What Ottawa doesn't want you to know

What Ottawa doesn't want you to know

www.theglobeandmail.com

Government was told detainees faced 'extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial'

The Harper government knew from its own officials that prisoners held by Afghan security forces faced the possibility of torture, abuse and extrajudicial killing, The Globe and Mail has learned.

But the government has eradicated every single reference to torture and abuse in prison from a heavily blacked-out version of a report prepared by Canadian diplomats in Kabul an

(visit the link for the full news article)


Related News Links:
www.theglobeandmail.com
www.theglobeandmail.com

Is there an echo in here? This seems to be a theme being played out where it's OK to detain and torture as long as it's not OUR people getting the treatment.

The fact of the attempted coverup by Canadian officials is disturbing.

www.theglobeandmail.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

I watched Question Period (Canadian Federal Opera) with particular interest today. To say it was loud and fractuous is putting things mildly.

O'Connor grilled on detainees, secret report

Link


Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor denied allegations of a government conspiracy as he was grilled Wednesday by a parliamentary committee on the treatment of Afghan detainees and the publication of heavily edited internal documents on Afghanistan's troubling human rights situation.

“There's no grand conspiracy,” Mr. O'Connor told the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development when questioned about a report published in The Globe and Mail which says that the Canadian embassy in Kabul warned the Conservative government last year about allegations of torture within Afghanistan's justice system.

The government initially denied the report existed. When it was finally released under access to information, several damning portions were blacked out but obtained independently by the Globe.

There seems to be a deflection going on. The governments' position is that this report paints the Canadian Army in a bad light, but the truth of the matter is that the policies regarding the POW handover are written by politicians.

I certainly DO NOT blame the Canadian service men and women who are doing the best they can with the tools they are provided with.

Thanks for the info masqua. I'll wager there have been many views of this thread but the lack of participation is due to the fact that there's no "shock and awe" of this Harper gov't walking goosestep with the Bush Admin. Hell, I'd wager he keeps Bush's "How to Ruin a Country in 10 Easy Steps" on his bed table. He's certainly playing the part well.

The only smart one in all this and were ostrasized in the beginning for it is France. They used their heads not ffalling for the lies Bush and Blair were putting out. I bet they knew what was going on and didn't want to get involved.


All these governments involved in this "coalition of the willing" have all colluded together in cover-ups against their citizenry. This mistaken war will be a blemish on our history.


Pie

I'm shocked... not.

I can't believe they voted down the motion to withdraw Canadian troops from Afghanistan at the end of our current commitment in February 2009. That's two years away but they are saying we'll be there longer?

See if you've heard this one before:

New York Times

Mr. Harper has thus far rejected those demands, saying he does not want to put a fixed date on the end of Canada’s role in the mission.

I'm sure that's playing well down south.

Tensions surrounding the vote on Tuesday were heightened by allegations surfacing this week in The Globe and Mail that Afghans detained by Canadian troops were mistreated after being transferred to Afghan custody. The newspaper reported that interviews with Afghans revealed instances of abuse, like being whipped with electrical cables.

Canada has no problem turning over prisoners to someone else for toture all the while maintaining it's holier-than-thou attitude. Just ask Maher Arar about that.

Why isn't this minority government in trouble?

It's all you heard about when it was Martin's turn, now the press seems quiet on the issue of how long the government will last.

Are Izzy Asper and Hollinger that influential?
.

The whole plan was for it to sell well down south, but it's killing the Harper Guv'mint.

link
Support for Harper's Tories fades on Kyoto, Afghanistan: Poll

The new poll finds that the Conservatives are the choice of 36 per cent of the electorate, down three percentage points from last month, while the Liberals are at 30 per cent, down one point. NDP support remained stable at 13 per cent, while backing for the Bloc Quebecois in Quebec rose six points to 39. The Greens are up a substantial seven percentage points from the election, when they attracted five per cent of the electorate.

_snip_

Meanwhile, another poll released yesterday found the Conservatives sagging even further. The survey from Decima Research showed the Tories a bare one-percentage point ahead of the Liberals, 30-29.

This is killing the Tory lead. I doubt we'll see a spring election and a Tory majority anytime soon.

BTW and off-topic... check out the Greens!

Gools - the Liberal motion to confirm the 02/2009 withdrawal was defeated partly because the Dippers voted against it - they want the troops home NOW (2009 is too long for them).

One thing to remember in all of this is that it was Liberal legislation which cut all Canadian Forces contact with those turned over to the Afghan authorities.

It is now the Liberals who are screaming that the Tories knew about the torture and mistreatment.

But, imo, BOTH political parties are guilty of neglect.

