Busted!!

Peter MacKay knew the day after Canadian Forces in Afghanistan stopped transferring prisoners to Afghan custody.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay expressed Canada's outrage and dismay directly to Kandahar's governor within hours of diplomats discovering a clear case of prisoner abuse last fall.

[...]

Mr. MacKay was in Kandahar on Nov. 6 visiting troops when the Canadian army decided to halt the handover of captured Taliban fighters to Afghan authorities.

The fact that the government kept the decision secret has infuriated opposition MPs.

"He was there, he knew something," said Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre.

"Why didn't he tell us? Is it because he was told not to say anything by a Prime Minister's Office that is controlling everything?"

The news that a prisoner had been allegedly beaten unconscious using an electrical cable and a hose in the custody of Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service angered Mr. MacKay, said a senior Conservative, who spoke on background.

Mr. MacKay immediately demanded to speak to Governor Assadullah Khalid, whose responsibility includes all provincial detention facilities.

The Defence Minister told the governor, a former Northern Alliance commander whose hatred of the Taliban is legend on the streets of Kandahar, that the abuse was "absolutely unacceptable."

Well now, that would be a good thing. It's the proper way to deal with the issue. He might have even scored a few brownie-points if he'd come back to Canada and given Parliament the details.

But he didn't do that, did he?

Instead, MacKay lied to Parliament.

That's all three of them: Harper, MacKay and Buckler.

Liars.

I gotchyer operational secrecy right here

Steve Harper, having now made it clear that he will play politics with the lives of Canadian soldiers, is about to find out just how angry certain elements of the... oh! I suppose he may already know.

The Canadian Forces are holding insurgent detainees at their Kandahar Air Force base rather than turning them over to Afghan authorities, are taking fewer prisoners and are quickly releasing some of them.

The information, provided to The Globe and Mail by sources, answers questions about Canada's new policy for handling detainees that Prime Minister Stephen Harper and other ministers repeatedly refused to provide Monday, citing the need for combat operational secrecy.

Hmmm... I honestly don't know if I would have provided quite that amount of information, but I probably don't have to paint to much of a picture to give you an idea of what's happening here. Steve's "operational security" caveat doesn't have the stranglehold on information that he might have originally thought.

Reports have also emerged that General Rick Hillier, Chief of the Defence Staff, was furious with the Prime Minister's Office's handling of the military's new policy and angrily telephoned Mr. Harper Friday night after letting it be known he was “tired of being used” in political controversy.

It looks like Steve's book of secrets is coming apart at the binding.

Might I add, that this is just the start?

I guess since Steve has established his entire hold on power on the premise that he's the only one who actually knows what's going on and everyone else is too stupid to actually understand, there's little chance he'll see what's approaching from behind.

And the plot thickens

Apparently the Conservatives are gathered in the bunker to work out their strategy. Well, not really. The best they can do now is run a quick tactic and hope no one really notices what a bunch of rank amateurs they really are.

Too late.

A Conservative MP said it's up to the prime minister to decide whether to fire his chief spokeswoman for making false statements about Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

The government sent out two designated speakers Saturday - one English, one French - who defended Prime Minister Stephen Harper's communications director Sandra Buckler.

Other Conservatives grumbled privately that her misleading remarks are the latest example of how a potential good-news story about the Afghan mission has been plunged into the bowels of public-relations hell.

Alberta MP Art Hanger was not one of the officially designated spokespeople Saturday.

He offered a curt and unenthusiastic reply when asked whether the prime minister should fire his communications director.

"You ask the prime minister that question," Hanger replied outside a Conservative caucus meeting.

"I'm not about to answer it."

This is in place of the official line provided by Peter Van Loan as he met reporters and suggested that everybody in the Conservative Party "misspeaks".

The truth is, the Conservatives are finding themselves in a bucket of shit of their own making. They work so hard at trying to present perfect optics that they can't see where they're going. If they had put as much effort into actually governing they might have turned into a fairly competent government. (That's not to suggest we would have liked much of it.)

In any case, there is a lot of pressure on Harper at the moment and the source of one demand for Buckler's head is not backing away.

But one telephone receiver was shaking with the sound of screaming as a livid Department of National Defence official vented his fury at the Prime Minister's Office.

The military official said his colleagues are incensed by the insinuation that they would be incompetent enough to withhold key details on a politically charged file from their civilian bosses.

