So, finally, Canadians now know what really happened in the Maher Arar case. Getting there wasn't easy. We had to sue our own government to find out. But we did. The Judge found in the people's favour. The system worked.
Now, there is not one, but two components to the Arar case. The first is the matter of his detainment, transportation to Syria, his torture and his release. The second is the cover-up by Canadian polticians and the Harper government.
Remember Watergate? There were two components to Watergate. The first was the break-in at the Democratic Party offices. The second was the cover-up. It was the cover-up that brought Nixon down. The Arar coverup may yet help bring the Harper government down. At the very least, it besmirches his government and confirms his blind and misguided loyalty to the Bushies.
The Arar case has now been in the forefront of the news in this country for four years. It is as instructive as it is horrifying. Maher Arar's nightmarish, Kafkaesque experience as a result of being wrongly accused by government agencies running amok in secrecy, should never have happened to a Canadian citizen and must not happen again.
The whole sordid and shameful affair should be indelibly etched on the mind of every Canadian who places human rights at the forefront of our values. What follows is a brief review of the case and developments to date.
Maher Arar was born in Syria in 1970 and came to Canada in 1988 with his parents. In 1991 he became a Canadian citizen. He attended University and acquired a BSc from McGill in Computer Engineering and a MSc in Telecommunications from the University of Quebec. He married his Tunisia-born wife, who has a PhD in Finance. By 2002 they had two children.
Between 1997 and 2002 he and his family lived variously in Ottawa, Montreal and Boston depending on the locale of his employment. In 2001, he started his own consulting company within which he carried on his business as a telecommunications engineer.
He was placed under surveillance by the RCMP by reason of being seen in the company of a Syrian born young man from Ottawa, Abdullah Almalki. Apparently Almalki had done some high-tech business in Afghanistan which was considered suspicious.
On September 26 2002, while returning home from a visit to Tunisia, Arar was stopped JFK Airport in New York and detained by U.S. Immigration authorities. He was held in solitary confinement for two weeks. On October 7, he was told by a U.S. official that he was considered to be a terrorist and an al-qaeda member because he knew Almaki and another Canadian citizen of Arab origin from Ottawa, truckdriver Ahmed Abou El Maati.
On October 9, Arar was flown out of the U.S. by the U.S. authorities to Jordan and then a few days later to Syria. He thus became a subject of the U.S. policy of extraordinary rendition - the policy of transferring a detainee terrorist suspect out of the U.S. to another country which has no qualms about using torture to elicit confessions.
For several weeks, while incarcerated in a cramped, dark, rat-infested cell, the Syrian authorities beat the hell out of this Canadian citizen. They persisted until he confessed that he was trained as a terrorist in Afghanistan. Then they eased up on him. For six months he didn't see daylight.
During a visit by Canadian consular authorities in August, 2003, Arar said that he was tortured. He was released in October after being incarcerated for more than a year. He then returned to Ottawa where, together with his wife, he started a campaign to clear his name and to convince the public that he was not a terrorist or an al-qaeda member.
Shortly after his return, there were reports that he had been detained by U.S. authorities as a result of information supplied to them by the RCMP.
The RCMP, true to their tried and true Canadian cop traditions, decided to investigate itself over the Arar case. This was done by Superintendant Brian Garvie. His heavily censored report was released on September 25, 2004.
Among Garvie's findings were that the RCMP gave the U.S. authorities information on Arar with no strings attached, that an RCMP officer assigned to the Foreign Affairs Department may have known of the plan to ship Arar to Syria but said nothing, and that a Deputy Commissioner had put heat on Prime Minister Chretien not to tell the Syrians that there was no evidence that Arar was a terrorist, because he was still a person of 'great interest.'
On February 5, 2004 the Martin government, much to its credit, set up the "Canadian Commission of Inquiry into the Actions of Canadian Officials in Relation to Maher Arar," under Ontario Associate Chief Justice Dennis O'Connor, to find out what really happened. The Americans nixed this idea and didn't cooperate.
O'Connor is a highly respected Judge who has had a brilliant career as both a lawyer and a judge. Given his experience as the Commissioner of the Walkerton Inquiry, he knew how to handle political hot potatos. He was a perfect choice for the job.
It is highly relevant that Stephen Harper took over the reins of government on
February 6th, 2006.
The O'Connor Inquiry concluded its public hearings on September 14, 2005. O'Connor's report was issued on September 2006. As expected, it completely exonerated Arar. He also concluded that it was likely the U.S. put Arar through his ordeal because it relied on false information provided by Canadian officials.
The swift fallout from the O'Connor Report included an immediate public apology from the RCMP to Arar and his family. Shortly after, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned in disgrace because of inconsistencies in his testimony at the Inquiry hearings. The Government also apologized to the Arar family and agreed to pay them a settlement of 11.5 million dollars including legal costs.
It was at the time of the issuance of the O'Connor report that the Arar cover-up took place. Government lawyers insisted that before the report was issued, some 1500 words had to be kept from the public because their release would compromise national security.
The O'Connor Commission disagreed. It sued the government to have the censored 1500 words released. The result was the decision of the Federal Court last week to release about 1000 of those deleted words. And we now know a great deal more about the Arar case. For example, we have learned:
1. CSIS, in the words of its Deputy Director at the time Arar was sent to Syria, thought that Arar would be sent to the Middle East to be questioned in a 'firm manner,' so that the Americans 'can have their way with him.'
2. The RCMP, in applying to a Judge for a warrant to eavesdrop on telephone calls, didn't disclose that they were relying on information from a country with a poor human rights record [Syria] and did not make an assessment of the reliability of that information.
3. In respect to the same application for a telephone warrant, despite that the RCMP knew that a confession was obtained through torture in Syria, it nevertheless insisted to the Judge that the confession was accurate and true.
4. Although the Syrians, as early as one month after they had Arar in custody, told CSIS that Arar was a nuisance rather than a terrorist, Canadian officials refused to help in his release.
5. One of the 'national security' reasons for withholding some information was that the RCMP did not wish to compromise the goodwill of foreign agencies like the CIA with which the RCMP shared intelligence. In other words, the goodwill of the CIA towards the RCMP was paramount to the full disclosure of the facts involving the torture of an innocent Canadian in a foreign, rat-infested prison. As a result all references to the names of the foreign intelligence sources such as the CIA had been censored out along with the other 1500 words.
There is more fallout from the court's decision. The new Conservative RCMP Commissioner William Elliott, who replaced the disgraced Zaccardelli, admitted late last week that when he was Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day's Associate Deputy Minister he was among a secret group of bureaucrats who were involved in a process that led to the government deciding not to allow disclosure of the 1500 words of the O'Connor report. A shaky beginning, to say the least, for a new Commissioner who was selected to improve public accountability of the Mounties.
Day, the Liberals' gift that keeps on giving, tried to deflect responsibility on the bureaucrats. He said of the government attempt at censorship that "senior officials from various departments" decided to block out the passages before the government approved the recommendations. Day, by the way, is an old hand at using the courts at massive taxpayers' expense to avoid coming clean. One recalls the case of Goddard v. Day lawsuit of a few years ago in Alberta. Day had defamed a Red Deer lawyer in a letter Day had written to the editor of the Red Deer Advocate. At the time of the defamation, Day was a minister in the Klein government and so his legal fees were borne by the public purse. He put the lawyer through grinding and protracted litigation before settling the case on the eve of trial for $60,000. The total cost to the taxpayers who were footing the Day bill - close to $800,000.
Harper, for his part, made a public statement in the wake of the Court decision and the new disclosures that avoided any reference to the government cover-up. Instead, as is his wont, he emphasized that the Arar affair took place under the watch of the Liberals and not the Conservatives, and so the Grits were responsible for all of it.
Yet the cover-up took place on Harper's watch. And it is consistent with other examples of the Harper government's excessive secrecy or downright lies and misleading information designed to throw the public off sniffing out the facts. We have seen the Foreign Affairs Department lie and deny the existence of a report on the progress of the war in Afghanistan. When caught in the lie, it issued the report but it was heavily censored based on national security reasons. When the Globe and Mail produced the uncensored report, the national security arguement couldn't possibly stand up because the whole censorship exercise was shown to be merely an attempt to keep news - bad news in this case - from the public (See Darryl Raymaker Blog, Harper and O'Connor: Canada's Bush and Rumsfeld . . March 25, 2007).
Similarly, General Hillier has issued his order that neither will there be any information passing to the public about the fate or whereabouts of detainees captured by Canadian troops in Afghanistan. Without elaboration he argues that the security of the troops is imperiled if that information is publicly available. How this is so, he doesn't say. Security reasons, we suppose.
One final observation. Recently, the Harper government had occasion to appoint a new Chief Justice of Ontario replacing the departed Roy McMurtry. Its choice was to elevate to the Court of Appeal from the Ontario Superior Court, Warren Winkler. Winkler, by any standard, was a worthy appointment. However, so would have been Dennis O'Connor. O'Connor was already on the Ontario Court of Appeal and was the Associate Chief Justice. As such, he was the strong favorite to replace McMurtry. The Harper government chose Winkler over O'Connor.
That'll teach him, I guess.
Showing posts with label Gordon O'Connor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gordon O'Connor. Show all posts
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Monday, August 06, 2007
HARPER'S AFGHANISTAN: A FINE MESS
I have predicted for some time that the perfect political storm likely to engulf the Harper government is Afghanistan.
