Canada Complicit in TORTURE
Comments
I don't understand those pictures of the flag with the little abu ghraib tourture victim.
That's American soldiers tourturing and humiliating Iraq people in a prison in Iraq.
Are Canadians tourturing Afghanistan people in a prison somewhere?
I thought this was about Canadians handing over prisoners who are tourture BY other Afghanistan people. Wouldn't it make more sense to have that abu ghraib man picture on an Afghanistan flag?
Connection seems pretty lame.
An assassin murders someone. In the eyes of the law, the party that paid the hitman is just as guilty as the party that pulled the trigger. The Geneva Conventions are very specific about the handling of detainees. If a party hands detainees over to a third party where it is known or suspected the third party tortures and abuses prisoners, this is a war crime.
Canada 's Guantanamo Canadian military's role in torture coverup in Afghanistan
Now, instead of launching an inquiry, the Conservatives are pursuing their usual practice of smearing critics. "We frankly just found his evidence lacked credibility. All his information was, he admits, at best second hand," said Lawrie Hawn, parliamentary secretary to Defense Minister Peter MacKay. MacKay angrily dismissed the charges, while former Canadian military chief-in-command in Afghanistan Rick Hillier can't "remember reading a single one of those cables", and depicted the fuss as mere "howling at the moon". "Even in our own prisons somebody can get beaten up," he cracked to reporters.But then this is standard operating procedure for Harper's Conservatives. They called New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton "Taliban Jack" for his suggestion that NATO should negotiate with elements of the Taliban. That is now the policy not only of Canada in Afghanistan, but of the Karzai government in Kabul.
Uncle Sam's yes-men in Ottawa are always out of touch.
Why would Canadians hand Afghans over to the ANP [Afghanistan National Police]. I'm going to throw this out there without causing a dogpile. The basic idea theory plan hope design thought etc.. etc.. is to take the ANP and turn them into a semi-professional, credible and ethical police force. It's impossible to give them the feeling of authoruty responsibility and professional compitence if we [Be it Canada, NATO] hold their hand and don't let them do their job. "You're all police officers BUT we don't want you arresting anyone or searching anyone, handling prisoners or giving people traffic tickets". Part of the process is to let them be their own keepers. Therein lies the problem it seems like we faced in Afghanistan. We want the ANP to basically be police officers but there not "there" yet and by that I mean it's or it was common place for them to take a prisoner drive off somewhere and put the boots to him or even shoot him. Where do Canadian soldiers fit in? I'll explain a military wide problem in a moment but Canadian soldiers were basically told what i just said here right? If you get a prisoner hand them over to the ANP because they need to be seen by the locals doing their thing and not having NATO hold their hands OR do everything for them. [This was a same-issue in Bosnia. The search for illegal weapons went from a NATO lead effort to Bosnian police searching for weapons with NATO advisors to Bosnian police working without help or hinderence of NATO]. Canadian soldiers are not stupid though and lots of complains went up the chain of command saying NO we can't hand these prisoners over, their just getting executed. Then it turned into a big bun fight over what to do. This is just my illinformed opinion but I suspect one major problem is something that is found throughout all militaries in the world. I am sure the military members of this forum current and otherwise will agree. The "troops" can be miserable, not getting paid not getting fed and all around pissed off. yet when a General comes to inspect the troops all he hears is SIR! Everything is great, troops are happy everyone is getting paid well there is plenty of food things are A-OKAY! It's not the privates talking to the generals... Somehow from the "grunt level" to the general there is a big disconnection. I could not pinpoint it but taking a guess in my little example the middle management does not want to explain why soldiers are not getting fed to a very angry general. In the case of what we are talking about here though I think the people on the bottom all over knew exactly what was happening and let people know but some how the people on top were told everything is fine the prisoners are being taken care of in a professional manner etc.. etc.. Disconnect somewhere along the way and the truth exactly where will come out and hopefully they will be brought to task over it.
There is a fundamental truth to the 'disconnect' when the issue is driven top-down such as a piece of kit that end users find poorly designed and useless but it is issued because some careerist refuses to acknowledge any error.
