Travers isn't entitled to make up his own facts

I don't know if there's any personal history there, if maybe there was a face-to-face conflict at one point, or perhaps some he-said-she-said gossip that soured things between them. But whatever caused it, Jim Travers seems to have a serious hate-on for Rick Hillier. Today's column in the Toronto Star is hardly an isolated example.

Here's another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

And another.

That's OK, I guess. A bit unprofessional for Travers to carry such a vendetta, but Rick Hillier's a big boy, and his hide has grown relatively impervious to such sniping over the years, I'm sure.

No, I only have so much of a problem with Travers' obvious dislike of the best military leader this country has enjoyed in my lifetime. Everyone's got an opinion, and they can't all be like mine.

I have a big problem, however, with how Travers continues to mislead unsuspecting readers of the Toronto Star on substantive matters related to Hillier.

First problem:

Along with the ruling party, the military has a lot riding on what Hillier told a Commons committee digging through the entrails of Canada's Afghanistan mission. A folksy talker with a sophisticated grasp of strategic communications, Hillier used his time back in the spotlight last fall to deny knowing anything about Afghans abusing Afghans and to dismiss as "ludicrous" diplomat Richard Colvin's claim that prisoners were routinely tortured.

Wrong. Dead wrong.

Remember what Colvin actually told the committee:

"According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured. For interrogators in Kandahar, it was a standard operating procedure," Colvin said.

ALL. Not some, not many, ALL.

That's what Hillier called ludicrous - watch for yourself what he said:

We didn't base our actions upon people making statements like "all detainees were tortured." How ludicrous a statement is that from any one single individual who really has no knowledge to be able to say something like that?

Second problem:

Most peculiar is how Hillier could have been in the dark about three high-value enemy targets who vanished after being transferred to Afghans by Canadian commandos. As chief of defence staff, Hillier had particular responsibility for the top-secret Joint Task Force Two that operates side-by-side with elite U.S. units in Afghanistan and is controlled in Canada outside the normal rigidly hierarchical chain of command.

"Particular responsibility?" Really? The CDS has more responsibility for soldiers from one unit than for another? Hillier would shoulder less responsibility for the supposed indiscretions of a supply clerk than for those of a special operator? I wonder what military law or regulation Travers could point to that would spell out the details of this tiered responsibility. Because I can tell you, every single young officer in the CF is required to learn a little about the legal and regulatory responsibilities of command, and I defy Travers to find a single one who has seen any indication of that concept in military law.

And since when is JTF 2 "controlled in Canada outside the normal rigidly hierarchical chain of command?" The chain of command for special operators is entirely normal, and just as rigidly hierarchical as any other in the CF. At the end of the day, all of it flows through the CDS to the political civilian control. This isn't some third-world banana republic run by a junta, it's Canada, and the Canadian Forces is subject to civilian control and oversight.

The implication that Canada's SOF community somehow isn't subject to as rigorous control as other units in the Canadian Forces is a completely unjustifiable slur. If Travers has evidence of that, he needs to bring it forward. Otherwise, he needs to stop dealing in base innuendo that has no foundation in reality.

Lastly:

More clarity is needed to understand why Hillier signed a 2005 prisoner exchange agreement that lacked common NATO safeguards and soon proved badly wanting.

Travers continues to flog this discredited line of attack against Hillier: that he somehow went rogue by signing the original detainee transfer agreement.

Why did Hillier sign that agreement? He tells you himself:

The Canadian Forces, with Foreign Affairs, were concerned about how the Afghans would treat those prisoners, just as there are concerns with any developing nation, and so in late 2005 we began discussing how we would handle them - the Taliban and suspected Taliban grabbed during operations. Foreign Affairs took the lead and drew up a memorandum of agreement with the Afghan government. David Sproule, our ambassador in Kabul, was at the forefront of developing this agreement. Bill Graham, Ward Elcock and I were of absolutely one mind that an agreement with the government of Afghanistan was the way to go.

In December 2005 the agreement was finalize, needing only the signatures from Canada and Afghanistan to bring it into force. I happened to be visiting our troops in Kandahar and was asked if I would consider signing the document for Canada during the couple of days I planned on spending in Kabul. General Abdul Rahim Wardak, the former Chief of the Defence Staff who was now the Afghan Defence Minister, was going to sign on behalf of the government of Afghanistan and had requested that I sign it with him. Wardak and I had become close during my time as ISAF commander, when he was CDS for Afghanistan. He knew and trusted me. Foreign Affairs had no problems with this, so during my trip to Kabul, David Sproule accompanied me to visit Minister Wardak and, with Sproule orchestrating the shuffling of the various copies with signature blocks marked by yellow stickies, we signed the agreement, bringing it into force.

There's the answer that Travers pointedly refuses to accept: Hillier's signature appeared at the bottom of a Government of Canada agreement simply because he had a personal connection with the Afghan official who signed on behalf of the Afghan government. Don't get me wrong: it's perfectly legitimate to ask why a Government of Canada agreement was written the way it was. But it is entirely illegitimate to imply that this was Hillier's agreement and that he should wear all its perceived flaws.

Travers, like everyone in this wonderful country of ours, is entitled to whatever opinion he fancies: thoughtful and reasonable or irrational and unsupportable, as he sees fit. He and his employers are well within their rights to push that opinion, however wacky it might be, in their newspaper.

But the Toronto Star and Travers himself lose all credibility when they make up their own set of facts and mislead their audience.