Canada began its participation there for the right reasons. We agreed to help rid the world of the terrorists who organized 9/11 and the government that supported them - the Taliban. At the same time, we wanted to help the development of the country, to help children get an education, and assist in bringing about some semblance of the rule of law to the country. Good intentions. But as Samuel Johnson once wisely said 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' Afghanistan is turning out to be indeed a road to hell - for NATO troops there and the politicians of the countries who sent them.
The reasons for this international nightmare are plainly evident. Now that at least some of us have read some history of the region (the Prime Minister excluded, it seems [see, DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOG, July 5, 2007, 'Harper Gets Ready To Cut and Run - Again'] ), we realize that this war is an attempt to bring order to one of the wildest countries on earth. For more than 2000 years Afghanistan has proved itself to be a tough and well-nigh impossible nut to crack by powerful invaders and occupiers. From the era of Alexander the Great to modern times this mostly lawless country has always left their opponents either lifeless on the battlefield or beating a hasty, bloody, and disorderly retreat. Even vast and well-equiped armies from far more sophisticatred empires have failed to subdue the war-like propensities of the Afghan people. Alexander the Great didn't stay long. The British Army at the height of its Empire was routed there. And more recently, the Russians left in failure after racking up 15,000 dead Russian soldiers as part of the lost cause (See DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOGS, July 5, 2007 and March 18, 2007, 'Gordon O'Connor - In Over his Head').
The Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan is particularly difficult. For centuries it has been home turf to Pashtun tribes who roam the mountainous and lawless border region of Pakistan-Afghanistan. To the people who live there, life is cheap. Islamic religious fanatics abound. Added to this holy mess is the timid and weak NATO offering to the project - a scant 35,000 troops scattered throughout the country. Neither is there any great enthusiasm among NATO nations to relieve or help Canadians who, with so far 66 troops killed in action, are taking the worst of it.
But it gets worse. The NATO forces, together with the Karzai government are looking the other way while the poor Afghan farmers cultivate their only significant cash crop - poppies. This year there is a record harvest of poppies in Afghanistan. That harvest will be turned into the production of opium, which will thereupon provide nearly 90% of the world's supply of heroin - heroin that continues to poison the minds and lives of millions of people throughout the world. Most of the heroin users reside in western member nations of NATO - rich nations - whose citizens are rich enough to support a heroin habit. So Canada and other NATO nations involved in Afghanistan are not only pursuing a lost cause with little support. They are tacitly supporting the production of heroin which fries the brains and ruins the lives of millions of people - mostly westerners, and many Canadians.
And according to all credible reports, the whole situation there is getting worse by the day.
Once again Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and the Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier are tripping over each other as to where Canada goes from here. Two weeks ago, O'Connor gave the sunny prediction - contrary to everybody else who knows something about what is happening in Afghanistan - that over the next four or five months Canada would take on a reserve role. He said that when Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment - the Vandoos - had completed their rotation in Afghanistan, there would be 3000 Afghan Army personnel operating in Kandahar and that "we will continue to withdraw" as more Afghan army personnel are trained. He said that it would mean a reduction in Canadian combat duties.
A few days later, Hillier contradicted O'Connor, saying that the training process had just started and it would be a long time before the Afghans could do the job themselves. O'Connor tried to recover this past weekend at the Conservative caucus meeting in Charlottetown, by saying he and Hillier were on the same page and that he did not know how long it would be before the Afghans were capable of taking the pressure off of the Canadian troops.
This latest O'Connor/Hillier difference of opinion, when added to their misleading and contradictory statements on other embarassing issues surrounding the Afghan adventure, seems to have been the last straw for Harper. There is now strong speculation that O'Connor is on his way out in a very merciful and immediate shuffle to Veterans Affairs. Deputy PM Jim Prentice is widely predicted to replace the hapless O'Connor.
Chalk one up for Hillier. However the General, who has never met a microphone he doesn't love, may be next on the list for the secrecy obsessed Harper.
And if Harper doesn't wake up to the futility of it all soon, he too will be a victim.
Canada began its participation there for the right reasons. We agreed to help rid the world of the terrorists who organized 9/11 and the government that supported them - the Taliban. At the same time, we wanted to help the development of the country, to help children get an education, and assist in bringing about some semblance of the rule of law to the country. Good intentions. But as Samuel Johnson once wisely said 'The road to hell is paved with good intentions.' Afghanistan is turning out to be indeed a road to hell - for NATO troops there and the politicians of the countries who sent them.
The reasons for this international nightmare are plainly evident. Now that at least some of us have read some history of the region (the Prime Minister excluded, it seems [see, DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOG, July 5, 2007, 'Harper Gets Ready To Cut and Run - Again'] ), we realize that this war is an attempt to bring order to one of the wildest countries on earth. For more than 2000 years Afghanistan has proved itself to be a tough and well-nigh impossible nut to crack by powerful invaders and occupiers. From the era of Alexander the Great to modern times this mostly lawless country has always left their opponents either lifeless on the battlefield or beating a hasty, bloody, and disorderly retreat. Even vast and well-equiped armies from far more sophisticatred empires have failed to subdue the war-like propensities of the Afghan people. Alexander the Great didn't stay long. The British Army at the height of its Empire was routed there. And more recently, the Russians left in failure after racking up 15,000 dead Russian soldiers as part of the lost cause (See DARRYL RAYMAKER BLOGS, July 5, 2007 and March 18, 2007, 'Gordon O'Connor - In Over his Head').
The Kandahar region of southern Afghanistan is particularly difficult. For centuries it has been home turf to Pashtun tribes who roam the mountainous and lawless border region of Pakistan-Afghanistan. To the people who live there, life is cheap. Islamic religious fanatics abound. Added to this holy mess is the timid and weak NATO offering to the project - a scant 35,000 troops scattered throughout the country. Neither is there any great enthusiasm among NATO nations to relieve or help Canadians who, with so far 66 troops killed in action, are taking the worst of it.
But it gets worse. The NATO forces, together with the Karzai government are looking the other way while the poor Afghan farmers cultivate their only significant cash crop - poppies. This year there is a record harvest of poppies in Afghanistan. That harvest will be turned into the production of opium, which will thereupon provide nearly 90% of the world's supply of heroin - heroin that continues to poison the minds and lives of millions of people throughout the world. Most of the heroin users reside in western member nations of NATO - rich nations - whose citizens are rich enough to support a heroin habit. So Canada and other NATO nations involved in Afghanistan are not only pursuing a lost cause with little support. They are tacitly supporting the production of heroin which fries the brains and ruins the lives of millions of people - mostly westerners, and many Canadians.
And according to all credible reports, the whole situation there is getting worse by the day.
Once again Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor and the Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier are tripping over each other as to where Canada goes from here. Two weeks ago, O'Connor gave the sunny prediction - contrary to everybody else who knows something about what is happening in Afghanistan - that over the next four or five months Canada would take on a reserve role. He said that when Quebec's Royal 22nd Regiment - the Vandoos - had completed their rotation in Afghanistan, there would be 3000 Afghan Army personnel operating in Kandahar and that "we will continue to withdraw" as more Afghan army personnel are trained. He said that it would mean a reduction in Canadian combat duties.
A few days later, Hillier contradicted O'Connor, saying that the training process had just started and it would be a long time before the Afghans could do the job themselves. O'Connor tried to recover this past weekend at the Conservative caucus meeting in Charlottetown, by saying he and Hillier were on the same page and that he did not know how long it would be before the Afghans were capable of taking the pressure off of the Canadian troops.
This latest O'Connor/Hillier difference of opinion, when added to their misleading and contradictory statements on other embarassing issues surrounding the Afghan adventure, seems to have been the last straw for Harper. There is now strong speculation that O'Connor is on his way out in a very merciful and immediate shuffle to Veterans Affairs. Deputy PM Jim Prentice is widely predicted to replace the hapless O'Connor.
Chalk one up for Hillier. However the General, who has never met a microphone he doesn't love, may be next on the list for the secrecy obsessed Harper.
And if Harper doesn't wake up to the futility of it all soon, he too will be a victim.
Monday, June 04, 2007
AESOP COMES TO CANADA
It wasn't supposed to be this way.
The Federal Grits, divided and at war - with Grits - with gaping, bleeding, largely self-inflicted wounds. The wretched odor of Adscam apparently permeating deep into the Canadian landscape. Grits broke and Conservatives flush. Grits in the sloughs of despond. Conservatives cheerfully aloft, setting sail for what was sure to be their era in the sun.
The Grits, out of power and with a new leader - a serious and austere ex-Prof, struggling with the Queen's English, broadly berated and ridiculed even by the political literati, cognisenti and glitterati of his own Province.
The Conservatives, basking still in their minority victory of January 2006, with an apparently young, organized, and decisive man in motion leading his team of new eager young men and women, prepared and ready to take the country in a new and exciting direction. Ah, they thought, just a few more yards to the majority government finish line. No photo finish this time. The only thing that will be finished will be the Grits.
Unhappily for Bush's pal Steve Harper, it is not turning out that way.
The great unravelling began with the Conservative about face on the income trust issue. It continued with the billions of dollars of bribe money given to Quebec in the last budget. It gathered speed with the disaster of the detainee issue in Afghanistan and accusations of a coverup, together with the gargantuan and the continued ineptitude of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor. And then, further into the mire with Harper's feeble greenhouse gas policy flogged by his pushy, frat boy pit bull John Baird, more suited to managing the beer machine than selling any kind of a policy.