In the case of information driven from the bottom, the careerists only acknowledge the portions that have the potential to reflect well on themselves and, in the case of such damning information as presented by Richard Colvin, any attempt to communicate such info would be throttled to preserve "plausable deniability".
Plausable deniability - what an odious term for cover thine ass.
Plausible deniability - what an odious term for cover thine ass.
It's how US shadow government has operated for years at arm's length from cosmetic government. They are still hand in glove with Al CIA'duh and other militant groups working to create an arc of destabilized countries extending from Africa to Central Asia. And our political stooges are only following the general plan handed them from Warshington.
We Are All War Criminals
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24043.htm
"And because these crimes are committed in all of our names, we are all war criminals..."
"And because these crimes are committed in all of our names, we are all war criminals..."
The crimes are not committed in our names, but in the name of democracy, freedom, modernism... The "war criminals" are those who use these fine principles for their own purposes (count the ways).
We Are All War Criminals
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24043.htm
"And because these crimes are committed in all of our names, we are all war criminals..."
9/11, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam embassies, USS Cole, Bali, Madrid bombings, London subway, Pakistani suicide bombings, etc..are also atrocities. Radical islamic jihadists are an atrocity. Didn't see the author of your link mention any of that.
Our inability to be strong, united, and play hardball is our weakness in dealing with an enemy who lives and dies by it.
My oh my have the times changed since WW2.
Eastwinds wrote:....
My oh my have the times changed since WW2.
Not so much.
We have brainwashed defenders of gratuitous torture of the innocent-- in the name of finally getting "strong, united, and play[ing] hardball". The SS would be proud.
I do not take joy in the torture of a human being but I also will not call my country's soldiers war criminals.
How about the leadership, military and political? The soldier ("doughboy in WW11 American memory) has had to follow orders too, eh? Always that way in uniform.
"My country's" soldiers, sailors and aircrews should be employed in defence of the motherlan...fatherl... er, place of peace, order and good government.
Politicians are ALL the same to me. Parliament is just a place for the high paid to shout at each other and achieve little most of the time. It doesn't matter the party, minor ideological differences is a very fine line that separates them. Whatever party is the ruler of the day, the opposition parties get up and try to accomplish what?...score points for the next election?...score better points for the leader? It would be the same if the cons were in opposition at the moment, they're all the same.
Does it make the job easier for the men and women who serve in our armed forces in Afghanistan?
Ignatieff isn't so moral himself, is he?....
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/11/24/...
Canaquetoo: "After spending good money on Pervez Musharraf's self-serving autobiography, I wouldn't waste the breath needed to stand at the till to purchase Hillier's drivel. I did, however, get good value for the amount spent to purchase Sarah Chayes' excellent work: The Punishment of Virtue which goes into some detail about the tribal culture of southern Afghanistan and the intricacies of inter-tribal relations. This, plus reading South Asian papers online, is the basis for my arguments that American policy is counterproductive and harming efforts to form a central government because Afghans have tribal based cultures that do not lend themselves to centralised control."
Right. I would never buy Hillier's memoirs. He is one coarse, ignorant fellow. But since the library beckons, I had to request a loan - a radical sociologist out of Berkley in '69 told us tykes that you had to read what the bastards are reading to understand how to fight them.
But many many years ago I put out .75 cents for a copy of John Masters, Bugles and a Tiger (Ballantine paperback) the memoirs of a Brit officer in late 1930s India and the Frontier (now Pakistan). The British eventually "reached the mountains that separate the subcontinent from Afghanistan. Those mountains extend four hundred miles from the Khyber Pass in the north to the Bolan Pass in the deserts of Baluchistan to the south. They are raw and bare, and a proudly independent people lives in them. These people,Semitic in origin, Moslem in religion, Pushtu in speech, are the Pathans. ("P'tahan") "The Pathans, subdivided into various tribes, live astride the Indo-Afghan border, which runs roughtly down the middle of the mountain chain. Nota only do different members of the same tribe live on oposite sides of the international baoundary, but the same family or subtribe may own winter fields on the Indian side and summer grazing on the Afghan side.
