- ...it seems the left wing have short term memory loss When it comes to THEIR Screwups.
- Adrian MacNair: Inquiry must get to bottom of Liberal involvement in war crimes
-
Far be it from me to pose as an expert on an issue as confusing as the secretive and murky conditions surrounding how detainees in Afghanistan have been handled in the care of Canada’s military. But recent information has come to light that reveals that the former Liberal government was aware of systemic abuse and torture in Afghan prisons, even though the Liberal Party has been hammering on the Harper government over an alleged “cover-up”. I shouldn’t really say “recent information”, since most of this information has been what you might call, “hiding in plain sight”, in the form of old news articles on the internet.
From 2002 to 2005, the Canadian protocol for Afghan detainees suspected of Taliban ties was to hand them over to U.S. military authorities. The Liberal government at the time was convinced that the treatment of detainees in American custody would be humane, but that soon changed when abuse allegations at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq surfaced.
What we do know is that Canadian diplomats who were stationed in Kabul repeatedly warned the former Chretien and Martin Liberal governments in 2003, 2004, and 2005 that torture was commonplace in Afghan prisons. Despite these warnings, the Martin government signed an agreement with the Karzai government in December of 2005 to hand over all Canadian-captured prisoners to Afghan authorities, according to official documents by Foreign Affairs.
Is it possible? Do Canadians actually ... care about Parliament?
Oooh, a shiny new poll. Ooooh! A shiny new poll showing the Liberals and Conservatives basically neck-and-neck! Neat-o! It’s all about prorogation, The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson declares. (Take that, Stephen Harper! People do care about democracy!) Kady O’Malley provides her usual, entertainingly minute analysis over at CBC, and she too thinks prorogation is the likeliest trigger for the narrowing gap, if only for lack of any better explanation. Alas, she cannot explain Ekos’s finding of, ahem, a 14.4% jump for the Liberals in Saskitoba. Frankly, we think Ekos might want to send its polling machine in for a complete systems check.
Back in the Globe, the mellifluous author and columnist, Lawrence Martin (we had to do it, if only just once) is well pleased at this apparent show of support for our beleaguered parliamentary democracy, and suspects Stephen Harper’s unusually hectic interview schedule in the past few days is evidence of “damage control.” Martin also notes a somewhat counterintuitive calming voice on the matter: constitutional scholar Donald Savoie, who suggests we all “take a valium.”
No comments:
Post a Comment