It's All About Torture. Don't Let Anyone Forget.

Whooee! Well, friends an' foes, Steve over at Far and Wide has a post about the polls and how bad ol' King Steve is doin' an' is the trend gonna continue. I left a bigass comment there an' I'm saving' energy by recycling that comment here.

We all saw the pundits come out wrong, wrong, wrong on the expected reaction to prorogation. Now, I've heard a few of 'em say that once the HOC resumes sitting, the prorogation issue will fall off the map. Maybe it'll be another swing and miss for the pundidiots. Maybe not.

If the prorogation outrage and backlash is to survive, we will need to show exactly how much work went down the tubes. How long will it take to get the legislative agenda back to where it was before the December break? How long before committees are reconstituted and back to where they were pre-prorogue?

If, as a small number believe, the budget triggers an election, how much work will be lost and, importantly, who will take the blame?

My own advice on this is that the public needs to be kept acutely aware that ducking the Afghan detainee issue was the primary reason Harper rolled the dice... and crapped out. So far, so good on that with the committee sitting.

The committee, however, is getting too bogged down in questions of privilege and protocol vis-a-vis the unreleased documents. The facts as reported by NGO spokespersons are that the current agreement is failing to do what it was intended to do. While they play cat and mouse with the document issue, detainees are not being monitored as required on paper and they ARE being tortured... now.

I think many voters see the power play over documents as politics -- parliamentary procedural wrangling done more for partisan gain than for truth-gathering. We know the truth. We've always known it. Detainees we hand over to the Afghans are abused. That fact can be clearly illustrated without the gamesmanship.

Despite some of the callous and uninformed comments I read in MSM comment threads, I truly believe most Canadians are repulsed by torture and are ashamed of any suggestion that our country was complicit in detainee abuse. If they are made to see that we are STILL complicit in ongoing abuse, we will achieve something. That "something" that we must be striving for is a cessation of torture by our allies -- Afghan or American.

Though we can show that abuse continues and we can demand it cease, the reality is that we have little power over such matters. Secret detention centres and denial of monitoring rights precludes our ability to wash our hands.

What to do? Either we quit handing over detainees altogether or we quit Afghanistan altogether.

Ignatieff made some encouraging comments a few days ago regarding the legitimacy of our support for the fraudulently elected Karzai and his gang of warlords, opium merchants and torturers. This theme will resonate; especially, when coupled with the message that the current transfer agreement is failing to prevent torture.

Human decency will prevail.

JB

Bob Rae Spouts Misinformation in By-election Debate

Whooee! Well friends an' foes, treehuggin' Greenie Chris Tindal oughta be havin' hisself a laff an' a haff at the expense of the Liberal Foreign Affairs Critic Bob Rae. Chris is runnin' against Bob Rae in Toronto Centre ( that's the centre of the centre of the universe). Last night at a candidates' debate, Bob Rae interupted Chris Tindal when Chris correctly said Canada has military officers serving alongside the Merkins in EyeRack.

Here's how Chris tells it:

While answering a question last night at the St. Lawrence debate, I mentioned that it’s important for us to realize that there are currently Canadian military officers serving in Iraq as part of the American command. Bob Rae interrupted me to object adamantly, almost angrily. “No there aren’t!”

Yes, I said, there are. “No there aren’t,” Mr. Rae said again. “They’re part of our military exchange program,” I explained. (I’m paraphrasing from memory for now, but will be able to check the tape later and will post the video when I can.) Strangely, Mr. Rae demanded I tell him where in Iraq our officers were stationed, as if my inability to do so would prove they weren’t there.

At that point, seeing no immediate resolution to our disagreement, I moved on with the rest of my answer. Today, however, having confirmed that I was correct, I’m quite taken aback that Mr. Rae could have been so misinformed about our military’s exchange program with the United States and our direct involvement in the war in Iraq. It’s made worse by the fact that Mr. Rae isn’t just any Liberal candidate: he’s the party’s foreign affairs critic.
(There's more...)

Anybody who's been keepin' track already knew we've had guys in the JTF2 in EyeRack fer years. It's dang disappointin' to hear about Bobby Rae shootin' his mouth off on somethin' he don't know about. I'd like to see Bobby publicly apologize fer interruptin' Chris when Chris was right and Rae was wrong.

The Liberals put Canadian soldiers in Iraq and in Afghanistan. They caved in to Con pressure and agreed to extend the Afghan mission by 2 more senseless years. Doesn't Bob Rae even know what his chosen party has got us into?

JimBobby