Harper's War Agenda

From Rabble.ca by Derrick O'Keeffe

Expanding foreign military bases serves Harper's war agenda

"Canadian fighter jets have flown more than 400 sorties over Libya thus far, and NATO's air campaign is intensifying. The Canadian planes have been operating from a NATO base in Italy. To fight wars from the air, you need to have the use of foreign bases.

Last week, Le Devoir broke the news that the Canadian government had completed agreements for new foreign bases in Jamaica and Germany, with talks ongoing to establish bases in Kuwait, Tanzania and several other countries."

The piece includes a link to the Canadian Peace Alliance and a statement against Canada's garrisoning of the planet.

"The Canadian Peace Alliance condemns the plans of the Harper government to establish new foreign military bases for Canada. This is a policy that has been in the works for some time but, like so much else about Canada's foreign policy, it was completely excluded from the discussion during the recent federal election

...The announcement about new foreign bases came at the same time as a request to keep Canadian Forces on the ground in Richelieu, Quebec to help with flood relief was being ignored. The Harper government continues to encourage costly and unnecessary deployments of the Forces abroad, while showing little interest in using its resources at home for disaster relief.

Foreign bases have nothing to do with Canadian security, and everything to do with the Harper government's desire to be able to participate in future military aggressions like the ones ongoing in Afghanistan and Libya."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian War Crimes in Afghanistan

A lengthy, well-documented and detailed piece by Michael Keefer, professor at the University of Guelph, Ontario, on the complicity of Harper and his minions in Afghan detainee transfer to certain torture, deliberate blocking of information at the highest levels in the Canadian Forces and the Canadian government and outright lies from Harper's government when questioned by news and parliamentary committees about it.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canadian War Crimes in Afghanistan

"...[A]ccording to law professor Amir Attaran, who has seen uncensored versions of the documents that the Harper government has so strenuously resisted sharing with Parliament, the paper trail is thoroughly incriminating. In March 2010 Attiran told CBC News: “If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees […]. There would be a question of rendition and a question of war crimes on the part of certain Canadian officials. That’s what’s in these documents, and that’s why the government is covering up as hard as it can.”

This question hasn't even come up in this election campaign except by Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party (NDP) whose position all along has been against the war and Canada's part in it. For his efforts, his was given the name "Taliban Jack" by Harper Conservatives and their supporters.

Michael Keefer's conclusion:

"The clear pattern of intentionality revealed in the words and actions of senior Canadian government bureaucrats and senior military officers is both embarrassing (these people actually believe, despite copious evidence to the contrary, that torture produces real ‘intelligence’) and also a scandalous offence against the rule of law.

More scandalous still is the evidence that these people were acting on directives from Stephen Harper—that Harper knew perfectly well that the Afghan puppet-state tortures the prisoners handed over to it by the Canadian Forces, but nonetheless permitted the continuation of this system, and that he actually took charge of the program of lying about it. "

Chalmers Johnson: August 6, 1931 - November 20, 2010

Rest in peace, Mr. Johnson. Your books were an inspiration.

Chalmers Johnson

We lose the good ones too soon and the bad ones hang around far too long, destroying things for everybody.

Massive casualties

The commander of Canadian forces in Afghanistan has said that a "flurry" of activities will occur in the fall and into next year.

When I read this, my heart sank - just when I thought it couldn't sink any further.

'Massive activities' from Canadian troops coming in Afghanistan: Lieutenant-General

"There’ll be a flurry of military operations starting with the major ones this fall, (and) there’ll be other ones certainly in the winter and spring," said Lt.-Gen. Lessard, head of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command. "We’re ready to launch."

Massive activites will lead to massive casualties but they don't seem to care.

Then comes the usual crippled logic for the whole thing.

If Canadian troops do not improve conditions in the districts before leaving next year, their sacrifices since 2006 will have been wasted, he suggested.

I can't believe that anybody with more than two functioning neurons is still using that stupid justification for mass death - of civilians and of soldiers.

Canada and the F-35's

From the wonderful Dr. Neil Kitson and his blog Canadians in Afghanistan

Canada's Purchase of the F-35 explained

They also did a wonderful explanation of the subprime mortages.