He said the Canadian Forces should be receiving plaudits for having signed a detainee-transfer deal when Foreign Affairs failed to do so in 2005, and for having then immediately halted transfers when proof of torture was uncovered in November.

"Instead we've been wearing this," the military official said, shouting loudly enough to shake the phone receiver. He described the mood at DND as "outraged and frustrated."

And they're not going to let it drop. The word on the jetty is that unless Buckler receives the appropriate discipline (fired), there will be information made public which will show that the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan did not make the immediate decision to stop prisoner transfers in isolation. They will demonstrate that the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, the government department actually responsible for administering the prisoner transfer agreement with the government of Afghanistan, made the initial decision on November 5th, 2007 and advised the CF to stop handing over prisoners to the Afghan government.

Added thought: I don't believe for a minute Buckler will be fired, but if she is you can expect a soft-landing. If I were the ambassador to any developed country in the Canadian diplomatic chain, I'd be checking to see where I could get some packing boxes.

Geez Sandra, don't get too close to any open flames. UPDATED

Did I title this post right or what?

Now, our dear Ms. Buckler, god of spin, has gotten herself caught in one of her own traps. Her only way out? Admit that she was not telling the truth.

The Harper government's position that it was not aware the military had suspended the transfer of prisoners to Afghan custody fully unravelled Friday as the Prime Minister's communications director retracted comments she had made to that effect, while the Opposition claimed it was briefed on the policy change two weeks ago. [...] Ms. Buckler called Friday to say she “misspoke” but would not say whether the military had or had not informed the government.

“I should not have said what I said to you, I misspoke, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of that,” she said. “I made a mistake…what I said was wrong.”

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said Friday it is obvious the Prime Minister's Office was aware of the policy change because he and deputy leader Michael Ignatieff had been personally briefed on it in mid-January by Canadian officials during their visit to Afghanistan.

Mr. Dion said he was prohibited from making it public under a security undertaking the Liberals had agreed to before their visit.

“We never, Mr. Ignatieff and I, disclosed this information, we did not have the right to do so, it would not have been responsible for us to do so, but we were aware. We forcefully disagreed with it,” Mr. Dion said.

“This is the only reason why I never believed [the government's] story they were not aware.”

Ms. Buckler, when asked Friday whether the military had informed the government that the transfer of prisoners to Afghan jails had been suspended in November, would not comment.

“I shouldn't have said it and I'm not going to comment on operational decisions made by the military,” Ms. Buckler said.

Well, Sandra, there's more to that than you're telling anybody. You see I had a conversation today with somebody whose rank badges are a lot bigger than mine ever were and he had a lot to say about your statement. He called you some extremely nasty names.

In fact, Sandra, he said that this is not the first time that you have abused the Canadian Forces this way as a means to protect Harper. He said that the long knives are drawn. If you don't know what that means, go ask Rick Hillier.

And, yes, I had full permission to tell you that little bit of information. We've always believed that if someone was going to get a beating, they had the right to know it was coming. Fair play and all that.

If I were you, Sandra, I'd be getting my resume up to date.

UPDATE: Golly, gee, that was fast. First I have lunch with an old friend, who is one of those generally-likable kind of guys (hint, heavy hint) and damned if his words don't translate into action.

Sources at the Defence Department said military commanders were livid at the assertion and insisted the government was informed "promptly" after the transfers were halted.

"I can't give you dates and times right now, but it was soon after," said a source with knowledge of the briefings.

"There have been a lot of heated discussions around this place over the last 24 hours."

Allow me to add: You ain't seen nothin' yet, Buckwheat.

Now go read what Impolitical has to say on it.

H/T Impolitical

Buckler: Lies, Cover-ups and Deceit

Let the acrimonious political slime-fest begin. On Monday, the opposition will attack the Harperites for failing to inform the Canadian public about the conditions under which prisoners taken by Canadians were detained. And the Harperites will deserve everything they get.

What Harper and his crowd of dilettantes don't seem to get is that misplaced secrecy will only cause to anger Canadians; and that anger is fully justified.

When pressed to explain why the Conservatives had deliberately chosen not to explain that detention arrangements had changed in the case of enemy fighters captured in Afghanistan, this is what happened.

A spokeswoman for the prime minister denied there was any attempt to cover up the decision and put the responsibility squarely on the shoulders of the Canadian army.

"The military make decisions each and every day based on what is happening in theatre," Sandra Buckler, Harper's communications director, said in an e-mail.

