More spinning than a figure skating competition

The "detainee abuse" story is getting a pile of press these days. And like it or not, a lot of what you're seeing reported in the press is seriously spun.

Let's start with the good professor of law who sparked this whole shitstorm in the first place: Amir Attaran. I watched this fellow speak on CPAC last night, and like any good lawyer, he tried to appear the concerned but reasonable advocate for those without a voice: the detainees in Afghanistan. It was enough to bring a tear to a glass eye.

The problem is that when you peel back the thin veneer of his purported respect for the CF, Attaran's agenda positively leaps out. While he mouthed fine words to the effect that he doesn't oppose the mission and hopes the allegations prove untrue, he went on to say that the CF investigations - both the CF National Investigation Service (NIS) criminal investigation, and the Board of Inquiry (BOI) administrative investigation - were "worthless" and "of no value to me." He reiterates the point here:

Amir Attaran, the University of Ottawa law professor whose digging through detainee-transfer documents uncovered a pattern of suspicious injuries on three detainees captured last April near Dukah, Afghanistan, said he doubted the military could properly investigate itself.

"In light of what happened a decade ago in Somalia, I very much doubt that [the military] should investigate internally," he said.

Nice little drive-by smear, that. Not only does he raise the spectre of the rogue Airborne troops beating a Somali to death - an event that irrevocably changed the CF and the way troops deal with detainees - but he also suggests that the military shouldn't investigate itself. Of course, if the military didn't investigate itself, he'd be castigating them for complacency.

Oh, wait. He already did that:

The possible mistreatment first came to light in military documents that Amir Attaran, a law professor at the University of Ottawa, says he obtained under access to information legislation.

"It is inexcusable that they have not investigated," Attaran said. "This is not right."

Attaran needs to pick a position here; he can't play 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' with this issue.

But let's step beyond his inconsistencies for a moment and look at the underlying issue at the core of this lawyer's problem with the Canadian Forces. For Attaran, the idea that Canadian soldiers might have roughed up Taliban detainees is tangential to his real beef, which is this: Canadian policy states that detainees in Afghanistan will be handed over to the Afghan government, who don't always play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.

Let me be perfectly clear: I believe that Attaran's entire motivation in pushing this story into the press was to get the CF on the ropes so he could hammer them over detainee transfer policy. That was the impetus for his initial Access to Information requests. I doubt that he particularly cares that the reputation of the CF is being unceremoniously dragged through the mud in order to facilitate his attack on a Government of Canada policy implemented by the CF. I don't know that it would even occur to him that he doesn't really want the military picking and choosing which government directives it will or will not follow.

What all this means is that even if the abuse by Canadian soldiers story is still-born after the investigations conclude there was no wrongdoing by CF members, he can still push the 'but you're turning prisoners over to known torturers' angle and keep the story above the fold on page one of the newspapers. It's a classic 'bait and switch': hook the public on the idea of soldiers abusing detainees, and even if that's proven false, feed them the completely separate issue of detainee transfers to the Afghan government.

Look at Attaran's remarks in today's Ottawa Sun:

An Ottawa professor is calling for the resignations of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and the Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier for what he says is their failure to address possible abuse of detainees by Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa law professor, said O'Connor and Hillier should resign over Canada's "routine practice of handing over prisoners to known torturers."

"It has long been my concern that Canada is acting disgracefully in transferring detainees to Afghanistan when we know the Afghan national police torture," he said.

See how the Sun reporters got it wrong? Attaran's not calling on O'Connor and Hillier to resign over the abuse allegations, he's calling on them to resign for the "routine practice of handing prisoners over to known torturers." Even though the agreement is Canadian government policy, not Hillier's policy. It simply serves Attaran's purposes to conflate the two issues, since that gets him face-time on the newscasts and column space in the newspapers.

Unsurprisingly, the media is more than happy to accommodate him, since it develops the controversy that the MSM thrives upon. Paul Koring is the lead scribe on this story, and you can bet your bottom dollar that he's thrilled to see his work above the fold on page one of the Globe and Mail for two days running now. In fact, I'd guess that even if there's nothing really new to report on the story, you'll see him milking any angle he can, no matter how lame or contrived, with every ounce of persistence and doggedness he can muster. You see, page one above the fold is the lead-dog position for an ink-stained wretch, and they'll fight to maintain that position like that lead-dog would for a bone or scrap of meat. Manufacturing controversy sells, and journalistic ambition outweighs any considerations of such outdated ideals as truth or fairness in reporting.

I sincerely doubt that Koring cares even a little that he's splattered shit all over the uniforms of every Canadian Forces member serving in Afghanistan, just to put the "working hypothesis" - Attaran's words, not mine - of an Ottawa lawyer on to the front page of his newspaper. You want 'innocent until proven guilty'? Find yourself a judge; the journos just don't care.