IED attacks in Afghanistan from WikiLeaks info

Using the massive sea of data that WikiLeaks released, this very disturbing video was made of the escalation of IED attacks in Afghanistan since the invasion and occupation.



Canadians seem most disturbed by a report in the WikiLeaks info from September 3, 2006 that states that four Canadian soldiers were killed by "friendly" fire (they should really retire that description) - a bomb dropped by U.S. forces called in for air support. Soldiers who were there say, in conflicting reports, that one was killed while walking along a road while another says he was killed when sticking his head through a hatchway. Canadian military types at first denied that it was friendly fire, as if getting killed one way was somehow more honourable or worthwhile than getting killed another way. Families of the dead soldiers had to relive the whole thing again. And of course we still don't know.

The next day, a Canadian soldier was killed by a U.S. bomb. There doesn't seem to be any argument on that point.

With casualty numbers going through the roof, 414 soldiers this year so far with a total of nearly two thousand since 2001, with uncounted thousands of Afghan civilians dead, wounded or displaced, why is this war still being fought?

Worse still, what is being covered up by the Canadian government - the treatment of prisoners, the numbers of wounded in mind and body, the use of defense contractors, the cost of the whole thing - now and in the future?

Who knows? Harper is taking a summer holiday. Nice that he can, that he has an income, a house that's safe to live in, in a country that hasn't been invaded by people with too many weapons and no plan.

No Plan A, either

From the Washington Post and Karen de Young on the Kandahar plan.

"The Obama administration's campaign to drive the Taliban out of Afghanistan's second-largest city is a go-for-broke move that even its authors are unsure will succeed. The bet is that the Kandahar operation, backed by thousands of U.S. troops and billions of dollars, will break the mystique and morale of the insurgents, turn the tide of the war and validate the administration's Afghanistan strategy.

There is no Plan B."

I'm not sure there was a plan A either.

This is going to be horrible.

An offensive by any other name is still offensive

From Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com:

As NATO Rebrands Kandahar Invasion, Residents Express Concern

Having spent months touting its upcoming Kandahar “offensive” to the world as the centerpiece of their 2010 plans for the ongoing Afghan War, NATO has decided that “offensive” doesn’t sound very good, and has reported decided to rebrand the invasion as a “process” or conversely a “series of efforts.”

The Kandahar Process. It sounds like a chemical process.

Or maybe a reverse Philosopher's Stone which turns gold into lead.

As for the Kandahar Series of Efforts - nope. Won't fly.

“More foreign troops means more attacks and more dead civilians,” noted Khan Mohammed, a car dealer in Kandahar, adding that NATO should “open their eyes and realize they can’t beat the Taliban through military means.”

Will somebody take this guy and make him King, please? He seems to have a firm grip on the situation.

And, after nearly a year under McChrystal's command, every month from July 2009 onward (he took command in mid-June 2009) had more casualties than any other of the same months since the beginning of this "war". How, in anybody's reckoning, does this look like success?

As I write this, the casualty count for 2010 is 185, almost as many as all of 2006 at 191. Numbers have been going up exponentially year after year.

And, of course, there's this to look forward to.

Attacks signal end of poppy harvest in Afghanistan

Once the crop's in, the guns and bombs come out.

When injured soldiers become annual statistics

We are a small country, population-wise, and every military death in Afghanistan, whether battle-related or not, has been reported in local and national newspapers, accompanied by a solemn, usually young, face looking straight at the observer. With every report of a death, there has been the number of wounded, too, until recently.

That was why many people were surprised to hear of the death in an Edmonton hospital of Corporal Darren Fitzpatrick of severe injuries to his lower body by an IED outside Kandahar. He was treated first in Kandahar, then the U.S. hospital in Germany. He was stabilized and brought back to Canada at his family's request and died the next day. He spoke to them before he died, a small comfort, I suppose, in a world of hurt.

But if he had not died, we wouldn't have known. The Department of National Defense does not report the number or severity of injuries, only the number of casualties so Canadians in general are completely unaware of them.

But now the propaganda is coming out, even if the facts aren't.

Canada forbids reporting of battlefield wounded

"The Canadian military has quietly stopped reporting when soldiers are wounded on the battlefield and will instead deliver annual statistics to the public.

The stark policy shift is described as a deliberate attempt to keep the Taliban in the dark."

