know like most people in this country I can't be sure what's going on. But I think I see the shape of something monstrous out there in the darkness. Something that needs to be lit up by a flash light ...or a flare. So I agree with this editorial. Canadians did not elect a politburo in last year's federal election. They elected a minority Parliament that can survive only as long as it commands a degree of opposition support. Harper is squandering that support with his reflexive secrecy, abrasive partisanship and compulsive stonewalling.
Because some things I do know: Richard Colvin is my kind of Canadian. Stephen Harper is not my kind of Prime Minister. And for the sake of our country's soul, now more than ever. We need a public inquiry...
Cluck. Cluck. Isn't war egg-citing? Just a few days after getting her journalistic feathers blown off, Crusty the Chickenhawk is back with another sucking chest wound of a column. Not a word of apology for smearing Richard Colvin. And getting redacted retracted corrected. Not a word to explain how she got the e-mails Colvin and members of the Canadian Parliament are not allowed to see. Not a word about getting publicly spanked by her own newspaper. Just this bitter nonsense. I am not one of those smart Ottawa reporters who, having suffered through too many Question Periods, know what constitutes torture better than anyone else. Nor am I a mandarin, politician or aide, all of whom have endured the same, plus the practice of jackal journalism, which is what the modern game has become. More drivel about her egg-citing tour of Kandahar, and all that manly manly musk. The experience was one of the most significant of my life (if not on a par with the drama of being, say, in a budget lockup) and I treasure every minute of it. I made some lifelong friends, and I love some of these men. This wild statement: The first is that the hysteria of this week to the contrary, there is still no evidence that any prisoners taken by Canadian soldiers and handed over to Afghan authorities were tortured.
And this dumb observation, to pretend she knows what she's talking about. Secondly, the MP didn't photograph the man purely to show he was in good condition when he got into the ANP truck. Canadians were routinely photographing every prisoner they detained, in part because most Afghans don't carry identification and sometimes have only one given name... When she clearly does NOT. We then photographed the individual prior to handing him over, to ensure that if the ANP did assault him, as has happened in the past, we would have a visual record of his condition. Because the soldier was pretty specific. About the MAIN reason he photographed the prisoner. And about what had happened to OTHER prisoners. Gawd. Look I don't really care if Blatchford prefers to be a chickenhawk cheerleader, the toast of the Canadian Legion, and General Hilliard's little pet....rather than a journalist. But she should be under no illusion that she is supporting the troops more than most Canadians do. Because she isn't. If she and some other journalists had done a better job of REPORTING on the war, we might not be in the mess we're in. And a lot of brave soldiers might still be alive. I mean doesn't this chickenhawk even know that old military motto? The truth will SAVE us. So please Crusty, spare us any more of your egg-citing adventures in Assghanistan. Or more of that sweaty Con propaganda masquerading as journalism.
Because the truth will come out whether you like it or not. At a public inquiry.
And in the meantime please try to remember that a journalist is a journalist eh?
I didn't think the Blogging Tories could surprise me. They're usually so predictable. But I must admit I've been stunned by the number of kooky climate change deniers coming out of the wood work. Bursting out like a swarm of cicadas, and humming sympathetically. Or just pathetically.
So what?? Big deal.. All the scientists of the day said the sun revolved around the earth , except for one guy. He was right, the rest of them were dead WRONG!!!!
Because 1,700 scientists can't be right, but he's Galileo. Huh?
And they're not just buzzing around here, they're everywhere. Which has left me trying to come up with a reasonable explanation for this bizarre group behaviour. Just like Jennifer does here. Those employed or funded by the oil and coal industry, or companies whose profit margins would be hurt by action on climate change, all have rational reasons to sow the seeds of doubt - just as Big Tobacco had sound financial reasons for insisting that their product didn't really kill people. It's despicable, but it's logical. What I still don't fully understand are the motivations of the seemingly ordinary Canadians and Americans who spend their days screeching online about Climategate and solar flares and how pleasant Canada will be when we can grow bananas here. I'm fairly certain they don't all work of ExxonMobil. But I could be wrong. Now I must admit that for a long time I believed that climate change deniers were the unfortunate victims of poor toilet training. The kind of people who pooped their nappies, but were too afraid to admit the obvious. No matter how stinky it was. No I didn't. Yes you did. No I didn't. Because after all irrational fear is what defines Conservatives. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics. But now I realize it's even more frightening and complicated. Climate change is disturbing. It’s something we don’t want to think about. So what we do in our everyday lives is create a world where it’s not there, and keep it distant... If I don’t want to believe that climate change is true, that my lifestyle and high carbon emissions are causing devastation, then it’s convenient to say that it doesn’t. So we don’t want to believe climate change is happening, feel guilty that it is, and don’t know what to do about it? So we pretend it’s not a problem? Yes... OMG. Not only are these trembling totalitarians breathtakingly ignorant, they're also dangerously delusional.
