Afghan detainees: Zinging Mr Dewar, M.P. (NDP), etc.

From a post by BruceR. at Flit:

The obvious followup

Paul Dewar, MP, is asking the Canadian Chief of Defence Staff to reconcile his statement that detainees were never transferred for the purpose of gathering information with the statements before a Commons Committee by an ex-translator.

It should be noted that Mr. Dewar probably had an opportunity to answer that question already...

Mr. Paul Dewar: It was understood then when the detainees were being transferred to NDS, it was done for that purpose?

Mr. Malgarai Ahmadshah: There was no one in the Canadian military with a uniform who was involved in any way, at any level, with the detainee transfers that they did not know what was going on and what NDS does to their detainees.

The second answer is, of course, non-responsive**. Mr. Dewar's obvious followup there was: "You've said you translated documents to be given to the NDS. Well, presumably their documents had to be translated, too, right? So, working as the Canadian translator, were you ever asked to translate an Afghan interrogation report for Canadians to read? No? Then how would this "subcontracting" of interrogation you suggest have worked, exactly, if the NDS never told us anything?"..

**And a little insulting. There is still a distinction, one hopes, between "could have reasonably assumed" and "knew."

Mr. Malgarai Ahmadshah also makes an (obligatory) reference to Maher Arar.

Also worth a look:

1) Tom Walkom tries again

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Walkom goes at it again today, stating the CDS did not deny the "transfer to interrogation" allegation in his letter. Even though he did. But I'm sure it's an honest oversight. Probably ran out of room, or an editor accidentally deleted a sentence, or something. Because you'd have to be a severely impaired box turtle with a very busy schedule to fail reading comprehension that badly, and we all know Walkom isn't one of those.

2) Occidental bureaucracy vs Oriental inscrutability

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Ah, now that sounds like the NDS guys I knew.