"The weekend death of Corporal Darren Fitzpatrick in an Edmonton trauma centre brought the directive to the forefront. The 21-year-old was mortally wounded in a previously unreported March 6 roadside bombing."

Apart from the deliberate attempt to keep the horrible consequences of an ill-conceived war from Canadian citizens, it was the cool determination to relegate them to annual statistics that bothered me the most.

First, how many years are we expecting to be reporting these statistics? I thought the "mission", whatever it is, is supposed to be finished in 2011, although that seems highly in doubt now.

And second, since when do military injuries become numbers to be reported like the annual per capita consumption of cheddar cheese or the vacation destinations of the traveling populace?

It's the second line of that quote that tells it all, though, that the withholding of injury statistics would keep the "Taliban in the dark".

One problem with that, though. The Taliban were there. They saw what happened and they send the information to their network. They don't send GPS-guided rockets or direct missile-laden drones from miles or continents or hemispheres away.

So, who exactly is being kept in the dark here, eh?

We have become a nation of mushrooms.

I guess Canadians aren't really leaving Afghanistan, then.

Peter MacKay, Minister of Defence, has kicked General Leslie, the head of the Canadian army, out of a job. Well, not really, but they just don't know where they're going to put him yet. So they say. I believe them. Sure.

Head of Canadian army shuffled out of job

"The head of Canada's army, who was set to play a major role in the withdrawal of the Canadian combat mission from Afghanistan next year, has been moved out of his job, officials said on Wednesday."

"Leslie, chief of the land staff, made headlines early last year when he said the army was worn out and would need at least a year to recover once the 2,800-strong Afghan military mission ended in 2011...He later reversed his position, citing increased investment in the military.

"He is no longer chief of land staff, but he awaits future responsibilities ... (he) has several options under consideration. He's a very capable and valuable officer," said a spokesman for Defense Minister Peter MacKay."

Yeah, yeah, sure, Peter. What a mealymouthed, lukewarm piece of organic fertilizer that is.

"Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears!
I come not to bury Leslie but damn him with faint praise!
You believe me, don'tcha? Huh? Huh? Don'tcha?"

In his place?

"Leslie will be replaced by Lieutenant-General Peter Devlin, currently deputy commander of Canadian troops based abroad. He served a 15-month tour in Baghdad from 2006 to 2008 with the U.S. military as part of an exchange program."

So that makes two. Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk was also in Iraq. Few Canadians know the extent of Canadian military involvement in the illegal Iraq war.

Now the chief and the head of the army can boast of having Iraq War creds carved into their bedposts.

Could this have anything to do with the rumour that the U.S. will be asking (demanding?) that Canadian soldiers stay in Afghanistan, supposedly as "trainers" after the parliamentary mandated 2011 withdrawal date?

General Leslie said last year that the Canadian army is exhausted. So are the Canadian people and their tax money.

Generals speaking inconvenient truths?

Just put them in the discard pile and shuffle the deck.

The big Marjah lie, or the lie that Marjah is big

Good heavens! Is General Staley McChrystal and his army of COIN swallowers lying to us? No. Can't be.

Somehow, I'm more likely to believe Gareth Porter.

Fiction of Marjah as city was U.S. misinformation

"For weeks, the U.S. public followed the biggest offensive of the Afghanistan War against what it was told was a "city of 80,000 people" as well as the logistical hub of the Taliban in that part of Helmand. That idea was a central element in the overall impression built up in February that Marjah was a major strategic objective, more important than other district centers in Helmand.

It turns out, however, that the picture of Marjah presented by military officials and obediently reported by major news media is one of the clearest and most dramatic pieces of misinformation of the entire war, apparently aimed at hyping the offensive as a historic turning point in the conflict.

Marjah is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers’ homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley."

Go on. Check it out on Google Earth.

And even with such sparse population, they still managed to get it wrong and kill civilians and then cry big tears about it.

In April 2006, John Pilger, who's been reporting on disastrous wars and lying politicians for a long time, had this to say about unquestioning belief in his article The Real First Casualty of War:

"During the 1970s, I filmed secretly in Czechoslovakia, then a Stalinist dictatorship. The dissident novelist Zdenek Urbánek told me, "In one respect, we are more fortunate than you in the west. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. Unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines, because real truth is always subversive."

