Step Up To The Plate Stephen - You Are Fumbling The Ball On This Issue

Why Not...the opposition leaders already appear to be in the pockets of the Taliban

Blame Tories, not the troops
By LORRIE GOLDSTEIN

Amid all the allegations of the torture of Taliban suspects captured by Canadian soldiers and later handed over to Afghani authorities, let's remember something.

As reported by the Globe and Mail, which broke the story a week ago: "None of the abuse was inflicted by Canadians and most Afghans captured -- even those who clearly sympathized with the Taliban -- praised the Canadians for their politeness, their gentle handling of captives and their comfortable detention facility."

So this controversy is not about the conduct of our soldiers. It's about a flawed process for handing over Taliban suspects to Afghani security forces for interrogation.

In its last month in office, the Liberal government of Paul Martin signed off on a prisoner transfer agreement with Afghanistan, which, while it theoretically guaranteed Afghani authorities would obey the Geneva Conventions against torture, had no verification mechanism.

Anyone knowing the history of Afghanistan's security forces should have known this was a bad idea.

When Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservatives took power in early 2006, they inherited the deal.

But ever since, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has failed to address repeated allegations that captured Taliban suspects transferred to Afghani control were being tortured.

The Conservative response has been a maze of contradictions and obfuscations.

At one point, O'Connor said the Red Cross was inspecting the prisoners for Canada. Wrong.

Last week, the Tories said an Afghani human rights group was doing the inspections, but the group said it couldn't do the job effectively.

By week's end, Harper and his ministers seemed to be contradicting each other.

Let's not be naive. The Taliban are a deadly enemy and the opposition parties who have been raising this issue often sound like they care more about them than our soldiers. Some of these allegations of torture are no doubt lies. But that said, Canada should not be handing over captured prisoners to known torturers.

It should not be beyond the competence of the defence minister, after 15 months in office, to come up with an effective way to do these inspections.

If it is, we need a new one.