Hovering over all of this was and is the obvious (some would say odious) ideological love affair between the Prime Minister and probably the most detested and inept western leader in recent memory - G. W. Bush. Not to mention, the Prime Minister's bent for surly and extreme partisanship and Joe McCarthy-like allegations trashing the integrity and motives of Opposition members together with his disdain for the press.
The result of this potent, kool-aid cocktail of incompetence and hubris is a series of polls that put the Grits and Conservatives neck and neck, with the Bloc not wanting to play Jack Kevorkian in the Commons and no Party wanting a quick election. Not yet, in any event.
In the meantime, Stephane Dion continues to slowly and steadily hone and develop his skills. This past weekend, he wooed a couple of hundred local Grits at a fund raising dinner in Calgary. He spoke slowly and clearly to an impressed and rapt audience as he set forth his vision of Canada under a Dion Government. He was joined by his wife Janine Krieber, a solid and brainy politician in her own right, who charmed the crowd.
The next day in a speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference, he promised to help Canadian municipalities reduce a 100 million dollar infrastructure deficit, with some long-term planning and the permanent transfer of the federal gas tax. Dion's speech earned him three standing ovations.
Is it Aesop or Hans Christian Anderson? Is Dion the Turtoise, and Harper the Hare? Or is Dion the Ugly Duckling becoming a swan? Take your pick. But Dion will be the Prime Minister after the next election.
The Federal Grits, divided and at war - with Grits - with gaping, bleeding, largely self-inflicted wounds. The wretched odor of Adscam apparently permeating deep into the Canadian landscape. Grits broke and Conservatives flush. Grits in the sloughs of despond. Conservatives cheerfully aloft, setting sail for what was sure to be their era in the sun.
The Grits, out of power and with a new leader - a serious and austere ex-Prof, struggling with the Queen's English, broadly berated and ridiculed even by the political literati, cognisenti and glitterati of his own Province.
The Conservatives, basking still in their minority victory of January 2006, with an apparently young, organized, and decisive man in motion leading his team of new eager young men and women, prepared and ready to take the country in a new and exciting direction. Ah, they thought, just a few more yards to the majority government finish line. No photo finish this time. The only thing that will be finished will be the Grits.
Unhappily for Bush's pal Steve Harper, it is not turning out that way.
The great unravelling began with the Conservative about face on the income trust issue. It continued with the billions of dollars of bribe money given to Quebec in the last budget. It gathered speed with the disaster of the detainee issue in Afghanistan and accusations of a coverup, together with the gargantuan and the continued ineptitude of Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor. And then, further into the mire with Harper's feeble greenhouse gas policy flogged by his pushy, frat boy pit bull John Baird, more suited to managing the beer machine than selling any kind of a policy.
Hovering over all of this was and is the obvious (some would say odious) ideological love affair between the Prime Minister and probably the most detested and inept western leader in recent memory - G. W. Bush. Not to mention, the Prime Minister's bent for surly and extreme partisanship and Joe McCarthy-like allegations trashing the integrity and motives of Opposition members together with his disdain for the press.
The result of this potent, kool-aid cocktail of incompetence and hubris is a series of polls that put the Grits and Conservatives neck and neck, with the Bloc not wanting to play Jack Kevorkian in the Commons and no Party wanting a quick election. Not yet, in any event.
In the meantime, Stephane Dion continues to slowly and steadily hone and develop his skills. This past weekend, he wooed a couple of hundred local Grits at a fund raising dinner in Calgary. He spoke slowly and clearly to an impressed and rapt audience as he set forth his vision of Canada under a Dion Government. He was joined by his wife Janine Krieber, a solid and brainy politician in her own right, who charmed the crowd.
The next day in a speech to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities conference, he promised to help Canadian municipalities reduce a 100 million dollar infrastructure deficit, with some long-term planning and the permanent transfer of the federal gas tax. Dion's speech earned him three standing ovations.
Is it Aesop or Hans Christian Anderson? Is Dion the Turtoise, and Harper the Hare? Or is Dion the Ugly Duckling becoming a swan? Take your pick. But Dion will be the Prime Minister after the next election.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
PARLIAMENT HILL: THE DAWNING OF A NEW LIBERAL ERA
Bush's pal Steve Harper is not doing well these days.
So long as Steve had a simplistic 5-point program and stuck to it, he did well. But when it came to multi-tasking he had trouble passing gas and blowing his nose at the same time. When it came to putting out fires he was all thumbs with both the hose and the extinguisher.
Harper's problems really began with his flip-flop on income trusts. During the election campaign, unlike the Grits who seemed to be lurking around the next corner to do them in, Stevie had promised to maintain them as an investment vehicle. Once in power however, he fell under the spell of the gurus at Finance, the Bank of Canada, and Bay Street. They convinced him to break the promise. And so, the sly and stealthful pal of Bush's, shamelessly changed his mind. Income Trusts, he announced, would be phased out. The handsome returns they delivered to their investors would be no more. Thusly, he broke his word to a key group of the traditional coalition of Conservative voters - retired people with savings, not to mention, the brokers and financial advisors who feed off of them, together with other business groups. They were all loyal, fair and foul weather Conservatives. Overnight, many became former loyal, fair and foul weather Conservatives.
The front end man picked by Stevie to do the verbalizing dirty work was an arrogant Ontario former ambulance chaser, Finance Minister James Flaherty. Flaherty's hauty demeanor while presiding as the chief executioner of the much beloved investment vehicle, did little but exacerbate Stevie's Government's first major PR disaster.
The next stop along Steve's road to perdition was his Budget. It took about 24 hours for the Canadian people to grasp the essence of it all - an obvious and giant bribe to the Province of Quebec.
The billions transferred over to Steve's pal Jean Charest never had a snowball's chance of passing the stink test. Charest was informed of Harper's largesse of several billion to La Belle Province to correct a mythical fiscal imbalance in Equalization payments near the end of a brutal provincial election campaign which was not going well. And so, in one of the most unsavoury and odious moves in Canadian political history, with the proceeds of his bribe, Charest offered a huge tax cut to Quebecers. He squeaked through with a narrow minority victory.
The Budget also earned the undying enmity of Tory Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland, who came out swinging about what he saw as another broken Harper promise - the promise of not including resource revenues to calculate Equalization payments. Williams remains on the warpath, taking his rip-roaring attack on Steve's character and policies, on speechifying road trips elsewhere in Canada. Premier Calvert of Saskatchewan, notwithstanding that he is a mild gentleman as befits a man of the cloth, has also told anybody within earshot of what he thinks of the conniving Prime Minister. Canadians from across the country cursed the Prime Minister as another Quebec appeaser. Even Quebecers seemed embarassed by the Conservative generosity of other Canadians' money. His support there has dropped like a rock since.
Then comes Afghanistan. The hapless and feckless warrior, retired General and Minister of National Defence Gordon O'Connor, under constant fire in the House, changed his story about the treatment and monitoring of Canadian captured detainees in Afghanistan repeatedly. He was ably assisted in the confusion by Steve himself, together with the grey-matter challenged Liberal gift from the Conservatives that keeps on giving, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.
The cuckolded (probably not the most accurate term in hearkening to his treatment by the vamp Belinda, but delicious nonetheless) Foreign Affairs Minister Peter McKay also got into the act. His Department first lied about the existence of a report on conditions in Afghanistan. It then produced a heavily censored version. When an intrepid Globe and Mail reporter produced the original, Canadians discovered that the censored report left all of the good news in, and the bad news out - an odious coverup. Canadians already felt queasy about Afghanistan, there being no end in sight to our sacrifice of lives and money. Now they are left with the firm conviction that the Government does not know what it is doing there. The treatment of the detainees handed over by Canadian troops to the Afghani authorities who tortured them, sounded to them an awful lot like the evil-doers Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanomo.
Next on the Agenda was the Global warming issue. This is the one promise that Bush's pal Steve Harper obviously did not want to break - the promise that he would go easier on industry than the Grits' Kyoto policy. The basis of Stevie's policy is the reduction of intensity levels of green house gas emissions, as opposed to an absolute reduction of emissions. A reduction of intensity levels will not necessarily reduce emissions. Canadians understand that in the case of the oilsands, the biggest greehouse gas belcher in the country, absolute emissions will increase regardless of intensity reductions because the production of oil from the oilsands is expected to triple in less than 10 years. The Canadian policy based on intensity reductions is - in the words of Al Gore, the guru of global warming - "a complete and total fraud."
To sell his flim-flam plan, Stevie sent into the battle, his doorman, John Baird - the chippy and burly, highly-partisan political hit man whose Frat boy demeanor reminds one of the anchorman on the college relay beer-drinking team. Yes, Baird was the designated hitter to take on the saintly Suzuki and the immensely popular Al Gore. The Frat boy never had a chance.