This acute skepticism, this skill of reading between the lines, is urgently needed in supposedly free societies today. Take the reporting of state-sponsored war. The oldest cliché is that truth is the first casualty of war. I disagree. Journalism is the first casualty. Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship that goes unrecognized in the United States, Britain, and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries, such as Iraq."

And the new guy, handpicked to oversee Marjah (with binoculars, I presume) and bring peace and stability?

New Afghan leader was jailed for attempted murder in Germany

"Abdul Zahir, the Afghan tribal leader chosen to bring law and order to the area cleared by the joint US and British troop surge, has previously been jailed for attempted murder.

Mr Zahir, who has been appointed as administrator for Marjah, was given a four-year sentence in Germany for stabbing his 18-year-old stepson with a kitchen knife.

He will now be in charge of bringing good government to the former Taliban stronghold targeted in Operation Moshtarak after being backed by President Hamid Karzai and US military commander General Stanley McChrystal."

Whoops. Looks like the Telegraph swallowed the "Taliban stronghold in Operation Moshtarek" organic fertilizer, too.

But the new Marjah mayor? He's - what can I say? - perfect.

Are we there yet? Turning corners with Petraeus.

Petraeus was in Ottawa yesterday, chatting to his military buddies. Don't blame me. I didn't invite him.

Really - these guys have got to get some new speechwriters.

Captions for this picture?

"David! Lovely to see you. Mwah!"

Afghan mission turning a corner, Petraeus says

“There's some minefields that you should go around rather than go through,” he quipped in response to a question on Ottawa's exit strategy.

I'm not much on military strategy here, but who in their right minds would choose to go through a minefield?

Later, speaking to reporters, he said: “Obviously, we always like to see everyone continue to pitch in.” But he added that military commanders will find ways to compensate for the loss of Canadian combat troops.

Pitch in? What is this, a barn raising or a pot-luck supper?

In the meantime, he said, the fight in southern Afghanistan will become yet tougher before the situation improves. Still, he argued that after nine years the war has turned a corner

Always darkest before the dawn, yadda, yadda. And exactly which corner would that be? The one you turned to avoid the minefield? What is this guy talking about?

“Having worked hard this past year to get the inputs right … now [the International Security Assistance Force] and its Afghan partners can start to see the progress that is possible,” he said.

Getting the inputs right is okay if you're setting up a sound system or working on a spreadsheet. I don't have the slighest idea what he's going on about here. What inputs? What makes them right? But the "we can start to see that progress is possible" is a total load of organic fertilizer.

Gen. Petraeus...[p]redicted that NATO will “regain the initiative from the insurgency” by following a counterinsurgency strategy similar to the one he followed as a commanding general in Iraq.

Yeah, that's going well.

The offensive in Helmand province to retake the town of Marjah will serve as a model for future operations in other Taliban strongholds, including Kandahar.

An aside. Once when I was traveling on a rather long plane trip from a northern location, I was sitting beside a cook from a lumber camp. Apart from a few tips on how to cook arctic char (landlocked salmon) he said that after cooking for hundreds at every meal, he was really bad at cooking for small groups. He said that recipes don't scale up or down very well, i.e. that cooking for one hundred people didn't just require multiplying a recipe for ten by ten. That's the kind of scale we're talking between Marjah and Kandahar.

Just saying.

“What we learned from Marjah was it's okay to announce that you're coming if you don't want to get into a slugfest right in the city you are trying to save,” Gen. Petraeus said. “That means some of the bad guys are going to get out the back door. That's okay, because we'll track them down. The objective is to secure the population.”

Slugfest, bad guys - sounds like comic book. Bam! Pow! Gotcha!

Ye gods.

“There's an Afghan clock, a Washington clock, an Ottawa clock and a lot of other clocks out there. … We know we've got to get on with it.”

Oh my gawd. He's added an Ottawa clock to all the other clocks.

Does anyone know what time it is?

The plan for future wars - NATO has the answer

.
I think we may be in a lot of trouble here.

Afghanistan a model for future crises: NATO

Afghanistan will serve as a prototype for future civil-military co-operation in handling crises in other weak or failing nations, says NATO's chief.

What planet is this guy living on?