Just thought I'd throw that in. Will look for a link.

Another bump in the road for the Harper government. The first instance of abuse surfaces to prick to conservative bubble of denial.

link

Col. Steve Noonan, a former task force commander in Afghanistan, disclosed the incident in a sworn affidavit filed with the court as part of the governments response to a legal challenge by Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association to stop all further transfers of detainees by the Canadian military to the Afghan government.

Noonans disclosure comes after repeated denials by the Conservative government that it had no specific examples that any detainee transferred by Canadian troops to Afghan authorities was later subject to abuse or torture. The detainee issue has mushroomed into a major political problem for Prime Minister Stephen Harper and several of his Conservative cabinet ministers.

Harper continued Thursday to dismiss allegations of prisoner abuse and blamed his political opponents for making it an issue.

Well its a sad state of affairs.
#1 the war is based on a fakeout.
#2 the absurd idea that this would not be a common scenenario has no idea of the human condition.
#3 so what the F are we fighting for? They are not at a level of police and jails and judicial system to cope with the demands of western code of conduct, and I say that with some sarscasm.
So were there to fight for freedom that is not set up judicially or socially or religiously as I shall point out.

#4 I remember last year when a exmuslim turned christian was in hiding as they were gonna kill him for changing relgions...again I ask what are we there for?
#5 you cannot bring democracry to anyone...it happens at the grassroots level. You can go in to stop atrocoties like Hilter, say we go into Dafor and do that, that would be benificial...but the war on terror fakeout, bring democarcy fallicy is not ever gonna work...and no war like that can be won.



[edit on 4-5-2007 by junglelord]

its always bothered me that there might be coursion at the office of the PM right now...let me explain
when PM Paul Martin was in office we did not go to war in Iraq

the USA Looked down on us made statements like your either with us or with the terrorist....

well I beg to differ as my first post here pointed out.
here is that link

Bill Moyers has put together an amazing 90-minute video documenting the lies that the Bush administration told to sell the Iraq War to the American public, with a special focus on how the media led the charge. I've watched an advance copy and read a transcript, and the most important thing I can say about it is: Watch PBS from 9 to 10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, April 25. Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you'll never watch television news again – not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.

While a great many pundits, not to mention presidents, look remarkably stupid or dishonest in the four-year-old clips included in "Buying the War," it's hard to take any spiteful pleasure in holding them to account, and not just because the killing and dying they facilitated is ongoing, but also because of what this video reveals about the mindset of members of the DC media. Moyers interviews media personalities, including Dan Rather, who clearly both understand what the media did wrong and are unable to really see it as having been wrong or avoidable.
www.afterdowningstreet.org...

what I see is a PM who is thinking for himself.

Then PM Steven Harper took office and then attended the Bilderberg meeting in Ottawa that year and now we don't know when we will pull out of Afgan and now he has shown that he has hidden facts of prisioner abuse that so shocked the Canadian military personal that they demanded the prisioner back. This story was related to him by a General I believe.

He knew of significant abuse and he must realize that human nature and the lack of judicial or social or religious framework to ensure that human rights would be observed in afgan would lead one to wonder what is he thinking
how could we possiblly give any prisioners to the Afgan police.
I for one am not that naieve....

Removed by author. Perhaps I'll bring this up again another day.

[edit on 5/4/2007 by centurion1211]

Come on Centurion you are more than welcome to comment on Canadian Affairs and Problems, like I said before The terms and conditions DO NOT say that if you are not from the country that the thread is related to, you don't have a say on it.

Back on Topic I never trusted Harper, he seems to be very war happy not only because of US interests but to end up in good terms with Britains as well.

again I ask what are we there for?

Good question here's your answer.

Drug Business is Big

I never thought the truth could be so nasty, but yes it seems we're there
to protect the crop.

As soon as I saw Harper at Bilderberg I knew he was no good

Harper is more concerned with pleasing the US government than his own.

He was more than happy to put Canada in the war.... any war. His agenda seems to include staying on the good side of Bush.

Did we ever resolve the 'soft wood money', last I heard they had reached an agreement but didn't hear anymore on it.

May 10, 2007 at 5:28 PM EDT

Conservative members of the House of Commons ethics committee spent five hours Thursday trying to block an investigation related to the Afghan detainee controversy.

Opposition parties proposed to conduct a probe into whether Foreign Affairs deliberately tried to withhold a scathing human-rights report that says torture and abuse in Afghan prisons is commonplace.

Link

Things are getting hot on 'The Hill'.

What's next, forcible confinement for anyone questioning authorities?

The line " If you're not with us, you're against us" seems to be echoing across all of North America these days.