Much as I hate to say it, the DND response has actually helped its attackers. First of all, according Attaran, he contacted the MND's office six months ago to discuss this with Gordon O'Connor, and was rebuffed. Apparently the minister has been too busy to meet with the professor; not an hour of free time since August of last year. If that's true, it would be just about the worst course of action O'Connor and his staff could possibly have taken.

The CF has been on its heels throughout this entire process. Why wasn't the initial incident investigated? Why is there documentation missing from the files obtained by Attaran through the ATI? More importantly from a communications standpoint, why did the CF wait until a newspaper broke a sensationalist story on this issue before addressing it with internal investigations by the NIS and a BOI? Whatever happened to taking the initiative?

A press conference a couple of weeks ago when the CF first realized a reporter was sniffing around would have taken the wind right out of the entire fabricated media tempest. Pre-empt the story by announcing it first and laying out what you're going to do to look into the allegations. Don't wait for the fight to come to you. How the military consistently fails to apply basic fighting principles to their information battle never ceases to amaze and disappoint me.

And with their twin investigations and the overzealous gag orders pertaining to this story, the brass have actually abandoned the public relations field to Attaran and the press. Because while DND personnel are proscribed from commenting on the substance of the allegations because of the investigations, the press and the CF's critics are under no such restrictions. Mark my words, the Canadian Forces are going to take a worse public opinion beating than they should for at least the next few weeks, simply because they refuse to fight back.

Here's my bottom line on all this. Firstly, if a Canadian Forces member disregarded his training in the Laws of Armed Conflict or CF doctrine on the handling of detainees, then the CF should throw the book at him hard enough to punch holes in his tac-vest. You break the rules, you pay the price. That goes for anyone in the chain of command who knew about it and suppressed the information as well. The Canadian military has never been shy about imposing consequences for poor decision-making by uniformed members, and it shouldn't start getting wobbly now.

Secondly, senior leadership in the CF should allow the troops to say in public: "We didn't do anything wrong." Just like any other matter, though, soldiers need to stay in their lanes on this and confine their remarks to their own experience and expertise: "My unit was out there for two months straight and we handled detainees by the book. Here's how we do it at my level. You'll have to talk to the MP's about what they do once we hand them over to those guys." But to slam the hurricane shutters closed, hunker down, and hope this blows over is a mistake. After Somalia, the CF worked too long and hard to regain a reputation for professionalism in the treatment of detainees to allow that reputation to be sullied by unsubstantiated accusations in the press. And even if the allegations are proven to be true, the overwhelmingly vast majority of soldiers deployed to Southwest Asia don't deserve to be tarred with such an indiscriminate brush. Defend them, at the very least.

Thirdly, the CF needs to do a full-court press to inform the public by any means possible of what their stated policies and procedures actually are, and how well they're being carried out in the vast majority of cases. Talk about the training, the rules surrounding the use of force, what the troops know they can't do, the medical examinations and treatment, the use of 'humane' cuffs for heaven's sake. Talk about the International Red Cross' statement that the Canadian Forces is "scrupulous" about following the rules pertaining to detainees in Afghanistan. Talk about the fact that embedded media have actually applauded the CF's treatment of detainees. In short, inform the Canadian public of exactly what you're doing right, and furthermore, that you're doing it right at least 99% of the time.

Lastly, someone with a lot more clout than me needs to call Attaran on his Trojan horse approach to the detainee transfer issue, and call the press on their deliberate and cynical attempt to tie the two separate issues together in order to give the story more clout. I'd love to see Hillier or O'Connor stand up in front of the cameras, look directly into Joe and Jane Canuck's living room through the magic of the evening news, and say to them: "If Professor Attaran and his supporters in the press corps have a problem with government policy on detainee transfers to the Afghan government - and that's their real issue here, make no mistake - they should just come out and say so. But sullying the reputation of thousands of dedicated and professional Canadian soldiers just to get the public's attention is a cheap and disgraceful stunt. They've set this up so that no matter how we respond, it's not enough. Well, I say we're doing good work in Afghanistan, and we'll continue to do it despite these distractions."

As it stands now, this story is being spun faster than a dance-party turntable. It's time for a little clarity and perspective. And it's long past time now to call the spin for what it is: various personal agendas converging at a single point of attack.

Update: In support of my assertion that Attaran is simply using the accusation of abuse by Canadian troops as an excuse to push his pet issue of detainee transfer policy into the limelight, I would point you to this backgrounder (shamelessly lifted from the comments section at SDA):

On March 24th 2006, Attaran spoke at a conference hosted by the University of Ottawa which was called Canadian Legal Response to Torture. Ottawa University has a page on their website dedicated to the conference:

(Attaran) suspects that Canada contravenes to the Geneva Conventions because its military would be legally implicated in the treatment that transferred prisoners will receive.

“I think it’s unethical and in the view of the law, I think it’s illegal,” he said about the accord.

This one-note symphony of a professor found that nobody was listening to his complaints. So he figured out a way to make everybody listen. And woe to the majority of upstanding Canadian soldiers who happen to get in the way of his single-minded agenda.

It's days like this that I really hope what goes around truly does come around eventually.