The good news?
Because they can't help themselves, the Cons are defining themselves as climate change deniers. The issue will marginalize them. Make them look like weirdos or deranged conspiracy theorists.
And the more the heat rises, the more they'll MELT.
Kowabunga. How ironic eh?They set out to torch the planet. And they torched themselves instead. Woohoo !!!!!! Gimme my fireman's party hat !!!! The Con cicadas are humming. But their house is burning down...
Well at least now we know this: somewhere in a pile of heavily censored documents, is one mother of a revelation waiting to go off like a bomb. In the faces of Stephen Harper's Cons. Because when they wheel out the ridiculous SoCon Doris Day...the Minister of International Trade... to tell us what other parliamentarians can or cannot read.
"There are details of which, if they were to be publicly made available, would only help the enemy. So the law is very clear that there are situations where there could be security issues where certain elements of an operation must be protected." You know these Cons are feeling the coming of the Day of Judgment. And that this outrageous muzzling of Parliament has nothing to do with protecting the lives of our soldiers, and everything to do with protecting THEM. So what ARE these Cons trying to hide? Since I'm not a Con or a General I can't know for sure. But here are some educated guesses: (1) In the bloody year of 2006, when almost five times as many Canadian soldiers were killed than had died in the four years before, we retaliated by taking a lot of prisoners... including many innocent farmers. We weren't too fussy about happened to them in the hands of the Afghan police. And this hardline policy was ordered by the high command and the Cons in Ottawa. Even though they knew that Afghans were being tortured.
(2) As a result of this policy, Canadian soldiers reported numerous instances of abuse, but they were suppressed and nothing was done about them for eighteen months. Even though the Cons were aware of these reports they chose to look away, and let the Afghan torturers extract as much information as possible. (3) Somebody in Ottawa set up a scheme to ensure that the torturers had enough time to extract that information, by dragging their heels as long as possible, before informing the Red Cross.
It would be difficult to conceive of a slower way to bring Red Cross protection to a detainee. Was it just a case of bureaucratic hyper-caution, flowing possibly from the micro-managing style of the Harper government? Or was there something more sinister at play? If you wanted to ensure your detainee was grilled to the hilt over days, weeks, or months, would this not be the kind of play-for-time system that you would devise?
Which, if true, would be a WAR CRIME. (4) Canadian troops were still handing over prisoners to the Americans, even though the previous Liberal government had ordered that practice stopped. (5) Stephen Harper was micromanaging the war from Ottawa, so he knew EVERYTHING. Because let's never forget that back then he was posing as Great Warrior Leader. He was determined to show Rick "Blowhard" Hillier that he was The Boss.
Because he's a control freak AND a student of Stalin. Which explains why this sinister authoritarian Con is trying to muzzle our Parliament, and turn Canada into a closed society.
The departing chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission has taken the Harper government to task for refusing to renew his term in the middle of a major public inquiry into the Afghan detainee controversy.
He said his departure will effectively halt the commission's ability to continue the public hearings - and send a "chill" through other quasi-judicial bodies whose heads are appointed by the government.
And why enough is enough. Releasing the Afghanistan documents will not endanger our troops. Failing to release them threatens the foundations of our democracy. These monstrous thug Cons have gone too far. The lights are going out in Canada. Now more than ever. We need a public inquiry...
Well it's day 22 of the Peter MacKay political death watch, and I STILL don't know whether he's going to resign or be fired. Or when.
So I can't send out any invitations to my Bye Bye Dumbo party. Or even know what party hat I'm going to be wearing...the blue one or the black one. How annoying. But at least judging by this photo today, the end cannot be far off.
Because if those bags under Dumbo's eyes get any bigger he'll have to check them when he travels.
And as for his mental state, it's clearly even more fragile. The Bloc’s Claude Bachand stood and suggested that an internal military investigation was not sufficient, that a full public inquiry was necessary. Mr. MacKay seized on this as a demonstration of disloyalty. “That again really portrays something quite obvious,” he said. “We support the forces, their success and the success of our country. He cannot say the same.” The Bloc’s Pierre Paquette attempted to quote from Abraham Lincoln. Mr. MacKay rose to suggest the words actually belonged to P.T. Barnum, then seemed to imply some comparison between himself and Mr. Lincoln. “I will tell him what Honest Abe did do, he tried to unify a nation,” Mr. MacKay declared. “He tried to bring people together during a time of war. That is what great Canadians do.... The honourable member continues to play cheap politics, continues to use wedge politics. We will support our forces. We will see our country succeed with no help from him.” Lordy. Can you believe that? Dumbo MacKay comparing himself to Abraham Lincoln?While trying to smear the opposition like Joe McCarthy. Just like he tried to destroy the reputation of an honourable Canadian like Richard Colvin.