A trial for David Frum - in a just world

Dr. Juan Cole, editor of the blog Informed Comment, mentioned our very own native son David Frum in his comment on February 18th.

The Decline of the Israeli Right and the Increasing Desperation of the 'Anti-Semitism' Charge

"...[F]rum, a Canadian who only became naturalized as a US citizen in 2007, was important in the early years of the Bush presidency and crafted many of the falsehoods and propaganda points that got up the Iraq War. He bears a heavy responsibility for the unnecessary deaths of over 4000 US military personnel, for the deaths of some 600,000 Iraqis, and for the displacement of nearly 4 million Iraqis. In a just world, David Frum would be on trial for his role in severe violations of international law, as would Bush, Cheney, Perle, and the rest of those bald-faced liars and warmongers."

In a just world...

David Frum's embracing U.S. citizenship might have been a clever move, as the U.S. does not recognize the ICC and would not extradite him to the Hague to be tried for war crimes.

Stephen Harper made his case for equating criticism of Israeli government policy with antisemitism back in 2008.

Harper also said, "Some of the criticism brewing in Canada against the state of Israel, including from some members of Parliament, is similar to the attitude of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned yesterday.

"I guess my fear is what I see happening in some circles is (an) anti-Israeli sentiment, really just as a thinly disguised veil for good old-fashioned anti-Semitism, which I think is completely unacceptable," Harper said in an interview with CJAD radio

This is both ignorant and dangerous.

But then, so are Stephen Harper and his policies. He puts us all in danger.

Stockwell Day, fundamentalist Christian, unquestioning Israel supporter and then Foreign Minister for Canada, signed an agreement with Israel which pretty well dragged us into defending Israel no matter what it did. He first denied then acknowledged that he had done this.

The matter came up again recently with the following pearls falling from the lips of Peter Kent, junior Foreign Affairs Minister:

Junior Foreign Affairs minister Peter Kent is suggesting Canada would rush to Israel's defence in a military confrontation, telling a Toronto publication that “an attack on Israel would be considered an attack on Canada.”

But he later declined to say whether this means that Canada would automatically declare war on an aggressor attacking Israel.

Ahem! Excuse me! Don't the rest of us get any say in this?

NATO - a multinational military dictatorship

Seems that U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates just can't get enough of war.

Gates: European aversion to war a danger to peace

Gates warned that Europe’s aversion to war was doing serious harm to assorted US military operations with NATO backing, and was therefore “an impediment” to the lasting peace he envisions those wars eventually creating.

Perhaps it's the memory of two world wars that devastated their countries in the last century that makes Europeans a little wary of militarization and armed conflict. Do you think?

The late British WW1 veteran and later peace activist Harry Patch from Britain didn't find any glory in it.

"Too many died. War isn’t worth one life,” and [he] said war was the “calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings".

WW1 set the stage for WW2. Every war sets the conditions for the next. If you want peace, another war isn't the way to get there. It wastes lives, it destroys families, it squanders resources and destroys economies.

If you're an arms dealer or munitions manufacturer, though, it's definitely the way to go.

An interviewer spoke to a young German woman during a recent antiwar demonstration. The citizens of Germany, like those in all the other countries involved in the Afghanistan mess, want it stopped now. She said that the German constitution prohibits the use of armed forces in war unless the country is attacked from outside. It also prohibits the use of its armed forces against its own citizens. But it seems that the almighty NATO can simply demolish national laws. This makes it effectively a multinational military dictatorship.

Even the Iraqi vice president warned that increased militarization of a society is setting the stage for a military coup.

Too bad our jonesing-for-war government "leaders" still don't get it.

McChrystal needs an equine proctologist: Fred Reed

Lordy, lordy. Some words should be written in letters twelve feet high and put on display for all to see.

Fred Reed and his Thoughts on an Interview with General Stanley McChrystal

Yes, [McChrystal]thought, we really should stop killing so many civilians, but we would stop. We were going to help the Afghans, as soon as we finished killing most of them. (He didn’t say the part about killing most of them but seems to be working on it.) We would win their hearts and minds by beneficent and salubrious bombing. (OK, he didn’t say that either. It seems to be what he thinks.)

Gret Gawd, I reflected not too charitably, if this guy ever gets sick, he’ll need an equine proctologist."