"Concerning the matter of detainees, the number of detainees, if they are being transferred or not, these are all operational matters and are the responsibility of the Canadian Forces."

Let's clear one thing up right now. Sandra Buckler is a flat-faced political operative. She wouldn't know the difference between an "operational matter" and a beet-green. Her statement isn't just an obvious dodge, it's a dangerous one - for the Conservatives.

As far as operational security where the taking of prisoners is concerned Buckler might want to do a little research.

Canadian policy is to treat all prisoners taken during military operations as prisoners of war and to be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of those prisoners. That means that Canada is responsible to make every effort to communicate the identity of those captured back to the other side - something that is normally done through a third party. Canada is also responsible to ensure that an independent third party has access to any prisoners in custody to monitor the conditions of incarceration and their continued humane treatment.

As a part of that access the third party, by convention, usually agrees not to disclose the location of prisoners held by the belligerent party. Although not mandatory, it is a condition of access.

The numbers of prisoners taken and the names of those captured is not an operational consideration. The "enemy" already knows who is no longer in their units and can easily discern who was taken prisoner.

So Buckler is absolutely full of it in describing prisoner statistics and generalized detention arrangements as being secret for operational reasons. If prisoners are transferred to the custody of another country, that information must be transmitted to the independent third party. Period.
Buckler, of course, is attempting to deflect responsibility for any prisoner arrangements directly onto the Canadian Armed Forces. In doing so she is tacitly suggesting that the civilian political establishment has nothing at all to do with prisoner arrangements.

There are instances where she might have even been considered to have been correct. But the last time that held true Buckler wasn't even born, and even then, the Canadian government was very much involved in prisoner of war policy.

Since the 2nd World War Canada has not been a declared belligerent. All combat missions and peacekeeping or peace enforcement operations have been conducted under the cover of a United Nations or NATO engagement. Both of those bodies require all parties under their operational authority to maintain the highest levels of humane treatment for those who, despite the way they may conduct themselves, become captive. The easiest way to accomplish that is to abide fully with the Geneva Conventions regarding the treatment of prisoners of war.

Given that even the sloppiest of the Harper and Buckler supporters continue to point out that Afghanistan is a UN sanctioned and a NATO led mission, they have no choice but to accept that the treatment of prisoners must meet the standards expected of those two bodies.

Is that simple enough?

So, then we get to the part where Buckler is trying to push all responsibility onto the Canadian Forces.

Big deal. Her statement suggests that the whole issue, both the actual detention and the communications of policy, is out of the hands of the prime minister, minister of national defence and whatever else is not in uniform.

That suggestion isn't just wrong, it's an outright lie. What she is hoping is that we'll all look at the Chief of Defence Staff for an answer. Even on a short leash, she is about to make him the one squirming in front of the news cameras.

It is not, however, the problem of the CDS.

The Canadian Forces can deal with immediate custody arrangements but it is up to the civilian government of Canada to formulate how to deal with longer term arrangements. The political leaders must not only know what is being done, they are required to provide approval.

Again, I expect there are a lot of people who are shrugging their shoulders. After all, if prisoners are being held by Canadians at least we know that no harm will come to them. Right?

Wrong.

I was there when, during the regime of the last Conservative government, there was no room left for that form of ambiguity. I clearly remember the priority messages and the directives. I don't blame the government of the day for the initial incident which led to that flurry of message traffic and endless direction, but I do blame them for keeping the entire episode a secret in an attempt to hide it from the Canadian public to save their own political hides.

Here's a word Sandra Buckler needs to look up and we all have to remember. It's why the Harper obsession with secrecy over prisoners can only make us even more suspicious than we already are.

Somalia.

Canada halts transfers of Afghan prisoners

Says the Globe and Mail.

Which proves Harper and Day were wrong all along and their political opposition was right.

The Harper government quietly stopped transferring prisoners into Afghan custody months ago after compelling evidence of torture was discovered, the government admitted Wednesday on the eve of a federal court hearing.

The government kept the its decision under wraps, even as it prepared to fight rights groups seeking a halt to transfers and as it tried to drum up public support for extending Canada's commitment to wage war on the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.

Justice Department lawyers admitted Wednesday that detainee transfers were halted 10 weeks ago.

In early November, a prisoner told Canadian diplomats in an interrogation room in a secret police jail in Kandahar that he had been beaten and then told them where they could find the electrical cable and rubber hose used by his torturers. The Canadians found them beneath a chair.