And finally, we have the plight of NHL star Shane Doan. Doan, from Halkirk, Alberta, is the highly effective and popular Captain of the Canadian National Team presently duking it out for the world hockey championship in Moscow. He had a dust-up with some NHL officials a couple of years ago, who accused him of making an anti-French slur during a heated hockey game. He denied it. There was an investigation, and he was cleared. But it wasn't enough to satisfy the politicians. Led by the Bloc, a hearing ensued last week before the Commons Official Languages Committee. All of the parties wanted in on this keystone kops act. By God, they were going to fall all over each other protecting our country from racial slurs in the hockey rink. Here, Steve had an opportunity of picking up some lost points. He could have and should have said, 'This is ridiculous. There's been an investigation and he's been cleared. Get off his case." He let Shane twist slowly in the wind until the debate petered out. Stevie just couldn't resist the further pandering to the nationalist vote in Quebec. He said nothing. And he lost more points. The whole Ottawa political scene became even more of a laughing stock than usual. Oh, yes, when it was all over and there were no further real or imaginary points to get, Bush's pal Steve Harper called Shane to congratulate him on a hat trick. Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it. Fortunately, the Canadian people saw it for the crass opportunism that it was.
Today Canadians received further information that the polls, already getting soft for Stevie, have taken an alarming anti-Conservative turn. An Ipsos Read poll released today shows the Conservatives with 35%, Liberals at 34%, NDP at 14%, the Bloc with 9% and Greens at 7%.
Most importantly, the Grits lead in Ontario 44% to 34%. And in Quebec, with the people obviously having more pride than Steve gives them credit for, the Grits are second to the Bloc and ahead of the Tories: The Bloc has 35%, the Grits 25% and the Conservatives 20%. In Atlantic Canada the Grits are ahead with 43% to 32% for the Conservatives. Only in the west, do the Conservatives lead the Grits: in British Columbia, 43% to 32%, in Alberta 66% to 20%, and in Saskatchewan, 46% to 25%.
If the election were held tomorrow, Stephane Dion and the Grits would win, because the overwhelming Conservative lead in Alberta does not translate into enough seats.
Bush's pal Steve Harper is in deep political trouble. What's worse, the Canadian people don't care much for him. Get ready for a Dion Government. You can say you heard it here first.
So long as Steve had a simplistic 5-point program and stuck to it, he did well. But when it came to multi-tasking he had trouble passing gas and blowing his nose at the same time. When it came to putting out fires he was all thumbs with both the hose and the extinguisher.
Harper's problems really began with his flip-flop on income trusts. During the election campaign, unlike the Grits who seemed to be lurking around the next corner to do them in, Stevie had promised to maintain them as an investment vehicle. Once in power however, he fell under the spell of the gurus at Finance, the Bank of Canada, and Bay Street. They convinced him to break the promise. And so, the sly and stealthful pal of Bush's, shamelessly changed his mind. Income Trusts, he announced, would be phased out. The handsome returns they delivered to their investors would be no more. Thusly, he broke his word to a key group of the traditional coalition of Conservative voters - retired people with savings, not to mention, the brokers and financial advisors who feed off of them, together with other business groups. They were all loyal, fair and foul weather Conservatives. Overnight, many became former loyal, fair and foul weather Conservatives.
The front end man picked by Stevie to do the verbalizing dirty work was an arrogant Ontario former ambulance chaser, Finance Minister James Flaherty. Flaherty's hauty demeanor while presiding as the chief executioner of the much beloved investment vehicle, did little but exacerbate Stevie's Government's first major PR disaster.
The next stop along Steve's road to perdition was his Budget. It took about 24 hours for the Canadian people to grasp the essence of it all - an obvious and giant bribe to the Province of Quebec.
The billions transferred over to Steve's pal Jean Charest never had a snowball's chance of passing the stink test. Charest was informed of Harper's largesse of several billion to La Belle Province to correct a mythical fiscal imbalance in Equalization payments near the end of a brutal provincial election campaign which was not going well. And so, in one of the most unsavoury and odious moves in Canadian political history, with the proceeds of his bribe, Charest offered a huge tax cut to Quebecers. He squeaked through with a narrow minority victory.
The Budget also earned the undying enmity of Tory Premier Danny Williams of Newfoundland, who came out swinging about what he saw as another broken Harper promise - the promise of not including resource revenues to calculate Equalization payments. Williams remains on the warpath, taking his rip-roaring attack on Steve's character and policies, on speechifying road trips elsewhere in Canada. Premier Calvert of Saskatchewan, notwithstanding that he is a mild gentleman as befits a man of the cloth, has also told anybody within earshot of what he thinks of the conniving Prime Minister. Canadians from across the country cursed the Prime Minister as another Quebec appeaser. Even Quebecers seemed embarassed by the Conservative generosity of other Canadians' money. His support there has dropped like a rock since.
Then comes Afghanistan. The hapless and feckless warrior, retired General and Minister of National Defence Gordon O'Connor, under constant fire in the House, changed his story about the treatment and monitoring of Canadian captured detainees in Afghanistan repeatedly. He was ably assisted in the confusion by Steve himself, together with the grey-matter challenged Liberal gift from the Conservatives that keeps on giving, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day.
The cuckolded (probably not the most accurate term in hearkening to his treatment by the vamp Belinda, but delicious nonetheless) Foreign Affairs Minister Peter McKay also got into the act. His Department first lied about the existence of a report on conditions in Afghanistan. It then produced a heavily censored version. When an intrepid Globe and Mail reporter produced the original, Canadians discovered that the censored report left all of the good news in, and the bad news out - an odious coverup. Canadians already felt queasy about Afghanistan, there being no end in sight to our sacrifice of lives and money. Now they are left with the firm conviction that the Government does not know what it is doing there. The treatment of the detainees handed over by Canadian troops to the Afghani authorities who tortured them, sounded to them an awful lot like the evil-doers Bush, Cheney Rumsfeld, Abu Ghraib, and Guantanomo.
Next on the Agenda was the Global warming issue. This is the one promise that Bush's pal Steve Harper obviously did not want to break - the promise that he would go easier on industry than the Grits' Kyoto policy. The basis of Stevie's policy is the reduction of intensity levels of green house gas emissions, as opposed to an absolute reduction of emissions. A reduction of intensity levels will not necessarily reduce emissions. Canadians understand that in the case of the oilsands, the biggest greehouse gas belcher in the country, absolute emissions will increase regardless of intensity reductions because the production of oil from the oilsands is expected to triple in less than 10 years. The Canadian policy based on intensity reductions is - in the words of Al Gore, the guru of global warming - "a complete and total fraud."
To sell his flim-flam plan, Stevie sent into the battle, his doorman, John Baird - the chippy and burly, highly-partisan political hit man whose Frat boy demeanor reminds one of the anchorman on the college relay beer-drinking team. Yes, Baird was the designated hitter to take on the saintly Suzuki and the immensely popular Al Gore. The Frat boy never had a chance.
And finally, we have the plight of NHL star Shane Doan. Doan, from Halkirk, Alberta, is the highly effective and popular Captain of the Canadian National Team presently duking it out for the world hockey championship in Moscow. He had a dust-up with some NHL officials a couple of years ago, who accused him of making an anti-French slur during a heated hockey game. He denied it. There was an investigation, and he was cleared. But it wasn't enough to satisfy the politicians. Led by the Bloc, a hearing ensued last week before the Commons Official Languages Committee. All of the parties wanted in on this keystone kops act. By God, they were going to fall all over each other protecting our country from racial slurs in the hockey rink. Here, Steve had an opportunity of picking up some lost points. He could have and should have said, 'This is ridiculous. There's been an investigation and he's been cleared. Get off his case." He let Shane twist slowly in the wind until the debate petered out. Stevie just couldn't resist the further pandering to the nationalist vote in Quebec. He said nothing. And he lost more points. The whole Ottawa political scene became even more of a laughing stock than usual. Oh, yes, when it was all over and there were no further real or imaginary points to get, Bush's pal Steve Harper called Shane to congratulate him on a hat trick. Talk about trying to have your cake and eat it. Fortunately, the Canadian people saw it for the crass opportunism that it was.
Today Canadians received further information that the polls, already getting soft for Stevie, have taken an alarming anti-Conservative turn. An Ipsos Read poll released today shows the Conservatives with 35%, Liberals at 34%, NDP at 14%, the Bloc with 9% and Greens at 7%.
Most importantly, the Grits lead in Ontario 44% to 34%. And in Quebec, with the people obviously having more pride than Steve gives them credit for, the Grits are second to the Bloc and ahead of the Tories: The Bloc has 35%, the Grits 25% and the Conservatives 20%. In Atlantic Canada the Grits are ahead with 43% to 32% for the Conservatives. Only in the west, do the Conservatives lead the Grits: in British Columbia, 43% to 32%, in Alberta 66% to 20%, and in Saskatchewan, 46% to 25%.
If the election were held tomorrow, Stephane Dion and the Grits would win, because the overwhelming Conservative lead in Alberta does not translate into enough seats.
Bush's pal Steve Harper is in deep political trouble. What's worse, the Canadian people don't care much for him. Get ready for a Dion Government. You can say you heard it here first.
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
HARPER AND O'CONNOR: CANADA'S BUSH AND RUMSFELD ( OR CHENEY - TAKE YOUR PICK)
Those naive Canadians who believe that the Harper Government and the Bush Government operate differently, better start paying attention to what is going on.
What is happening in Afghanistan with respect to our military operations as they deal with suspected Taliban detainees is outrageous and perhaps worse.
By way of review, as has been been widely reported this week by the Globe and Mail, our Canadian troops from time to time have detained people suspected of being or helping Taliban fighters. After the detainees are taken into custody by Canada, they are turned over to the Afghanistan authorities. Some of those are handed over to the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security, which is the Intelligence Police. The Canadian military have signed an agreement with the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission wherein the Commission agrees to monitor and report back to the Canadian authorities about any allegations or evidence of torture or other mistreatment while the detainees are in the custody of the Intelligence Police.
