The revised agreement

You can find it here. It supplements the original agreement of 2005, found here (pdf).

What does it mean?

Well, most of it is self-explanatory, filling in perceived gaps in the language of its precursor. Some of those gaps weren't highlighted by the human-rights brigade, but rather by the Canadian Forces:

3. ...The Government of Canada will be notified prior to the initiation of proceedings involving persons transferred by the Canadian Forces and prior to the release of the detainee. [Babbler's emphasis]

If a captured Taliban leader or warlord is going to bribe or bully his way out of custody, we want to know about it.

But one clause I found particularly interesting:

11. The Government of Afghanistan and the Government of Canada will cooperate closely to maximize capacity building activities directed towards improving the Afghanistan corrections and justice systems.

I say that leaves the door open to operating a joint detention facility with the Afghans.

While this revised agreement represents a significant improvement over the 2005 version, it's still just words on a page, as critics note. Alex Neve and his single-issue adherents are picking at it already:

"Monitoring isn't the solution. It's a positive step forward compared to the former deal, but that's not the end point when torture is as rampant and systematic as it is in Afghanistan," Amnesty spokesman Alex Neve told news agency Associated Press.

"No amount of monitoring will prevent something that is a secret, insidious practice that can inflict devastating harm and damage on prisoners in a few minutes," he said.

We haven't heard the last of this one.