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. "

Bring it on

Neil Kitson, doctor, educator and anti-war activist is keeping an eye on Canada's freaking government and its activities in Afghanistan.

Neil's blog, Canadians in Afghanistan gives you an idea what this guy is all about.

Re the Harper government's refusal to hand over papers on detainee abuse in Afghanistan, here's a quote from an article posted on Antiwar.com today, Canada’s ‘Whole Freaking Government’ Approach in Afghanistan

"One of the reasons for the flagrant obstruction of justice by the current government in Ottawa might be that if the truth comes out in Canada, the truth will also come out about NATO, a lot of famous people might end up on trial at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, or even better, Québec Superior Court, which conducted a successful investigation and prosecution regarding war crimes in Rwanda (R.C. Munyaneza, 2009 QCCS 2201) using the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act of 2000 [.pdf] and subsequent case law, and the world might never be the same."

Bring it on.

Dr. Kitson, I second that emotion. (Thanks, Smokey.)

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.

Shoot the messenger

Jeffrey Simpson's take on the blustering, posturing and deliberate avoidance of the torture of Afghan detainees after they were handed over to local authorities.

And the Conservative spin machine spins on …

Richard Colvin, according to sources from all over the place, was a diplomat's diplomat. He volunteered for the provincial reconstruction team in Kandahar after a colleague of his, Canadian diplomat Glyn Berry, was killed and three Canadian soldiers wounded when their convoy was blown up in January 2006. Colvin sent communications to everyone he could think of that detainees transferred by soldiers to Afghan authorities were being tortured.

Politicians, DoD, everyone said they never heard anything about it.

If you believe that, I have some nice waterfront property in Florida I'd like to sell you ...

Now he's in the intelligence division of the Canadian Embassy in Washington, DC. Most of his colleagues know little about him, as is the way with "spooks". The floor he works on is severely restricted. If anybody knows anything about what was and is going on there, it would be this guy. To be a whistleblower is a dangerous thing for a man in his position.

So the neo-Conservative members of parliament are trying to discredit him. Peter McKay, defence minister, complete with little "yellow ribbon" lapel jewelery, says that Colvin is trying to smear "the troops", which is bound to get tempers riled. They know this, but anyone with a few functioning brain cells knows that's not what this is all about.

According to the Geneva Conventions, to which Canada is a signatory the last time I looked, the soldiers could be complicit it war crimes if they had handed over prisoners who were subsequently tortured.

I doubt whether the front line soldiers knew anything at all about the conditions inside Afghan prisons. But their superiors in both the military and government did - for years - and therein lies the rub.

Former chief of defense staff Rick Hillier blusters on, of course, but at the time he blustered about not being there to "babysit" Afghans. The army's job was to kill "scumbags". Nice.

Problem was that most of the people swept up and handed over were not combatants by any description. They were bakers, truck drivers, farmers, people who just happened to be "in the wrong place at the wrong time" according to Colvin. If Canada couldn't secure its own prisoners or ensure their safety when handed over to someone else, they shouldn't have taken any. They should have been released. There are fears that some jurisdictions just killed people rather than take them prisoner. Now, that is a war crime.

While questions were being asked in Parliament yesterday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (who says he doesn't "do" Monday question periods) was across the street accepting a honorary jersey from the Canadian lacrosse team. Let's get the important stuff right, eh, Stevie?

My loathing for the man just deepens.

Canadian soldiers dying for Karzai and Mullah Omar

Using our soldiers as pawns in new Afghan game

Thomas Walkom at the Toronto Star

Karzai is playing a carrot and stick game. The carrot is a place for the Taliban in the Afghan government. The stick is using Canadians and others to kill them (and be killed by them) if they don't go along with it.

The carrot Karzai is offering his adversaries, including Taliban leader Mullah Omar, is a major role in the country's government. Canada and other NATO countries willing to have their soldiers die for the Afghan regime constitute the stick.

Somehow, Canadians dying for the Afghan regime doesn't really have a very good ring to it, does it?

...His problem, however, is that Canadians – even those who now support the war – may not be willing to have their soldiers used as pawns in this new great game.

I never was, and I'm not now.

We have been given many reasons for going to war.

Sometimes, the federal government says we want to ensure that Afghan girls can go to school. Sometimes, it says the aim is to defeat the Taliban so as to prevent Afghanistan from becoming a terrorist base. At yet other times, we are told we are fighting to avenge the 9/11 attacks.

They use whatever they think might work at the time.

Chief of defence staff Gen. Rick Hillier says the aim is to kill the "scumbags."

Always a classy guy, Hillier. Nice to know he's the face of the Canadian military around the world. Makes me proud. (Sarcasm dripping from every word.)

All of these reasons are simple and powerful.

And powerful to the simple. Unfortunately, they're lies.