Defence Minister O'Connor has stated to the House that he knows of no allegations of torture, and that he has relied on the Human Rights Commission to keep the Canadian military informed pursuant to the Agreement.
The Geneva Convention requires a country that has taken prisoners that are transferred to another authority, must ensure that those prisoners are not abused by that other authority.
The Globe and Mail's in depth look at the situation published this week, indicates that there were 30 suspected Taliban detainees who, once they were under the control of the Intelligence Police, were tortured and mistreated in a host of inhumane ways. Furthermore, the report states that the Human Rights Commission said that it does not have enough staff to monitor what is happening to the detainees. Worse yet, the Intelligence Police refuses to cooperate and allow the Human Rights Commission to investigate.
Many people are aware of this deplorable situation. Defence Minister O'Connor and Prime Minister Harper have both stated to the Commons, that they are not aware of such goings on. The Prime Minister in the House yesterday, said that the allegations of torture were allegations of the Taliban. That is not what the Globe and Mail reported. All of the 30 suspects were ultimately released with no charges filed. Upon their release they told of suffering from torture while in the custody of the Intelligence Police. The Prime Minister said yesterday, ". . . We do not have evidence that [the torture] is true. And certainly I have to say that to suggest the Canadian Forces would deliberately violate the Geneva Convention, and to make that suggestion solely based on the allegations of the Taliban, I think, is the height of irresponsibility."
O''Connor continued his dissembling, Pinnochio-like, wrong-again, performance in the House by saying that the Human Rights Commission, ". . . have confirmed that they can do what we have asked them." In fact, the Globe and Mail discovered that the Human Rights Commission is barred from inspecting detainees held in cells run by the Intelligence Police and are understaffed to properly do their work.
Are Harper and O'Connor stupid, wilfully blind, or stupid liars?
A clue lies in a related story about a written report prepared by Canadian diplomats respecting conditions in Afghanistan. The Report was thought to include information on Human Rights. When inquiries by the Globe and Mail were made about the existence of such a report, the Foreign Affairs Department lied. They said it did not exist.
After complaints were made to the Access to Information Commissioner, Foreign Affairs released the Report. It appeared to have been prepared in 2006 and was entitled "Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights." The produced report had large swaths of it blacked out.
Fortunately, the Globe and Mail got its hands on the full unedited and uncensored report. The two reports were compared - the censored report and the complete report. Among the passages blacked out were the words: "Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, and detention without trial are all too common." Another blacked out passage stated "the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006." Another blacked out passage stated: "military, intelligence and police forces have been accused of involvement in arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, extortion, torture and extrajudicial killing." There were more statements which showed that torture and corruption of the Security forces that had been edited out of the censored report. In fact, the edited, blacked-out version of the report contained only positive news. The full report contained negative passages together with the positive.
The Foreign Affairs Department appeared to have told a whopper when it said originally there was no report. Then it produced a report containing only the good news and censoring the bad -a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.
The actions of our Government in this sordid affair are uncannily akin to the Bush administration practice of tailoring intelligence to support its mindless policies in Iraq, and deliberately misleading his public about torture and mistreatment of prisoners by United States forces in places like Abu Graibh and Guantanamo.
In fact, the Canadian Government at the moment is run by many extremist, neocon, Bush admirers and lackeys. The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence are two of them. They are prepared to mislead, lie, and look the other way about torture and mistreatment of detainees, so that the public swallow their Afghanistan policy. Canadians, when they are finally asked their opinions about this Government at the ballot box, will have it all figured out by then. And this Government will be defeated.
What is happening in Afghanistan with respect to our military operations as they deal with suspected Taliban detainees is outrageous and perhaps worse.
By way of review, as has been been widely reported this week by the Globe and Mail, our Canadian troops from time to time have detained people suspected of being or helping Taliban fighters. After the detainees are taken into custody by Canada, they are turned over to the Afghanistan authorities. Some of those are handed over to the Afghanistan National Directorate of Security, which is the Intelligence Police. The Canadian military have signed an agreement with the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission wherein the Commission agrees to monitor and report back to the Canadian authorities about any allegations or evidence of torture or other mistreatment while the detainees are in the custody of the Intelligence Police.
Defence Minister O'Connor has stated to the House that he knows of no allegations of torture, and that he has relied on the Human Rights Commission to keep the Canadian military informed pursuant to the Agreement.
The Geneva Convention requires a country that has taken prisoners that are transferred to another authority, must ensure that those prisoners are not abused by that other authority.
The Globe and Mail's in depth look at the situation published this week, indicates that there were 30 suspected Taliban detainees who, once they were under the control of the Intelligence Police, were tortured and mistreated in a host of inhumane ways. Furthermore, the report states that the Human Rights Commission said that it does not have enough staff to monitor what is happening to the detainees. Worse yet, the Intelligence Police refuses to cooperate and allow the Human Rights Commission to investigate.
Many people are aware of this deplorable situation. Defence Minister O'Connor and Prime Minister Harper have both stated to the Commons, that they are not aware of such goings on. The Prime Minister in the House yesterday, said that the allegations of torture were allegations of the Taliban. That is not what the Globe and Mail reported. All of the 30 suspects were ultimately released with no charges filed. Upon their release they told of suffering from torture while in the custody of the Intelligence Police. The Prime Minister said yesterday, ". . . We do not have evidence that [the torture] is true. And certainly I have to say that to suggest the Canadian Forces would deliberately violate the Geneva Convention, and to make that suggestion solely based on the allegations of the Taliban, I think, is the height of irresponsibility."
O''Connor continued his dissembling, Pinnochio-like, wrong-again, performance in the House by saying that the Human Rights Commission, ". . . have confirmed that they can do what we have asked them." In fact, the Globe and Mail discovered that the Human Rights Commission is barred from inspecting detainees held in cells run by the Intelligence Police and are understaffed to properly do their work.
Are Harper and O'Connor stupid, wilfully blind, or stupid liars?
A clue lies in a related story about a written report prepared by Canadian diplomats respecting conditions in Afghanistan. The Report was thought to include information on Human Rights. When inquiries by the Globe and Mail were made about the existence of such a report, the Foreign Affairs Department lied. They said it did not exist.
After complaints were made to the Access to Information Commissioner, Foreign Affairs released the Report. It appeared to have been prepared in 2006 and was entitled "Good Governance, Democratic Development and Human Rights." The produced report had large swaths of it blacked out.
Fortunately, the Globe and Mail got its hands on the full unedited and uncensored report. The two reports were compared - the censored report and the complete report. Among the passages blacked out were the words: "Extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture, and detention without trial are all too common." Another blacked out passage stated "the overall human rights situation in Afghanistan deteriorated in 2006." Another blacked out passage stated: "military, intelligence and police forces have been accused of involvement in arbitrary arrest, kidnapping, extortion, torture and extrajudicial killing." There were more statements which showed that torture and corruption of the Security forces that had been edited out of the censored report. In fact, the edited, blacked-out version of the report contained only positive news. The full report contained negative passages together with the positive.
The Foreign Affairs Department appeared to have told a whopper when it said originally there was no report. Then it produced a report containing only the good news and censoring the bad -a deliberate attempt to mislead the public.
The actions of our Government in this sordid affair are uncannily akin to the Bush administration practice of tailoring intelligence to support its mindless policies in Iraq, and deliberately misleading his public about torture and mistreatment of prisoners by United States forces in places like Abu Graibh and Guantanamo.
In fact, the Canadian Government at the moment is run by many extremist, neocon, Bush admirers and lackeys. The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence are two of them. They are prepared to mislead, lie, and look the other way about torture and mistreatment of detainees, so that the public swallow their Afghanistan policy. Canadians, when they are finally asked their opinions about this Government at the ballot box, will have it all figured out by then. And this Government will be defeated.
Monday, April 23, 2007
GORDON O'CONNOR: LIKE THE PIANO PLAYER IN THE BORDELLO
In case Canadians think that we don't have our very own Dick Cheneys and Donald Rumsfelds, they should read today's Globe and Mail. In a front page expose we learned that when suspected Taliban Afghans are captured by our troops, after being handcuffed and treated politely, they are turned over to Afghan security forces. The Globe dug up 30 former detainees in Afghanistan who said that they received good treatment from the Canadians.
However, once the Canadians had sent them to the Afghan security forces it was a different story. To put it mildly. The Afghans were a little harder on the detainees. For example, they were choked. They were hung by their ankles. They were whipped with electrical cables. They were starved, stripped naked and made to spend the night in brisk Afghan temperatures. And this treatment went on for days on end. When their tormentors decided that the detainees were no threat, they were then released.
When the Opposition got on O'Connor's case in the Commons today about him turning a blind eye to torture, he and the Prime Minister said our Canadian troops treated all detainees well. Which was true as far as it goes. As to the treatment of the detainees by the Afghan security forces, well, they would look into it. With a straight face, O'Connor said in his defence that the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission had promised to advise Canada if any of the detainees were abused.
That ranks up there as a mother of all disingenuous responses. O'Connor has been connected to the military all of his life. He rose to the rank of General in the Canadian Armed Force. After he retired he lobbied for some Defence contracting firms for a time before he went into politics. Since he's been in politics he has been Defence Minister. He is telling us and would have us believe that he is naive about these things. He pleads ignorance of interrogation methods and treatment of detainees by third world countries like Afghanistan, a country steeped in revolutionary foment for as long as anyone can remember. This is beyond belief - just like the piano player in the bordello who claims he doesn't know what's going on upstairs. This is monumental stupidity or wilful blindness. Take your pick.