“Canadian authorities were informed on November 5, 2007, by Canada's monitoring team, of a credible allegation of mistreatment pertaining to one Canadian-transferred detainee held in an Afghan detention facility,” the lawyers said in a letter sent Wednesday to Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

That is one correct decision followed by a bad one.

Once proof of torture was obtained the only decision the Harperites could have made was to cease transferring prisoners into Afghan custody.

But why the secrecy? There is no operational imperative to keep the basic information classified. So, it was political. After Montreal La Presse visited the Afghanistan in October 2007 and reported prisoner abuse, which is now consistent with that discovered by Canadian diplomats in Afghanistan, this is what government house leader Peter Van Loan had to say:

"We do expect these kinds of allegations from the Taliban," said Tory House leader Peter Van Loan.

"It is their standard operating procedure to engage in these kinds of accusations."

That would be fair enough if it wasn't for the fact that what La Presse discovered was completely true. And when the Harperites discovered that it was indeed true, what did they do?

They kept it a secret.

These guys behave just like their fellow travelers to the south. They can't handle being wrong, cannot admit an error and despise having to accept that somebody other than they can actually have a better handle on a situation than them.

They are right-wing authoritarians and they would rather chew off their own arms than admit a mistake.

And they expect us to believe them when they tell us how things are going in Afghanistan.

Why should we? The Conservatives keep getting caught with their pants around their ankles.

What a pack of morons.

H/T Scott

The New York Times ends the year by issuing forth shame

This was on the editorial page of the NY Times this morning:

There are too many moments these days when we cannot recognize our country. Sunday was one of them, as we read the account in The Times of how men in some of the most trusted posts in the nation plotted to cover up the torture of prisoners by Central Intelligence Agency interrogators by destroying videotapes of their sickening behavior. It was impossible to see the founding principles of the greatest democracy in the contempt these men and their bosses showed for the Constitution, the rule of law and human decency.

It was not the first time in recent years we’ve felt this horror, this sorrowful sense of estrangement, not nearly. This sort of lawless behavior has become standard practice since Sept. 11, 2001.

The country and much of the world was rightly and profoundly frightened by the single-minded hatred and ingenuity displayed by this new enemy. But there is no excuse for how President Bush and his advisers panicked — how they forgot that it is their responsibility to protect American lives and American ideals, that there really is no safety for Americans or their country when those ideals are sacrificed.

Out of panic and ideology, President Bush squandered America’s position of moral and political leadership, swept aside international institutions and treaties, sullied America’s global image, and trampled on the constitutional pillars that have supported our democracy through the most terrifying and challenging times. These policies have fed the world’s anger and alienation and have not made any of us safer.

[...]

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could.

[...]

In other foreign lands, the C.I.A. set up secret jails where “high-value detainees” were subjected to ever more barbaric acts, including simulated drowning. These crimes were videotaped, so that “experts” could watch them, and then the videotapes were destroyed, after consultation with the White House, in the hope that Americans would never know.

The C.I.A. contracted out its inhumanity to nations with no respect for life or law, sending prisoners — some of them innocents kidnapped on street corners and in airports — to be tortured into making false confessions, or until it was clear they had nothing to say and so were let go without any apology or hope of redress.

These are not the only shocking abuses of President Bush’s two terms in office, made in the name of fighting terrorism. There is much more — so much that the next president will have a full agenda simply discovering all the wrongs that have been done and then righting them.

We can only hope that this time, unlike 2004, American voters will have the wisdom to grant the awesome powers of the presidency to someone who has the integrity, principle and decency to use them honorably. Then when we look in the mirror as a nation, we will see, once again, the reflection of the United States of America.

Now, pay attention to Jill.

Now if whoever wrote this excellent editorial would inform the Powers that Be in the executive suite that every atrocity mentioned therein was applauded by the very man they've just hired as a columnist.

Awesome.

New allegations of prisoner abuse in Afghanistan

Via POGGE is this new report that prisoners being taken by Canadian Forces in Afghanistan are still being tortured by the Afghan secret police before being forwarded to the Afghan prison system.

The federal government is dismissing an incendiary newspaper report about the continued abuse of detainees in Afghanistan.

Prisoners at an Afghan jail in Kandahar are being bashed with bricks, having their fingernails ripped out, getting electrocuted, being forced to stand up without sleeping and are whipped with electric cables, Montreal La Presse reported on Monday.

The newspaper cites interviews with three prisoners and independent sources including a spokesman for the Afghan Human Rights Commission and a prison boss.