The argument that we are fighting the Taliban abroad so that we don't have to fight them in downtown Toronto may be wrong. But it has resonance.

However, when the rationale for war is simply to buttress the negotiating position of an obscure foreign leader, will Canadians be as amenable?

...I applaud Karzai for his attempts to end Afghanistan's nightmare through negotiation. Ultimately, a political solution is the only way out.

But at the same time, I wonder how the parents and husbands and wives and girlfriends and boyfriends of Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan will feel if he succeeds – if Mullah Omar becomes Karzai's prime minister; if, as part of a coalition deal, more severe forms of sharia law are imposed on women; if the very few gains Afghanistan has made in the field of human rights are reversed.

Won't they wonder if the whole thing was a waste of time? Won't they suspect their lovers and sons and daughters died for nothing?

Yup.

And they'd be right.

There were more protesters at the SPP meeting

Red Friday Rally in support of Canadian troops attracts 1,000 to the CNE

Even with a captive audience at the CNE, there were only 1,000 at the rally. I guess that just means Canadians don't respond to jingoistic propaganda.

There were even words of "wisdom" from the Rick Hillier.

Among the dignitaries in attendance was Canada's Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier, who delighted the crowd before his speech when he removed the top of his camouflage suit to reveal a bright red T-shirt underneath.

“From the soldiers' perspective, we do not believe a group of people who will whip women for wearing heels that click on pavement should be allowed to reassume control of their country and the lives of those people in it,” Gen. Hillier said in an interview.

They even put two of the badly injured soldiers on stage. What an awful thing to do. It might have inspired pity, horror or sorrow, but it won't stir up any support for the war. And we all know that this is what it's all about. There was never an question of support for the military in Canada. We hired them and we'll take care of them, but we don't support sending them somewhere where they don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning, even if we knew exactly what form "winning" would take.

I wonder if Stephen Harper turned his nose up at the spectacle and called it "...sad".

Sell a war that nobody wants and try not to kill so many civilians

Since the Harperites haven't been very successful in convincing Canadians that the Neverending War in Afghanistan is a good thing, they're letting the loudmouthed Rick Hillier do it for them.

Great strategy!

From Harper Index - Hillier, Rick - brassy top soldier does what government can't

Chief of staff used as booster and stalking horse for government military policies

In selling the war in Afghanistan to Canadians, Hillier is merely "doing what the government has failed to do," according to historian and McGill University Professor Emeritus Desmond Morton. "I don't think the Tories have to give him a car or promises of a Senate seat," says Morton. "He enjoys doing it."

He is critical of Stephen Harper's June announcement of the planned purchase of naval patrol vessels..."They have promised to build little ships, but they haven't promised to build icebreakers, just cheap little ones. Their procurement strategies are not based on any kind of cold rational strategic analysis. Why would you want boats in the Arctic that can't get through the ice?"

Morton disagrees, as well, with purchases such as four Boeing C-17 military transport aircraft, at a cost of $3.4 billion. "Normally you don't own these aircraft, you rent them," at a cost of a few million per trip as opposed to "several million per minute," in the case of ownership. A hangar alone for these giant aircraft will cost $800 million, says Morton. Owning these aircraft "is like keeping a transport truck in your back yard," for use when you move. Purchases like these may keep top commanders like Hillier onside with the government.

Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, NATO is trying not to kill so many civilians.

From the Australian Sun Herald:

NATO will use smaller bombs in its campaign against Islamist Taliban rebels in Afghanistan to try to limit rising civilian casualties, the alliance's chief says.

Brilliant!

The big Afghanistan cover-up

Rick Hillier has said he will no longer release any information about Afghan prisoners taken by Canadian soldiers. Previous released information showed that everything wasn't all sweetness and light for Afghan prisoners captured and held in their own country by armed forces of invading countries.

Hillier says that this is to protect Canadian soldiers. This, of course, is a gigantic pile of garbage.

To keep whatever little support for this "mission" there still is, it is necessary to keep the truth from Canadians.

Where are dignified, compassionate soldiers like John de Chastelain and Roméo Dallaire when you need them? How did we end up with this as the head of our armed forces?

War is auto-cannibalism

General Rick Hillier, who, the last time I looked, was the Chief of Defense Staff, has now started putting his two cents in on economic policy.

Balancing trade with U.S. a challenge: Hillier

...[G]en. Rick Hillier spoke to the Economic Club of Toronto today on Canada's continuing mission in Afghanistan, and highlighted the important role the economy plays in supporting a war effort.

What a glorious future - working to support war. Take your profits and pour them into munitions, tanks, weapons of mass destruction. It's like auto-cannibalism. Your appetites will eventually kill you.

But some guys will get really, really rich. And you can bet whatever part of your body you like that none of these guys or their heirs will ever set foot in war zone. After all, they're dangerous. A guy could get killed!