O'Connor's actions before and after the evidence was presented by the Globe and Mail are no different from Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush who denied knowledge of mistreatment and torture in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison or Guantanamo Bay. It is the same mentality of officialdom that would send Maher Arar to Syria from Canada and the United States, so that the dirty work would be done by another country that had ways of making people talk. So they wouldn't have to worry about inconveniences like the Charter of Rights or civil liberties lawyers.
This is a continuation of O'Connor's blindness or stupidity on these issues. In the Commons in early March, he was questioned about allegations of detainee abuse by Canadian troops. He responded that Canada got reports and updates from the International Committee of the Red Cross on such issues. Two weeks later he apologized for his misstatement. He had discovered that The Red Cross has no such obligation.
O'Connor is a cowboy in matters of Defence. As is General Hillier, the Chief of the Defence Staff who broke through to the public consciousness in July with his famous 'murders and scumbags' speech. Part of what he said on that day about the Taliban was this: "These are detestable murderers and scumbags. I'll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties,.." Now if that isn't a page out of George W. Bush's 'Political Speeches for Dummies' book I don't know what is.
Hillier signed an agreement in December of 2005 wherein Canadian Armed Forces would transfer suspected Taliban detainees to the Afghan security forces. However, the agreement contained no clause that the Canadian military had a right to inspect the detainees after transfer. Unlike other European nations who are in Afghanistan as part of the NATO forces -those nations have such a clause in their agreements.
O'Connor and Hillier are reckless. They are Canada's Cheney and Rumsfeld.
As suggested today by a couple of Professors, if it is proven that Canadians turned over the captive detainees knowing they would be tortured, the two cowboys may be in for a helluva lot of trouble for themselves, not to mention the disgrace upon our country that will follow.
However, once the Canadians had sent them to the Afghan security forces it was a different story. To put it mildly. The Afghans were a little harder on the detainees. For example, they were choked. They were hung by their ankles. They were whipped with electrical cables. They were starved, stripped naked and made to spend the night in brisk Afghan temperatures. And this treatment went on for days on end. When their tormentors decided that the detainees were no threat, they were then released.
When the Opposition got on O'Connor's case in the Commons today about him turning a blind eye to torture, he and the Prime Minister said our Canadian troops treated all detainees well. Which was true as far as it goes. As to the treatment of the detainees by the Afghan security forces, well, they would look into it. With a straight face, O'Connor said in his defence that the Afghanistan Human Rights Commission had promised to advise Canada if any of the detainees were abused.
That ranks up there as a mother of all disingenuous responses. O'Connor has been connected to the military all of his life. He rose to the rank of General in the Canadian Armed Force. After he retired he lobbied for some Defence contracting firms for a time before he went into politics. Since he's been in politics he has been Defence Minister. He is telling us and would have us believe that he is naive about these things. He pleads ignorance of interrogation methods and treatment of detainees by third world countries like Afghanistan, a country steeped in revolutionary foment for as long as anyone can remember. This is beyond belief - just like the piano player in the bordello who claims he doesn't know what's going on upstairs. This is monumental stupidity or wilful blindness. Take your pick.
O'Connor's actions before and after the evidence was presented by the Globe and Mail are no different from Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush who denied knowledge of mistreatment and torture in Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison or Guantanamo Bay. It is the same mentality of officialdom that would send Maher Arar to Syria from Canada and the United States, so that the dirty work would be done by another country that had ways of making people talk. So they wouldn't have to worry about inconveniences like the Charter of Rights or civil liberties lawyers.
This is a continuation of O'Connor's blindness or stupidity on these issues. In the Commons in early March, he was questioned about allegations of detainee abuse by Canadian troops. He responded that Canada got reports and updates from the International Committee of the Red Cross on such issues. Two weeks later he apologized for his misstatement. He had discovered that The Red Cross has no such obligation.
O'Connor is a cowboy in matters of Defence. As is General Hillier, the Chief of the Defence Staff who broke through to the public consciousness in July with his famous 'murders and scumbags' speech. Part of what he said on that day about the Taliban was this: "These are detestable murderers and scumbags. I'll tell you that right up front. They detest our freedoms, they detest our society, they detest our liberties,.." Now if that isn't a page out of George W. Bush's 'Political Speeches for Dummies' book I don't know what is.
Hillier signed an agreement in December of 2005 wherein Canadian Armed Forces would transfer suspected Taliban detainees to the Afghan security forces. However, the agreement contained no clause that the Canadian military had a right to inspect the detainees after transfer. Unlike other European nations who are in Afghanistan as part of the NATO forces -those nations have such a clause in their agreements.
O'Connor and Hillier are reckless. They are Canada's Cheney and Rumsfeld.
As suggested today by a couple of Professors, if it is proven that Canadians turned over the captive detainees knowing they would be tortured, the two cowboys may be in for a helluva lot of trouble for themselves, not to mention the disgrace upon our country that will follow.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
STEPHEN HARPER AND THE GREAT UNRAVELING
It all looked so easy at first - the new Liberal leader Stephane Dion struggling to get his message across in English, a youthful (if portly) Prime Minister that seemed to stick to his promises and deliver well crafted speeches, a Government party unburdened by scandal, party coffers bursting at the seams, the Premier of Quebec making nice, an economy going gangbusters - shurely, it was only a matter of time and the Conservatives would form a majority Government.
The chattering class by a wide margin interpreted the Quebec election results as boding well for Steve. The public seemed to show strong initial support for the budget - initial polls showed the Conservatives' support spiked to 40%. It all looked so rosy for Bush's pal Steve Harper. It was going to be a waltz. A breeze. A romp. He had the bucks, the brand new hi-tech 17500 square foot, shiny headquarters. And the polls that showed him to be a 2 to 1 favorite as the leader who would make the best Prime Minister.
Well, if I may be permitted to indulge in some trite and hackneyed political truisms, that was then and this is now. Or, dare I say, if two weeks is a long time in politics, one month may seem like an eternity.
Since the Budget was tabled on April 19, its been all downhill for Stevie. It took a few days to settle in, but once Canadians had time to think about the great Quebec giveaway - the billions given to rectify a mythical fiscal imbalance - they were . . . well, they were underwhelmed. Particularly when they thought about Premier Charest - toute de suite, as they would say in La Belle Province -bribing Quebecers with a 700 million tax break upon hearing of of Harper's beneficence on the eve of the Quebec election. Premier Danny Williams, the colourful and fearless newfy and the normally sober and sedate man-of-the-cloth Premier Calvert of Saskatchewan, began leading an attack on the Budget that continues unabated.
Even Bay Streeters, who one would think regarded Stevie as their fair-haired boy, became angry. They were irate over the Budgetary tax change that disallowed Canadian companies deducting loan interest for foreign investments.
The El Stinko Budget seemed to revive that damnable Income Trust issue still festering in the minds of millions of middle class Canadians and income trust business leaders. Harper's shameless broken election promise saw net worths of ordinary Canadians slashed. Cash flows that older families had relied on for their twilight years, thanks to Harper, were now out the window. Furthermore, piranha-like foreign companies were now picking up business assets of the trusts for a song. Ontario MP and Grit finance critic John McCallum was greeted by cheers - in Calgary of all places - as he assailed Harper and his Government for being idiots and morons for trashing income trusts.
But that's not all. Soon to replace Stockwell Day as the gift to the Liberals that keeps on giving, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has been front and center in the Conservative drive to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Former General O'Connor was already in trouble. He had to do an embarassing about face by admitting in the Commons that the Red Cross did not inform Canadian authorities if Taliban prisoners turned over by Canadians to Afghani authorities were mistreated. He had earlier informed the House otherwise. O'Connor was also
under heavy criticism regarding Federal untendered purchasing contracts made between his Department and a company for which he had formerly lobbied.
In recent days O'Connor blithely commented that the Afghanistan war would probably last 15 years. Underlining that statement and in a move indicating Canada would be in the Kandahar debacle far beyond the Commons approved 2009 date, his Department acquired tanks from Holland which will only be delivered in 2009. This comes at a time when plenty of Canadians have become concerned with body bags of our brave young troops, and informed that the good news of our heavy lifting participation in the NATO initiative in Afghanistan is not shared by knowledgeable observers on the ground. The feel-good rhetoric from O'Connor, Day, Toews, and Hillier about success in Afghanistan seems to be shared only among themselves.
And there remains the disquiet felt by many Canadians about the meanness of the Prime Minister, reflected by his partisan and personal attacks which can only be described as extreme - accusations that Liberals support the Taliban instead of our troops, that a Liberal Sikh MP did not support the continuation of measures under the anti-terror legislation so as to keep his father in law from testifying at the Air India Inquiry, and that Liberals are not a friend of Israel, etc. etc.
There's more. Now we have the attack on Kyoto. Harper's Environment Minister Pit bull, John Baird's over the top doomsday scenario unveiled this week in the Senate hearings has met with derision from all quarters - even including traditional Conservative cheerleader Canwest columnist Don Martin. Senator Denis Dawson referring to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth,' called Baird's show 'a convenient lie.'