The Conservative government in Ottawa responded to similar reports last spring by saying it had a new a deal to monitor detainees.

On Monday, the government responded to the latest report by dismissing it as Taliban propaganda.

"We do expect these kinds of allegations from the Taliban," said Tory House leader Peter Van Loan.

Van Loan persists in being a complete idiot. La Presse actually visited the prison and interviewed the very outfit which is supposed to be reporting incidents of prisoner abuse to the Canadian government - the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission.

A spokesman for the Afghan Human Rights Commission is quoted as saying that about a third of prisoners are still being tortured by Afghanistan's secret service before they are taken to prison.

"The Canadians give us a sealed envelope with the names of the prisoners. The problem is that list never corresponds to the one compiled by the secret service," said commission spokesman Shamuldin Tanwir.

Ahem! One would think Peter Mackay would be in a bit of a rush to verify, or put to rest, that report. That's his prize prisoner monitoring agency saying things are off the rails.

There is a very clear solution to all of this. We simply do what we should have been doing all along. Take prisoners and retain them in Canadian custody. It's called a PW camp - in Canada. We then monitor their treatment, which is actually our responsibility as one of the combatants in Afghanistan. By removing them from theatre completely there is no chance that they can be delivered by a corrupt Afghan regime back into the hands of the enemy.

I know, there are those out there who are possessed of the belief that the such captives are entitled to no such treatment. Those people are easily dismissed. When your enemy surrenders they are now your problem. You won. Both sides did their best, and their dirtiest, to kill each other and emerge victorious. This country does not allow, under any circumstances whatsoever, the torture or abuse of prisoners who have turned themselves over as captive. Period.

Stockwell Day showed his extreme ignorance for such matters when, in April 2007, he responded to the suggestion that PWs be removed to Canada thusly:

"We want the Taliban to stay in Afghanistan. We are going to insist that their human rights are respected, but we don't want them to come here," he said.

He then went on to admit that the Afghanis had a history of torture and abuse and that things weren't going as well as we would like.

Day's argument is moot. His painting of the Taliban as murderous torturers carries no weight. The fact is, the NAZI regime in WW2 Germany was also a bunch of murderous torturers on a scale far beyond that of the Afghan Taliban regime. Yet, we placed their captured soldiers in prison camps in Medicine Hat, Lethbridge, Kingston, Bowmanville, Gravenhurst, Ozada and Kananaskis - by the thousands.

That's right Stockwell, Peter and Steve. We brought them, the soldiers of a regime led by mass murderers and thugs, into captivity in Canada.

I would suggest re-thinking the currently held position but that would require giving the original suggestion some actual thought.

Wanna Get Even More Angry?

Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker on "How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties."

The Three Stooges and Prisoner Abuse.

The idea of governments waiting until after 6 p.m. on a Friday to release information is that the news cycle is effectively dead. Unless something truly titillating is transpiring, most reporters have left the field and headed for cover. Some go to the bars and hob-nob with the very people they're writing about. (If you don't believe that, do I have some interesting pictures for you!)

In any case, if a government official wants to release information that is least likely to gather attention, after 6 p.m. local on a Friday is the best time to do it.

That's what Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay's office did yesterday.

Six prisoners have complained to Canadian officials of abuse in Afghan prisons – not four, as Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said earlier this week.

Not the two admitted to by Stockwell Day in April; Not the four admitted to by Peter MacKay before a parliamentary committee this past week.

Six.

But it's not the number so much as the attempts to either mislead parliament or the glaring incompetence of O'Connor, Day and MacKay in dealing with the problem.

At any given time they have a different answer to the same question. They have misled parliament and parliamentary committees. They have lied about the levels of access Corrections Canada officials had to transfered prisoners. They were unable to describe the prisoner transfer agreement until yet another new one was implemented on 3 May.

And now, they keep changing the numbers. Why? The most obvious answer is that someone else knew the truth and was about to deliver it to a news outlet.

Before anyone goes off half-cocked with inappropriate suggestions, I have no problem with detaining captured prisoners, or transferring them. As long as it's done within the scope of the standards set for the Canadian Forces. That means that whether a combatant meets the test of identity laid out in the 1949 Geneva Convention Article 4 or not, the Canadian Armed Forces are required to treat all captured combatants as Prisoners of War by way of regulation and orders.

