Canada Complicit in TORTURE

That is, they were un-Canadian, counterproductive and probably illegal.

There should be calls to action going out about this to MP's......as a bolster to this:

"The only way to get to the bottom of this is a full public inquiry. The women and the men of the Canadian Forces deserve nothing less."

List of MP's with email addresses

That's good! Keep this story fresh in the minds of Canadians. Hopefully this will turn enough Canadian voters in the next federal election so that the Cons[ervatives] will be voted out of office!

Gulbuddin Heymatyar was infamous for throwing acid in the faces of women at the University of Kabul! He was the recipient of billions in aid from the CIA and Saudis in the 1980's during their anticommunist jihad!

And now Pete Mackay's bosses in Warshington and London are offering Hekmatyar a power sharing role in Karzai's government!

Someone should tell Pete Mackay that his imperialist masters aided and abetted the throwing of acid in women's faces not so long ago.

Not only that, but Peter MacKay makes the assumption that these prisoners were "Taliban". An assumption that has yet to be proven.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar does not belong to a member organization of the Taliban. He is the commander of an insurgent group known as the Hezb-i-Islami Gulbuddin or the HIG Hekmatyar network. Hekmatyar and and his network usually operates on its own. Hekmatyar and his HIG network usually operates in northeast Afghanistan, not Kandahar province, south Afghanistan.

[url=Many">http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/many-detainees-were-just-farme... detainees were just local farmers[/url]

Overall, though, I'm guessing that the locals are overwhelmingly grateful to their Canadian saviours for building schools etc.

The U.S. offers bounties to those who bring in "Al-Qaeda" and "Taliban" "terrorists". Anyone wanting to make a quick buck can either make a "citizen's arrest" or "finger" (along with two, or more, others who bear false witness) a totally innocent person to U.S. or Canadian or other NATO/ISAF troops (think Afghans can tell them apart, or care? They're all hated feringhees or foreigners or "Americans" to them.) Off to Bagram prison for them.

Anyone seen "Taxi to the Dark Side"?

Where's the petition to see charges laid against Hillier, Harper and MacKay? I want to sign.

Yes.

In Afghan tribal culture, revenge doesn't always involve direct violence. Many of the innocent victims of false terrorism charges are simply fingered due to domestic or financial disputes. 

Another example of culturally insensitive American expediency being utilised by Afghans to settle scores. As in Iraq, American policies have turned the population against them. The sad part is that Canada's feeble aid efforts are marginalised by a tribal culture that does not differentiate between occupying nationalities - they are all enemies.

Why stop there? The whole pack of 'I didn't see that email' jowly porkers in expensive suits should walk the plank.

In his book, (just out) A Soldier First: Bullets, Breaucrats and the Politics of War, tricky Rick attempts to cover his ass on the earlier controversy, and plows on in singularly insensitive fashion:

"Things had changed after spring 2006, however, when we moved south of Kandahar and our soldiers would often take prisoners after firefights with Taliban or in other operations...the decision was made...that the right thing to do was transfer prisoners to the Afghans and let the Afghan judicial system, fledgling though it may have been, handle them. After all, Afghanistan is a sovereign country and, almost without exception, it was Afghans that we were detaining."

Hillier writes - in classic Blimp fashion: "We thought we had a good process in place, although obviously it was not perfect. Eventually - no surprise - people back in Canada started squawking about the issue. Opposition politicians and several specific individuals were trying to spin the story for their own purposes, and the result was that screaming newspaper headline insinuating that Canadian soldiers were abusing detainees."

He continues: "This suggestion that Canadian soldiers were not abiding by the laws of war coincided with complaints that the Afghans were abusing some of those handed to them. Their judicial and prison systems were still somewhat nascent, and there was always some risk that abuse would occur. That, unfortunately, is not abnormal in failed states and occurs even in solid countries like Canada. After indications that some abuse might have occurred (ed. the Globe pointed out that it had) the CF felt it was a necessity to have Candian officials make regular, unannounced visits to Afghan prison to ensure the people we transferred were being treated humanely. "

He plows on, about the Manley Report of January 2008 and the "improvements in prison infrastructure and Afghan police training..." But, of course, the general's concerns came late, after admitting that, yes, shit happens.  Which makes the sounds from the government benches these days, expressions of pure flatulence.  

Whassamadda? Fish not biting? You run out of friends to chat with in your 'the Afghan people will win' fantasy world?

You're pushing it. 

How about some substantive comments instead of this trash. 

This person has caused a lot of Canada's problems in recent times, and he needs to be taken down a notch or three. 

Hillier as Chief of the Defence Staff

On February 4 2005, he became Chief of the Defence Staff. At the change-of-command ceremony he repeated his call, more broadly, for increased military funding. "In this country, we could probably not give enough resources to the men and women to do all the things that we ask them to do," he said, with Prime Minister Paul Martin and Defence Minister Bill Graham looking on. "But we can give them too little, and that is what we are now doing. Remember them in your budgets."[5] His willingness to speak openly and on the record about the Canadian Forces' financial resources, and about the Defence budget in particular, distinguishes Hillier from previous Chiefs of the Defence Staff.[citation needed]

After his appointment, Hillier maintained a very high profile, frequently talking with the media and arguing his case for defence planning. He has been called the most prominent Chief of the Defence Staff in decades, with popularity not just in the military, but among a broad spectrum of Canadian civilians.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Hillier

Absolutely - I even watched Battle of Algiers very recently for the first time in decades - would love to see Z again, it had a major influence on my world view at the time. You're quite right, today's events are a case of nature imitating art. Nothing much has changed.