And if all of that wasn't bad enough, now Stephane Dion has begun to find his voice. His environment policy is widely seen by experts to be the most responsible. He and John McCallum have offered up a credible alternative to the Conservative axing of Income Trusts, so as to protect the investments of ordinary Canadians. He has boldly agreed with Elizabeth May not to run a Liberal candidate in the Central Nova Riding that she hopes to win from Peter McKay, and she has agreed to reciprocate in his Montreal Riding. This clears the way for unprecedented cooperation between the Liberals and the Greens (and probably some Green NDP) in the next Federal Election.
The result: a poll released by Decima Research on April 17 shows the Tories at 34% - 2 points below election day in January 2006. The Grits have 31%, the NDP have 15%, the Greens have 11% and the Bloc 7%. And in Quebec, the Budget honeymoon has really gone south: the Bloc has 29% and the Grits lead the Conservatives 23% to 20%. Apparently Quebecers do not liked being bribed. The ND's trail with 10%.
The future is bleak for Bush's pal Steve Harper. With numbers like that he will not win a majority. With a trend like that he is likely to lose if the election is called soon. With gaffes like he and his Government have committed in recent weeks, the result could be a Liberal majority Government. Which of course, I have predicted. Once again, you can say you heard it here first.
The chattering class by a wide margin interpreted the Quebec election results as boding well for Steve. The public seemed to show strong initial support for the budget - initial polls showed the Conservatives' support spiked to 40%. It all looked so rosy for Bush's pal Steve Harper. It was going to be a waltz. A breeze. A romp. He had the bucks, the brand new hi-tech 17500 square foot, shiny headquarters. And the polls that showed him to be a 2 to 1 favorite as the leader who would make the best Prime Minister.
Well, if I may be permitted to indulge in some trite and hackneyed political truisms, that was then and this is now. Or, dare I say, if two weeks is a long time in politics, one month may seem like an eternity.
Since the Budget was tabled on April 19, its been all downhill for Stevie. It took a few days to settle in, but once Canadians had time to think about the great Quebec giveaway - the billions given to rectify a mythical fiscal imbalance - they were . . . well, they were underwhelmed. Particularly when they thought about Premier Charest - toute de suite, as they would say in La Belle Province -bribing Quebecers with a 700 million tax break upon hearing of of Harper's beneficence on the eve of the Quebec election. Premier Danny Williams, the colourful and fearless newfy and the normally sober and sedate man-of-the-cloth Premier Calvert of Saskatchewan, began leading an attack on the Budget that continues unabated.
Even Bay Streeters, who one would think regarded Stevie as their fair-haired boy, became angry. They were irate over the Budgetary tax change that disallowed Canadian companies deducting loan interest for foreign investments.
The El Stinko Budget seemed to revive that damnable Income Trust issue still festering in the minds of millions of middle class Canadians and income trust business leaders. Harper's shameless broken election promise saw net worths of ordinary Canadians slashed. Cash flows that older families had relied on for their twilight years, thanks to Harper, were now out the window. Furthermore, piranha-like foreign companies were now picking up business assets of the trusts for a song. Ontario MP and Grit finance critic John McCallum was greeted by cheers - in Calgary of all places - as he assailed Harper and his Government for being idiots and morons for trashing income trusts.
But that's not all. Soon to replace Stockwell Day as the gift to the Liberals that keeps on giving, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor has been front and center in the Conservative drive to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. Former General O'Connor was already in trouble. He had to do an embarassing about face by admitting in the Commons that the Red Cross did not inform Canadian authorities if Taliban prisoners turned over by Canadians to Afghani authorities were mistreated. He had earlier informed the House otherwise. O'Connor was also
under heavy criticism regarding Federal untendered purchasing contracts made between his Department and a company for which he had formerly lobbied.
In recent days O'Connor blithely commented that the Afghanistan war would probably last 15 years. Underlining that statement and in a move indicating Canada would be in the Kandahar debacle far beyond the Commons approved 2009 date, his Department acquired tanks from Holland which will only be delivered in 2009. This comes at a time when plenty of Canadians have become concerned with body bags of our brave young troops, and informed that the good news of our heavy lifting participation in the NATO initiative in Afghanistan is not shared by knowledgeable observers on the ground. The feel-good rhetoric from O'Connor, Day, Toews, and Hillier about success in Afghanistan seems to be shared only among themselves.
And there remains the disquiet felt by many Canadians about the meanness of the Prime Minister, reflected by his partisan and personal attacks which can only be described as extreme - accusations that Liberals support the Taliban instead of our troops, that a Liberal Sikh MP did not support the continuation of measures under the anti-terror legislation so as to keep his father in law from testifying at the Air India Inquiry, and that Liberals are not a friend of Israel, etc. etc.
There's more. Now we have the attack on Kyoto. Harper's Environment Minister Pit bull, John Baird's over the top doomsday scenario unveiled this week in the Senate hearings has met with derision from all quarters - even including traditional Conservative cheerleader Canwest columnist Don Martin. Senator Denis Dawson referring to Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth,' called Baird's show 'a convenient lie.'
And if all of that wasn't bad enough, now Stephane Dion has begun to find his voice. His environment policy is widely seen by experts to be the most responsible. He and John McCallum have offered up a credible alternative to the Conservative axing of Income Trusts, so as to protect the investments of ordinary Canadians. He has boldly agreed with Elizabeth May not to run a Liberal candidate in the Central Nova Riding that she hopes to win from Peter McKay, and she has agreed to reciprocate in his Montreal Riding. This clears the way for unprecedented cooperation between the Liberals and the Greens (and probably some Green NDP) in the next Federal Election.
The result: a poll released by Decima Research on April 17 shows the Tories at 34% - 2 points below election day in January 2006. The Grits have 31%, the NDP have 15%, the Greens have 11% and the Bloc 7%. And in Quebec, the Budget honeymoon has really gone south: the Bloc has 29% and the Grits lead the Conservatives 23% to 20%. Apparently Quebecers do not liked being bribed. The ND's trail with 10%.
The future is bleak for Bush's pal Steve Harper. With numbers like that he will not win a majority. With a trend like that he is likely to lose if the election is called soon. With gaffes like he and his Government have committed in recent weeks, the result could be a Liberal majority Government. Which of course, I have predicted. Once again, you can say you heard it here first.
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
THE HONORABLE GORDON O'CONNOR: OUR VERY OWN DONALD RUMSFELD
Yesterday, our Defence Minister said that Afghanistan was a 'success story,' 'improving,' and that Canada will have a presence there until the progress made cannot be reversed by Taliban extremists. He said that he would watch the progress this year to determine whether the Afghan mission needed to be extended beyond its existing mandate - i.e. Canadian troops there until 2009 and millions of dollars in aid until 2011. He did not mention the billions more required in military expenditures.
This was consistent with the statements of happy warriors Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Treasury Board President Vic Toews. Earlier in the week while in Afghanistan they announced further aid to the Afghan police. Proudly sporting their bullet proof jackets and strutting about in the style reminiscent of General Patton, they used their photo-op to declare that Canadian assistance would not only help Afghanistan develop a professional civilian police force that would fight crime, but also promote Canadian values such as the Rule of Law and human rights.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission monitors carefully the goings on in Afghanistan. This is what Ahmad Zia Langari a commissioner of the AIHRC has to say about the Afghan police that our Government is trying to bolster with our money. He said, "There is not a very strong rule of law and the government is not keen to follow the law. Also, in the criminal court there is not a very strong and clear code for prosecuting police action." . . . "The main problem in Afghanistan is the culture of impunity. The government is not powerful. When a Governor, for example, has committed violence or he has been very corrupt, he is not prosecuted. The President just changes his position."
A recent joint report by the Pentagon and the US State Department said the Afghan police was 'far from adequate' at carrying out even conventional responsibilities. The report stated that recruits were illiterate and there was pervasive corruption.
Nicholas Kristof, a prominent American Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist and
columnist as well as an expert on the history and politics of Asia and the author of several books on the subject recently interviewed President Karzai in Afghanistan. Karzai accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban so as to turn Afghanistan into a colony of Pakistan. In Karzai's mind the NATO forces had focused on the wrong targets in seeking to wipe out terrorists. Instead of attacking villages, they should have stopped Pakistan from harboring and financing the terrorists. In other words, NATO should have been fighting the source of terrorism - namely, Pakistan. Karzai said that terrorism in his country was surging because of the Pakistani policy of turning a blind eye on the Taliban.
Kristof, an acknowledged Asian expert, who has witnessed the troubles in Afghanistan first hand, described conditions in southern Afghanistan as 'a catastrophe.'
In fact, the only optimists around talking about progress in Afghanistan is the Conservative Government of Bush's pal Steve Harper together with his Rumsfeldian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor (a character right out of Dr. Strangelove, to be sure) and two dim-witted Ministers, Stockwell Day and Vic Toews. All of the feel-good talk about our commitment to Afghanistan is likely to continue only until the election is held. Then, whichever Government takes power, it will be truth time. No more photo-ops with bullet proof vests for campaign pamphleteering ballyhooing pointless and toothless assistance to a corrupt and violent Afghani police force. No. Then we will have a painful reassessment of our Afghanistan policy, the result of which will be to high-tail it out of there and pronto.
This was consistent with the statements of happy warriors Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day and Treasury Board President Vic Toews. Earlier in the week while in Afghanistan they announced further aid to the Afghan police. Proudly sporting their bullet proof jackets and strutting about in the style reminiscent of General Patton, they used their photo-op to declare that Canadian assistance would not only help Afghanistan develop a professional civilian police force that would fight crime, but also promote Canadian values such as the Rule of Law and human rights.