"In all historical time the Pathans have kept themselves alive by a combination of nomad life, half-hearted tillage of the barren earth, armed raids into the settled farmlands of the plains, and levying tolls on the commercial traffic that must use the few routes through their hills. The principal routes are via the Kabul River, the Khyber Pass, the Kurram River, the Tochi River, the Gomal River, and the Bolan Pass.
"Well armed, owning no king or central authority, loosely organized into soviets of tribes, subtribes, and families, fanatically adhering to the Moslem law, addicted to blood fueds and vendettas, the Pathans gave the oncoming British serious pause...."
And so it goes.
And they likely praise Allah every day for their long guns and RPG's.
When has the term 'tribe' or its derivatives ever been presented within the mainstream media to imply anything other than what the use is intended to suggest among readers and viewers. The latest examples reveal that we're expected to associate the term with lawlessness, as in the case of the Pakistani 'tribal' areas, where long range missiles are used to destroy houses and everyone in it. Among the indoctrinated westerners who have come to equate tribalism with lawlessness, this form of 'justice' is seen as the appropriate response because the people affected, as in all ages killed and maimed, are of no account, their lives are meaningless because they are presented to us through the implied meaning of the word 'tribe' as deserving of such fate.
What is appropriate is fury and outrage at those interests in the MSM who propagate these associations of hatred with their all too obvious inferences. Considering the numerous examples of horrific context, instead of defensiveness as the default response to such measured challenges that are offered here to loose terminology, time and effort might be better spent in understanding strongly held views and analysis behind the objections. It isn't too much to ask at all in comparison with what should sicken us when it is absorbed everywhere else.
They do things that I once tried to post here, quoting Masters...but failed. You will find some of them in Kipling's "Tommy". Old Imperialist India stuff, old boy. At least, known to the Raj...
Their history should have alerted "the West" to the insanity of the idea of going there in the first place, but our leaders have not read any of this, and we are not allowed to talk about history that might only be used in the bastardized fashion of our leaders.
I don't understand those pictures of the flag with the little abu ghraib tourture victim.
That's American soldiers tourturing and humiliating Iraq people in a prison in Iraq.
Are Canadians tourturing Afghanistan people in a prison somewhere?
I thought this was about Canadians handing over prisoners who are tourture BY other Afghanistan people. Wouldn't it make more sense to have that abu ghraib man picture on an Afghanistan flag?
Connection seems pretty lame.
I believe the motif's central idea is "torture". The idea that it was exclusive to "others", while "we" were not involved, has been questioned.
You're right. (If we can ignore the "handing over". ) Some find that more difficult than others, apparently.
Is Peter MacKay posting here in his ample spare time?
Why were we handing over prisoners?
LOL LOL!!!
Sparky: "Why were we handing over prisoners?"
We didn't want to shoot them or put them in concentration camps, and it seemed the easiest, most cost-effective thing to do, for anyone not giving a damn about their treatment by the home grown security forces.
Yawn.... You don't realise many things because you are too steeped in your own delusions to make any attempt to comprehend the context of anyone's words except to misrepresent them.
The "sad part" is the militarisation of aid delivery.
Hysterical denunciations of "imperialist racial arrogance" is the default position of ideologues with nothing to say.
I think that many posters see the little trooper in the same light. The mods have his back so he feels free to intimidate and silence anyone who dares to disagree with his viewpoint.
I think it's also a case that Harpo wanted to show what a good Quisling he was/is for the American Empire.
"Well armed, owning no king or central authority, loosely organized into soviets of tribes, subtribes, and families, fanatically adhering to the Moslem law, addicted to blood fueds and vendettas, the Pathans gave the oncoming British serious pause...."
And so it goes.
In Pakistan, they are refered to as Pakhtoons. The various tribes are supported by regional players like Iran and Pakistan whose intent is to keep Afghanistan destabilised. Pakistan, for strategic depth in its hostilities with India, who is also a regional player, supporting Karzai's government on one hand and tribal entities on the other. Iran, for reasons of a more geopolitical nature than merely keeping a neighbouring nation weak.