Canuquetoo get off your high horse.  While I wouldn't necessarily characterize you as "Islamiphobe", at least based on this thread, your remarks about "Afghan tribal culture" reek of white western privlige and superiority. Stop it.  If you don't like unionists posts don't read them.

The image that you refer to as "the dude in the hoody" has become a symbol for the issue of torture by western forces in Iraq.  I'm a bit shocked anyone would not be familiar with it.

Google Abu Ghraib and just look at images. A picture is worth a thousand words. See what's been done in our name. Tribalism indeed.

Lies based on lies based on lies. The entire setup often looks so utterly corrupted that the nazipoohs can race around knocking over fax like they was bowling pins (and the nazipoohs themselves bowlingballs) w/out worrying what the OPPOSITION says- and get this: the media is liberal, so whattaya expect?  Meanwhile, on cbc's 'Ideas' the other evening Paul Kennedy was talking with some phony liberal frontman named 'Wolf' who is selling a doorstopper ('the case for liberalism'?) and ...well, didya know the junyer Kristol is a 'romantic' for thinking western democracy/freedom can be transplanted to Iraq/Afghanistan etc via shock'n'awe warfare? And the geebush admin was the most 'conservative' in US history? And liberal ignatief knows that terrorism has got to be fought, which hamstrings his criticisms (and nevermind that the US, Britain and Israel- along with their puppet states re saudia arabia- spend two thirds of entire global military budget, whilst 'alciada' doesn't even have a state base to operate in)... How do you fight such seamless dishonesty? It's a plain fact they say, that the 'war' in Afghanistan has been going on for 'generations' according to the talkers on 'Sunday Edition' (actually, Afghanistan was easily one of freest places on earth up until late 70's-there was a huge 'hippie' colony there of western expats- and that was while it was considered under the Soviet umbrella...the carter cia then began funding the 'muhajadeen'in order to ruin the USSR, which the MSM has been celebrating recently, as if nobody recalls the real history)

If the liars weren't so untterly despicable, there'd be no inspiration to carry on, imho. The people really seem bovine indifferent, or overwhelmed.

Hey, Canuqetoo, this is just par for Babble. Trolls and trash if you're not one of "them" and like unionist said - "not worth responding to". Don't know what's wrong with calling a tribe a tribe.

Torture and abuse of prisoners by Americans at Abu Ghraib, Iraq. Remember Pvt. Lindy England? If not, watch the DVD "Taxi to the Dark Side", if you have the opportunity.

Thanks for the lecture. I'm an ordinary progressive Canadian, not a PhD of political correctness. 

By the way, I hear over CBC radio that now Walt Natynczyk has weighed in saying that yep, Canadian Forces have had to from time to time stop handing over prisoners. (That's all I caught).

I can only paraphrase Orwell: 'all pigs are equal but some pigs are more equal than others' when I ponder babble policy de jure and babble policy de facto.

While lurking, I thought babble was an interesting place for an inquiring mind  but after dealing with unionist's relentless non-sequitur that disagreeing with his position equals disagreeing with the anti-war movement and experiencing oldgoat's dedication to inclusiveness and diversity, the potential here for open discussion seems limited.

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.

This umbrage at the usage of "tribal" is a strawman to use as another club against any poster with the temerity to challenge the ideology of the more extreme element of babble.

For the moderators, de facto enforcement of policy is more the convenience of moving the saltbowl to regulate those who sit below the salt (with apologies to Thomas B. Costain) than principled enforcement of policy de jure.

When news of the torture broke, it was the result of the release of the Abu Ghraib torture photos, the hooded man being one of them. Photos and motion picture images were taken by U.S. Army prison guards with their cell phones and camcorders. Some of the torture was extracurricular activity that the soldiers did for their "amusement". Behavior that was endorsed by then U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in his infamous "Torture Memo".

Concerning this particular photograph, the hood was used as a blindfold - part of sensory deprivation. The man could have been exposed to loud heavy metal music or the drone of the fans that made the prison cells uncomfortably cold (many were in fact, subjected to this). Temperature was varied from uncomfortably cold to uncomfortably warm.

This particular man was forced to stand on a box with his arms outstretched in the manner as you can see by the image, for hours. This is called a "stress position". Wires were placed on his fingers of both hands. I believe a wire was also placed around his penis. He was ordered to maintain this position. He was also told (in this particular case actually not true) that if he changed his position, the movement would be sensed by the wires and that he would be shocked by jolts of electricity.

This and in other sickening ways, is how amateur "prison guards" at Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Bagram, Afghanistan prisons (keep in mind, before the treaty Gen. Rick Hillier signed with the Karzai government concerning the handing of PoWs to Afghan authorities, the Canadian military handed Afghan PoWs to the U.S. Like the U.S., the Canadian military took a dragnet approach and captured large numbers of prisoners - all to please the Bush administration and the Pentagon) amused themselves.

All in the name of fighting the" War on of Terror".