The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission monitors carefully the goings on in Afghanistan. This is what Ahmad Zia Langari a commissioner of the AIHRC has to say about the Afghan police that our Government is trying to bolster with our money. He said, "There is not a very strong rule of law and the government is not keen to follow the law. Also, in the criminal court there is not a very strong and clear code for prosecuting police action." . . . "The main problem in Afghanistan is the culture of impunity. The government is not powerful. When a Governor, for example, has committed violence or he has been very corrupt, he is not prosecuted. The President just changes his position."
A recent joint report by the Pentagon and the US State Department said the Afghan police was 'far from adequate' at carrying out even conventional responsibilities. The report stated that recruits were illiterate and there was pervasive corruption.
Nicholas Kristof, a prominent American Pulitzer Prize winning New York Times journalist and
columnist as well as an expert on the history and politics of Asia and the author of several books on the subject recently interviewed President Karzai in Afghanistan. Karzai accused Pakistan of aiding the Taliban so as to turn Afghanistan into a colony of Pakistan. In Karzai's mind the NATO forces had focused on the wrong targets in seeking to wipe out terrorists. Instead of attacking villages, they should have stopped Pakistan from harboring and financing the terrorists. In other words, NATO should have been fighting the source of terrorism - namely, Pakistan. Karzai said that terrorism in his country was surging because of the Pakistani policy of turning a blind eye on the Taliban.
Kristof, an acknowledged Asian expert, who has witnessed the troubles in Afghanistan first hand, described conditions in southern Afghanistan as 'a catastrophe.'
In fact, the only optimists around talking about progress in Afghanistan is the Conservative Government of Bush's pal Steve Harper together with his Rumsfeldian Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor (a character right out of Dr. Strangelove, to be sure) and two dim-witted Ministers, Stockwell Day and Vic Toews. All of the feel-good talk about our commitment to Afghanistan is likely to continue only until the election is held. Then, whichever Government takes power, it will be truth time. No more photo-ops with bullet proof vests for campaign pamphleteering ballyhooing pointless and toothless assistance to a corrupt and violent Afghani police force. No. Then we will have a painful reassessment of our Afghanistan policy, the result of which will be to high-tail it out of there and pronto.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
GORDON O'CONNOR: IN OVER HIS HEAD
I had occasion to meet Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor just before the the calling of the last Federal Election. The circumstances were pleasant enough. We sat beside each other on a Toronto to Calgary Air Canada Business Class Flight and had a couple of drinks together during a congenial conversation.
Even though he wasted no time after introducing ourselves to take the Feds to task on a host of issues, he was certainly not an unpleasant man. Although he was and looked to be in his mid sixties, with his full head of neatly combed straight white hair, angular and alert face, and lean body, he obviously was a man who had taken care of himself, as might be expected from the retired General that he was.
Early in our conversation he disclosed to me that he was the Tory Defence critic, and made no bones about his view that the Canadian Government had for too long ignored its Armed Forces
and that if he was elected, which he quite confidently predicted, Canadians were going to see a far more aggressive Defence policy.
His partisanship and enthusiasm for his job and future plans struck me that he would be shaking things up should he be made Defence Minister. It also left me with the impression that he was so steeped in the view that our Armed Forces had for too long been ignored and that Canada had not done its fair share of international heavy lifting in military actions, that he lacked objectivity and would probably proceed with wild-assed determination quite recklessly.
His performance on the job has proved that my initial impressions were correct.
When it comes to soldiering O'Connor, like Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, is one tough hombre. As Minister, he has pursued his objectives, fearlessly and showing absolutely no doubt as to their correctness. This can be a great quality for a General in a theatre of war, as well as a Government Minister pursuing his policy objectives. Provided that they are right. Because if one is not right, disaster looms over the next hill.
It is evident that O'Connor has demonstated both a lack of thoughtfulness as well as a lack of historical perspective, in respect to what will likely be the biggest military issue for Canada over a period of at least a decade: Canada's role in Afghanistan.
He and the Harper Government have allowed the Canadian contingent of 2200 or so men and women to fight it out in the toughest part of the country - the Kandahar Region - which has been known for centuries to contain the most warlike of tribes as well as the greatest number of religious extremists in the whole country.
The Government of Canada has so far spent something approaching 6 billion dollars on the operation. 44 Canadian personnel have died. The Taliban, who are supposed to be the forces of darkness that are out to oust President Karzai (who is supposed to be the good guy) are gaining strength, the poppy fields are rife with the raw materials to serve the heroin market the world over, and NATO forces number only about 36,000 to impact on the whole country.
Contrast this to the Russian experience, the last major effort to tame that wild Central Asian Republic. They were there for a little over 9 years, ending in February 1989. A total of 620,000 Russian military personnel served - between 80 and 120,000 at any one time. 14,500 died. In addition, the Russians lost 150 tanks, more than 300 helicopters and 118 jet planes before they hightailed out of the country. When they left, the civil war got rolling in earnest.
Add to that sorry history, the fact that Afghanistan has never been subdued by a foreign invader or occupier for very long, whether it be England, Russia, or Alexander the Great, and that there is a tradition of both ferocity and independence amongst its people.
The fact is that the NATO participants, and particularly the United States, are not interested in shedding too much blood in this battle. By all reports our allies, the forces of the existing Afghanistan Government under President Karzai, are fighting at best, a stalemate with the Taliban. Indeed, many observers report that the Taliban are winning.
Soon, the Canadian people are going to twig to this. At the moment, out of support for our troops, questions have been muted. But just as the Iraq experience in the United States little by little finally entered the consciousness of the American people, so to will Afghanistan amongst Canadians. At that point, questions will be raised respecting the futility of it all, and many will pay a political price. At the top of the list will be Gordon O'Connor - clearly a Rumsfeldian, who in his blood thirsty impulsive sabre rattling, did not think through our involvement in Afghanistan. Neither does it seem that he bothered to read much, if any, of its violent history.
Even though he wasted no time after introducing ourselves to take the Feds to task on a host of issues, he was certainly not an unpleasant man. Although he was and looked to be in his mid sixties, with his full head of neatly combed straight white hair, angular and alert face, and lean body, he obviously was a man who had taken care of himself, as might be expected from the retired General that he was.
Early in our conversation he disclosed to me that he was the Tory Defence critic, and made no bones about his view that the Canadian Government had for too long ignored its Armed Forces
and that if he was elected, which he quite confidently predicted, Canadians were going to see a far more aggressive Defence policy.
His partisanship and enthusiasm for his job and future plans struck me that he would be shaking things up should he be made Defence Minister. It also left me with the impression that he was so steeped in the view that our Armed Forces had for too long been ignored and that Canada had not done its fair share of international heavy lifting in military actions, that he lacked objectivity and would probably proceed with wild-assed determination quite recklessly.
His performance on the job has proved that my initial impressions were correct.
When it comes to soldiering O'Connor, like Chief of the Defence Staff General Rick Hillier, is one tough hombre. As Minister, he has pursued his objectives, fearlessly and showing absolutely no doubt as to their correctness. This can be a great quality for a General in a theatre of war, as well as a Government Minister pursuing his policy objectives. Provided that they are right. Because if one is not right, disaster looms over the next hill.
It is evident that O'Connor has demonstated both a lack of thoughtfulness as well as a lack of historical perspective, in respect to what will likely be the biggest military issue for Canada over a period of at least a decade: Canada's role in Afghanistan.
He and the Harper Government have allowed the Canadian contingent of 2200 or so men and women to fight it out in the toughest part of the country - the Kandahar Region - which has been known for centuries to contain the most warlike of tribes as well as the greatest number of religious extremists in the whole country.
The Government of Canada has so far spent something approaching 6 billion dollars on the operation. 44 Canadian personnel have died. The Taliban, who are supposed to be the forces of darkness that are out to oust President Karzai (who is supposed to be the good guy) are gaining strength, the poppy fields are rife with the raw materials to serve the heroin market the world over, and NATO forces number only about 36,000 to impact on the whole country.
Contrast this to the Russian experience, the last major effort to tame that wild Central Asian Republic. They were there for a little over 9 years, ending in February 1989. A total of 620,000 Russian military personnel served - between 80 and 120,000 at any one time. 14,500 died. In addition, the Russians lost 150 tanks, more than 300 helicopters and 118 jet planes before they hightailed out of the country. When they left, the civil war got rolling in earnest.
Add to that sorry history, the fact that Afghanistan has never been subdued by a foreign invader or occupier for very long, whether it be England, Russia, or Alexander the Great, and that there is a tradition of both ferocity and independence amongst its people.
The fact is that the NATO participants, and particularly the United States, are not interested in shedding too much blood in this battle. By all reports our allies, the forces of the existing Afghanistan Government under President Karzai, are fighting at best, a stalemate with the Taliban. Indeed, many observers report that the Taliban are winning.
Soon, the Canadian people are going to twig to this. At the moment, out of support for our troops, questions have been muted. But just as the Iraq experience in the United States little by little finally entered the consciousness of the American people, so to will Afghanistan amongst Canadians. At that point, questions will be raised respecting the futility of it all, and many will pay a political price. At the top of the list will be Gordon O'Connor - clearly a Rumsfeldian, who in his blood thirsty impulsive sabre rattling, did not think through our involvement in Afghanistan. Neither does it seem that he bothered to read much, if any, of its violent history.
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