It's the fact that, until 3 May, there seemed to be little concern for the way transferred PWs were treated. It is likely that there was no complete record of those transfered to Afghan custody. Prior to that date, the conditions of the prisoner transfer agreement were literally unknown, the Minister of National Defence being unable to explain its contents.

For those who would argue that we shouldn't be concerned about how Afghan insurgency fighters are treated once captured because they are murderous scum-bags, I can state, without compunction, we don't get to be like them - ever. Neither do our agents.

The particularly warped belief that we can behave in the same manner as those we refer to as the Taliban would suggest that we would have been completely justified, between 1939 and 1945, in rounding up every citizen and resident of German descent, however far removed they were from that heritage, concentrate them in camps and methodically murder them. The fact that, in 1942, we did incarcerate Japanese-Canadians for no other reason than their race and appearance remains a shameful stain on the Canadian historical record.

This is about O'Connor, Day and MacKay and the fact that they cannot seem to get any of this right. They are either trying to hide something or they are all unbelievably incompetent.

Either way, they appear less organized than the Three Stooges and it's time we were rid of them. They are exposing our troops to charges of war crimes and I can't think of any serving CF member who deserves such a lack of support.

Supporting the Troops

Over the last several weeks we've seen Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor and Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day twist and squirm on the issue of prisoners of war captured by the Canadian military in Afghanistan. They seemed to have hit a new low last week when Harper, who has never served in the military (or even had a job in the private sector) tried to deflect criticsm of his gormless defence minister by suggesting that anyone who hadn't served in the military was not fit to criticize those who had. By the same reckoning I suppose those who have never taught school should be barred from criticism of the education system and those of us who have never held a seat in the House of Commons should just keep our traps shut and be grateful for the fine job the Gnu Gummint of Kanada is doing on our behalf.
This is, of course, to use the technical term complete and utter bullshit. Canada is not a military dictatorship, the armed forces answer to their civilian overseers, who are supposed to answer to the voters.
This week, they've sunk a notch lower in their emulation of the national security state to the south, where anything the government does, no matter how many of its own laws it breaks, can be justified by claiming it is being done in the interest of national security (Just like they do in such enlightened democracies as North Korea and Burma. The government is now stonewalling on releasing information about the number of prisoners taken in Afghanistan, saying the enemy could use such information for propaganda purposes or to hurt our gallant boys in harm's way defending our way of life over there so that we don't have to fight the terrorists over here and why aren't you wearing red with yellow ribbons you islamoanarchofacist pinko bastard?
Doris wants to know how we dare to even ask questions:

"Detainees are not simply people who have jay-walked," Day said. "These are
people who are suspected terrorists."

"That has been the air of the questioning, so much so that our troops tell us they think they're being accused of doing wrong things."

Doris better go read the Geneva Conventions again, because if the military is handing over prisoners to be tortured, they are doing the "wrong thing" -- the kind of wrong thing that could land people in the Hague. By asking these questions and demanding the military act properly we are supporting them, we are making sure they don't inadvertently violate international law and commit a war crime by mimicing the conduct of our neighbors to the south.
It is not the job of the grunts in the field or their immediate superiors to determine whether the Afghan government tortures prisoners. They should be able to take the word of the minister of defense and the prime minister and the chief of defense staff who job it is to determine what happens to prisoners taken on the battlefield. It very definitely is their responsibility to determine whether the Afghans are likely to torture any prisoners we hand over to them.
The opposition are doing their job, the voters are doing thier the troops are doing theirs -- why isn't the government doing its job?

crossposted at The Woodshed

Muddy waters, prisoner abuse and a sworn affidavit

First, go over and read liberal catnip's post about the contradictions being cast over Colonel Steve Noonan's sworn testimony that Canadian troops demanded the return of a prisoner after they discovered he had been beaten.

We'll wait here.

OK, now consider two things.

1. Colonel Noonan uses the word "we" in his affidavit. That is as it should be since he would have been made aware of the incident by way of a situation report. But it should be taken into account since it suggests there is an entire group of people who are aware of exactly what happened. Lt. General Walter Natynczyk, the Vice-Chief of the Defence Staff, who is disputing Noonan's account, was not there at the time. Noonan, on the other hand, was.

2. If the Vice-Chief of Defence Staff is suggesting that Noonan got it wrong intentionally, then it is Natynczyk's responsibility to charge Noonan, under the National Defence Act, of having committed perjury and to send that charge to a convening authority.

So, what's it going to be, General? The choice is a court-martial or a retraction.

Update: For more crunchy goodness on this subject, go here.