You know nobody has ever called Dumbo a classy guy, and he has been accused before of playing doggy games in Parliament. And of borrowing a dog to make people feel sorry for him.
But this is even more shameful. Colvin did his duty by speaking truth to power. MacKay responded by tarring the diplomat.
Self-serving from the outset, that smear no longer hides that this government knew, or should have known, as early as June 2006 that continuing to transfer prisoners was wrong and potentially illegal. The good news? Decent Canadians are speaking out. Two critical masses are forming here. One is that Colvin was far from alone in worrying about how Afghanistan treated prisoners and warning that Canada had a serious problem. The other is that those accustomed to serving their country silently are starting to shout that they are mad as hell and won't take it any more. Stephen Harper's polls are going DOWN. And sooner or later so will Dumbo. Because watching his precious majority slip away is enough to make Harper squat on his hind legs, howl at the moon... and bite people. And because Dumbo's too doggy to stay in Parliament.
Which reminds me eh? I'm still not sure what party hat I'll be wearing to my Bye Bye Dumbo bash. But I'm sure I'll be playing this one ...
Now that Gen. Walter Natynczyk has jogged his memory, changed his story, and fired a torpedo into the Con torture and rape cover-up.
Gen. Walter Natynczyk, Canada's top military commander, is now saying a suspected Taliban fighter abused by Afghan police in June 2006 had been detained by Canadian troops, contrary to comments he made Tuesday.
And we know that the detainee who was abused wasn't the only one. The sergeant also wrote that the man was photographed "prior to handing him over, to ensure that if the [Afghan National Police] did assault him, AS HAS HAPPENED IN THE PAST, we would have a visual record of his condition." And that the Cons are liars or idiots. Or both. The Conservative government has said there is no evidence that Afghan detainees in Canadian custody who were subsequently handed over to Afghan officials before 2007 were abused. All I need to know now is why did it take them 18 long months to do something about it? Why did they make sure that the detainees we handed over to the Afghans were the LAST to get a visit from the Red Cross? It was while this odd Kandahar to Ottawa to Geneva to Kandahar shuffle was going on that detainees would be under the greatest threat of torture and other abuses.
Was it just a case of bureaucratic hyper-caution, flowing possibly from the micro-managing style of the Harper government? Or was there something more sinister at play? And will Peter MacKay resign or be fired? Because I've got a blue party hat and a black one, and I need to know which one to wear. Although after reading that, and seeing this picture of the Con front bench in Question Period today, I'm guessing FIRED...
Because as they say a picture is worth a thousand words eh?
And when Stephen Harper looks like he's praying while you're up on your feet trying to defend yourself, you know it's the Con equivalent of finding a horse's head in your bed. Next comes the stinky fish wrapped up in the Globe and Mail. The record speaks for itself on what the Canadian government knows, or should have known, about the torture of Afghan detainees. It speaks far louder than the falsehoods from the government that have by now become routine. If these falsehoods are offered unintentionally, one wonders how senior government ministers can be so ignorant of the contents of such an important file. Gawd. Is this an organized cover-up...or an organized crime? Is this a government or the MOB?
When Christie Blatchford's smear job on Richard Colvin first reared its ugly head, I noticed something strange. Although getting some leaked e-mails should have been a big scoop, no other Globe reporter was touching the absurd chickenhawk's story. But as Paul Wells notes, they've more than made up for it since. In 20 years in journalism I have never seen anything resembling the systematic and sustained repudiation to which Christie Blatchford, the Globe and Mail’s marquee columnist, is being subjected by her own newspaper. There is room in any good paper for disagreements among colleagues, and frankly there should, for a long time now, have been room for more of that at the Globe. But this goes further. This is breathtakingly methodical. And I believe it was needed. I don’t think hanging Blatchford out to dry has been the Globe’s goal here. But because she wrote what she did, and Globe reporters keep finding what they do, hanging her out to dry has become necessary to the larger task. Oh boy have they ever. Christie. Crusty. Canadians want journalism out of Assghanistan, not Con propaganda. Or all that jingo nonsense and all that manly musk. Never have I witnessed such a journalistic spanking.And never was one more DESERVED.
