In a follow-up to her screed against diplomat Richard Colvin, Globe and Mail columnist Christie Blatchford resorts to a full-blown bucket defence. According to Blatchford: There is no evidence Afghan security forces abused prisoners Canada turned over to them: "This is not akin to officials knowing that Afghans were being tortured." Everyone knew Afghan security forces abused prisoners Canada turned over to them: "[It's] obvious that Afghanistan is a brutal country where cruelty, hardship and physical violence are a way of life. No one with a lick of sense would expect that Afghan prisoners would live in comfort or ease." Colvin never actually...

01 December, 2009

In the PMO War Room, columnist Christie Blatchford must have seemed an inspired choice. She can turn a purple phrase with the best of them. She stands foursquare for troops, widows, and orphans. She's against plummies, toffs, and pointyheads. She's long on guts and glory, short on assay. She has an ego as big as the Ritz, and fragile as a Gruyère Soufflé. To receive a document drop on a Matter of National Importance would be sweet validation. So the Harper Government—someone in the Harper Government—got the brilliant idea of handing Blatchford a trove of Richard Colvin's long-sought emails from Kandahar,...

29 November, 2009

The CBC's Kady O'Malley brings prescient analysis—and that rarest of journalistic qualities, a political memory—to the Conservative scheme to fabricate a dastardly opposition "refusal" to hear diplomat David Mulroney rebut fellow diplomat Richard Colvin's account of how Canada turned a blind eye to Afghan security officials' torture of detainees our forces turned over to them. Here's the plan: Refuse to turn over documents bearing on Colvin's testimony. Invoke national security, of course. Have Mulroney show up, uninvited, and demand to be be heard immediately, before MPs have any opportunity to prepare for his testimony, let alone see the documentary evidence bearing on...

24 November, 2009

Today's must-read: A former NATO official tells the Toronto Star how Prime Minister Harper's office micromanaged the story of Canada's complicity in Afghan torture when it first erupted in 2007. The former official, speaking on condition his name not be used, told the Toronto Star that Harper's office in Ottawa "scripted and fed" the precise wording NATO officials in Kabul used to repudiate allegations of abuse "at a time when it was privately and generally acknowledged in our office that the chances of good treatment at the hands of Afghan security forces were almost zero." "It was highly unusual. I was told...

23 November, 2009

In his Saturday column, Jeffrey Simpson pointed out something others have overlooked: For all the fire and brimstone Conservative spinmeisters hurled at Richard Colvin, they didn't actually contradict a single word of his testimony. Significantly, for those who paid careful attention to substance rather than bombast, in all the sound and fury from the government and former military personnel, no one actually contradicted a single thing in Mr. Colvin's testimony...

23 November, 2009

Former top Steven Harper strategist Tom Flannigan tells Jane Taber of the Globe and Mail he's unimpressed with Conservative character assassination of career diplomat and whistle-blower Richard Colvin. He thinks it's happening...

20 November, 2009

Writing in Maclean's, Andrew Coyne expresses "some bafflement" at the Conservatives' reaction to Richard Colvin's testimony. Don't worry, Coyne hasn't gone socialist. He's sure Canada is no longer turning over detainees without adequate safeguards. He thinks the Harperites fixed the problem, and ought to take credit for it. He doesn't think we are at the point of needing a public inquiry—yet. He thinks Colvin's testimony is "less than bullet-proof." But it’s another thing altogether to imply that Colvin is some sort of whack job or stooge of the Taliban. As others have pointed out, his sterling career track — he’s now a...

20 November, 2009

Chantal Hébert makes a good point. Canadians only got to hear Richard Colvin's testimony because we have a minority Parliament. The Conservatives had previously used a national security clause in the Canada Evidence Act to prevent Colvin from testifying to a Military Police Complaints Tribunal hearing. But not having a Parliamentary majority, they were powerless to prevent him from testifying to the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan. Hébert is skeptical of claims the government was out of the loop: [T]the government could not have been in the dark about the potential prevalence of torture unless the country's top civil...

20 November, 2009

Tories knock off Bloc in eastern Quebec - Gazette Tories, NDP make gains in by-elections - Star Tories retake former Nova Scotia stronghold - Globe and Mail Byelection win will boost Tories in Quebec: MP - CBC This is likely a losing battle, but could the national press corp please stop calling the Harper Conservatives "Tories?" The Conservative Party of Canada is not simply a renamed Progressive Conservative Party. It was borne of a hostile takeover by the Reform Party, thinly disguised as a merry merger. Headline writers need short substitutes for party names — Grits, NDP, Bloc, etc. — but that's no excuse for...

10 November, 2009

The American Civil Liberties Union has released a video in which five former detainees talk about their treatment at the American prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. All were eventually released without charge. As you watch this troubling video, consider the Harper Government's refusal to request the release of the last citizen of a western democracy still held in Guantanamo: Canadian Omar Khadr, who has been subjected to similar treatment for seven years, since he was 15. The Conservative Government is appealing a Federal Court decision ordering it to request Khadr's release, as every other western democracy did for its citizens...

03 November, 2009
Show more
Loading...