And as the numbers of dead soldiers and Afghans skyrocket - the last 27 civilians killed in a bus convoy was a Special Ops operation and they were WRONG - Fred Reed makes the following suggestion:

Now, if America wants to kill its own soldiers, that is America’s business. It is a matter of national sovereignty with which no other country should have the right to interfere. McChrystal could maybe hold a private war somewhere in the southwestern deserts. You know, McCrystal vs. David Petraeus, with two divisions each, twelve rounds or knockout, no holds barred, but they have to buy their own weapons.

But leave others out of it.

Amen to that.

They lied about the rocket "veering off course"

So they lied about the death of Afghanistan civilians.

Looks like that errant rocket that "veered off course" and killed fifteen Afghan civilians a few days ago didn't "veer" anywhere. It went exactly where it was supposed to go. Civilians didn't really matter to these guys. They either didn't know or didn't care.

Odds on that it was both.

From Wired.com:

Deadly Afghanistan Rocket Attack Actually Hit Its Target (Updated)

When a pair of rockets killed 10 or more civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday, the military initially said that the weapons had veered away from its intended target by a thousand feet or more. But a spokesman for the American-led coalition now tells Danger Room that the weapons from the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) actually hit their intended target. Troops were unaware that there were civilians were inside.

And the sweet voice of reason, Malalai Joya, called McChrystal's Afghanistan strategy "ridiculous".

Dear heavens, will someone please listen to her?

From the Independent:

Joya condemns 'ridiculous' military strategy

"It is ridiculous," said Malalai Joya, an elected member of the Afghan parliament. "On the one hand they call on Mullah Omar to join the puppet regime. On another hand they launch this attack in which defenceless and poor people will be the prime victims. Like before, they will be killed in the Nato bombings and used as human shields by the Taliban.

Joya spoke to Allan Gregg on TVO not long ago. I think he was a little taken aback by her intensity and her bordering on despair while her people were massacred and her country destroyed. This is one amazing woman.

No wonder Stephen Harper wouldn't speak to her. She would have wiped the floor with him.

Malalai Joya in conversation with Allan Gregg on TVO

Blame the other guy

More civilians were killed in another "success" for McChrystal's brilliant strategy to "win" the war in Afghanistan, whatever that might mean.

NATO's novel battle tactic spawns opposite effects

Not content with merely screwing up, McChrystal weeps buckets of crocodile tears and then - ta DAH! - blames the other guys. What a prince.

"On Sunday, two International Security Assistance Force rockets hit just such a home, killing 12 civilians and sparking an outcry. The rockets had been aimed at a group of Taliban fighters engaged in a gun battle with coalition forces 300 metres away."

"...[W]e deeply regret this tragic loss of life,” U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, ISAF's top commander, said in a statement apologizing to Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“It's regrettable that in the cause of our joint efforts, innocent lives were lost.”

How to know you're on the wrong track

From Antiwar.com and Australia's Sydney Morning Herald:

Cheney 'a complete supporter' of Obama Afghan effort

Time to go.

With friends like Cheney, who needs enemies?

Willing groupie

If you've eaten recently, don't look at the photo-shopped picture of Christie Blatchford in a recent article by Scott Taylor about reporters/columnists acting as groupies for the powers-that-be.

Christie Blatchford, willing groupie

She swallowed the bait whole and coughed it up again when she repeated lies about Richard Colvin's experience "outside the wire" in Afghanistan.

That picture, though - arghhhh, my eyes, my eyes!

Christie Blatchford's pieces in the G&M while she was an "embedded" reporter (what a choice of words that is) were embarrassing to read. It was like watching a young girl besotted with somebody really unsuitable who didn't care much about her but really, really wanted to drive her daddy's car.

Mr. Colvin was concerned that Canadian soldiers could be implicated in war crimes, as the Geneva conventions prohibit handing over prisoners who could be subsequently tortured. It seems like the leadership, both military and Con government, weren't really concerned. If something happened, they could blame the guys on the ground.

I'm so sick of hearing Harper's constant drivel about how everything - everything - is always someone else's fault.

Firing or dissing competent civil servants is what he does, though. Nuclear watchdogs, elections officials, military tribunals overseers - if you protect the citizens, and not the Cons, you're toast.