"Richard Colvin's story of widespread torture and indifference is unravelling"
That according to Brian Lilley, Ottawa Bureau Chief for radio stations Newstalk 1010 in Toronto and CJAD 800 in Montreal (links in original):
Leaks abound on the issue of torture in Afghanistan. Those supporting and those opposing the claims of Richard Colvin are trying hard to make sure that Canadian journalists have access to the documents at the centre of the controversy.Read the whole piece. Earlier:
The Globe and Mail columnist and Newstalk 1010 commentator Christie Blatchford has her hands on redacted copies of Richard Colvin's emails and finds his evidence wanting.
As you read Blatchford's two columns, one Saturday and one Monday, it is important to remember what Colvin's allegation was in his testimony to the special Commons committee on the Afghan mission. "According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," Colvin told MPs. "For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure."
Blatchford's run down of the memos in today's column and the words of retired General Michel Gauthier testifying before that same committee tell a different story...
Matthew Fisher, of Canwest News Service, details comments from Eloi Fillion, deputy director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, showing the organization is upset with the man opposition parties believe is a whistleblower...
Richard Colvin and Afghan detainees/Update: Six of his (redacted) memosUpdate: Why certain commentators in the major media, with a certain cachet, need to be read very closely. Scott Taylor:
...Colvin served in Kandahar for 17 months [emphasis added] in 2006 and 2007...But in Mr Colvin's own words:
...
I spent 17 months in Afghanistan. First as a senior DFAIT representative of the provincial reconstruction team, or PRT in Kandahar, and then for over a year at the Canadian Embassy in Kabul [emphasis added, facts dear boy, facts] as the head of a political section and chargé d'affaires -that is, the acting ambassador [which does not in reality mean very much as such]...
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 4:12 p.m.
5 Comments:
As this opposition party gong show falls apart, as this despicable drive by smear campaign blows u in their faces, never forget the Liberals and Bob Rae in particular have been the driving force and they have been doing it for cheap, tawdry political gain.
A disgusting episode. Our Lame Street media, the Liberals and especially Bob Rae should be ashamed of themselves
As this manufactured Liberal/media hysteria fades away, remember these people always remember the real heroes of Canada.
http://icasualties.org/OEF/Nationality.aspx?hndQry=Canada
Blarchford doesn't seem very credible, she does not appear to have all of Colvin's memos, so she cannot dismiss them all.
http://contrarian.ca/2009/11/29/blatchford-makes-herself-useful/
All those criticizing Blatch as a CPC stooge need to reread her piece:
"The only real clue in the 30-item e-mail and report trail to Mr. Colvin's increasing urgency is that – after The Globe series – his impatient pleas for swift change and better prisoner monitoring won him no friends in the Ottawa bureaucracy. In these demands, he was proven right, and in his anger about being muzzled by a hyper-secret government, which he made most strongly in an end-of-assignment report he never sent his superiors, he was hardly alone."
Christie isn't defending the party in power. She's defending the soldiers who were doing their jobs and doing them well. Because despite his protestations to the contrary, some of Colvin's assertions cast them unfairly in a poor light. And those in uniform can't defend themselves in this sort of a domestic political fight.
Hogwash. Colvin testified:
"...The focus of our attention, in my view, should not be on those who obeyed their chain of command, which soldiers are obliged to do. Instead, any responsibility for Canada's practices toward detainees lies, in my view, with the senior military officers, senior civilian officials, and the lawyers who developed the legal framework, designed the policies and practices, and then ordered that they be implemented..."
http://creekside1.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-reckon-weve-had-just-about-enough-of.html
It's Harper, MacKauy and Baird who smear the troops by pretending someone is accusing them. Because Harper, MacKay and Baird are asscovering cowards.
The leadership are soldiers too. Colvin seems to have forgotten that:
"To recap, Canada took far more detainees than the British and Dutch, and unlike our NATO allies, we conducted no monitoring. Instead of hours, we took days, weeks or months to notify the Red Cross, which meant nobody else could monitor. We kept hopeless records and apparently to prevent any scrutiny, the Canadian Forces leadership concealed all this behind walls of secrecy."
That is to say that Colvin thinks Canadian soldiers were detaining Afghans unnecessarily, setting up a purposefully byzantine reporting system, engaging in gross negligence when it came to record-keeping, and intentionally hiding these actions in order to keep the Canadian public in the dark.
I say that's casting them unfairly in a poor light, no matter his protestations to the contrary.
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