Sister Sage's Musings

Posts Tagged ‘Afghanistan’

I sometimes wonder how the man is capable of any thought process without getting a nosebleed.

Georgie seeks vengence for 9/11 in Afghanistan. He pretty much sub-contracted his little campaign of revenge to  Canada and other NATO nations in order to go invade Iraq. Yet Rethuglican National Chairman in all his brilliance came up with this little brainstorm:

“This was a war of Obama’s choosing,” Michael Steele said at the event. “This is not something the United States has actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in.”

Yes, the Uncle Tom of the GOP has struck again and one must wonder how many veins popped for him to come up with that one.

He seems to have somewhat, clumsily attempted to back pedal.

“There is no question that America must win the war on terror,” Steele said. “During the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama made clear his belief that we should not fight in Iraq, but instead concentrate on Afghanistan. Now, as President, he has indeed shifted his focus to this region. That means this is his strategy. And, for the sake of the security of the free world, our country must give our troops the support necessary to win this war.”

Oh Mikey, no matter how much you trash Obama and suck up to the Fox News Crowd and the Rush Limbaugh machine; the tea-bagger hit parade have already hijacked the GOP; unless you learn Michael Jackson’s whitening secrets,  it’s a matter of time before they turf you out. I hope it was worth selling yourself out.

We all remember what kind of a public spanking Clucking Christy, our chickenhawk of the Grope & Fail got when she jumped on heavily redacted documents and basically threw Richard Colvin under the bus.

But do you think she learned?

No!!! Of course not!! Old habits seem to die hard with our chickenhawk.

Go! Read Dave at The Galloping Beaver. He has all the sordid details of how Toronto’s  lying police chief Bill Blair getting the biggest war mongering columnist who will jump at any opportunity to defend that war, now, including taking certain shortcuts, like not researching facts to back up the questionable statements of a police chief who has already admitted to playing fast and loose with the laws and creative licensing with the truth.

Gotta luv how our clucking Chickenhawk columnist is willing to throw a credible man like Richard Colvin to the lions but believe a disgraced (ok, he ain’t…yet..but, he should be!)  police chief. Go figure!

Here’s a thought, Christy, stop blathering and actually enlist in the Canadian military; sign up for Afghanistan if you’re so gung-ho. It would be far more constructive than your columns, that’s for sure.

It would appear Canada isn’t alone in the Afghan detainee scandal.

Allegations first surfaced in November 2007, by Amnesty International (same time Canada first heard their allegations of torture) and brought to the courts by British anti-war activist, Maya Evans has made the accusations and is seeking a judicial review of the detainee transfer policy.

She is backed by Public Interest Lawyers, who have brought a number of cases relating to the treatment of detainees in Iraq, notably that of Baha Mousa, who died in British custody.

Ministry of Defence has passed some ‘evidence’ to her lawyers;   a heavily redacted document outlining the case (sound familiar?). It appears that they want it suppressed. However, there is somewhat more evidence available in the British case and little cooperation.

Following one long excised passage, the document revealed in court today reads: “The lessons from these shocking events is … investigation by the NDS [Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security] is obviously incapable of providing any satisfaction of the UK’s human rights obligations.”

Public Interest Lawyers, the solicitors’ firm representing Evans, say the “horrific brutality” of the NDS was well documented.

They say they have gathered details of nine cases involving allegations of beatings, electrocution, sleep deprivation, individuals forced into stress positions and whipping with rubber cables.

Michael Fordham QC, for Evans, told the court: “The issue in this anxious case is whether the practice of handing over of suspect insurgents to the NDS is compatible with Article 3.”

He told Lord Justice Richards and Mr Justice Cranston: “We will submit emphatically that it is not. It never was.” Article 3 of the European Humans Rights Convention prohibits torture, and inhuman and or degrading treatment.

The MoD initially described Evans’ legal challenge to the British practice of handing over detainees to the NDS as “totally misconceived”, the high court was told.

However, after allegations came to light about ill-treatment at NDS facilities in Kandahar, Kabul, and Sangin, in Helmand province, there was a “change of direction”.

The ministry “finally acknowledged that there were serious issues” involved and agreed to a judicial review, a court challenge to the practice, Fordham said.

Here’s how their debacle got started; almost a copy cat of Canada. They too, signed a very flawed  detainee transfer agreement with the Afghans in 2006. Like Canada’s, this agreement was pretty much based on trust.

From what I have read so far, it sounds like their looking into the torturegate matter is going along faster than here in Canada where Brother Steve still refuses to cooperate. Will this trend in Britain continue? Hard to say if  Gordon Brown’s government will cooperate. A federal election has already been called and all are in full campaign mode. Expect more to come from this situation as the campaigns edge closer to British election day.

What is happening in Britain should concern Canada, the British and Canadian circumstances are very similar and the time line is about the same.

The British case could yield evidence about Canada’s practices. If this case continues to reveal more evidence, this will most definitely also be ready made evidence against Canada. Yes, Brother Steve, looks like this will come back and bite you on the ass down the road. Better change your tune!

Tomorrow, they are back in court.

UPDATE: Remember they were going to court today?  Well, here’s what happened:

The court Tuesday heard of documentation, drawn from military files, relating to six known cases in which Afghan captives handed by British forces to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS) prisons, including one in Canada’s military jurisdiction in Kandahar, are said to have been tortured using electric shocks, beatings with wires, whips and metal rods, sleep deprivation and cuts, between early 2007 and late 2008.

While it appears many of the documents submitted to the court today were  redacted at the government’s request, the censorship is not as heavy as that applied to Canadian documents released by Ottawa and most details other than proper names are unconcealed. Wow! This actually means their investigation is actually going somewhere.  Why is it that their torturegate is being played out in the courts and ours’ isn’t? Well, unfortunately, unlike Canada, the British military must follow domestic human-rights laws, which require safe treatment of prisoners in foreign countries. That explains why Brother Steve has been able to run away from this to date.

However, I think it’s worth it for us to pay more attention to what’s happening in Britain these days, the more I read, the more I see this mirrors Canada’s situation. Their case is being expedited faster.   Plus, as I mentioned above,  a federal election has been called and  Gordon Brown and his Labour Party as well as the other parties are in full campaign swing. Not sure how down and dirty the tactics used by opposition parties to attempt to knock over the incumbent, but something tells me the opposition would be motivated to find more skeleton’s in Labour’s closet. Never know what can turn up during an election campaign.

If a smoking gun in Britain is found sooner than later, and at the rate it’s going, count on this to unfold long before Canada, me thinks Brother Steve will really be backed into a corner.

Also, I wonder if British citizens would be more concerned about breaking international laws than many Canadians seem to be?  I wonder how a British columnist would feel if they heard the likes of Blathering Blatchford on talk radio, saying, ‘you can’t have a proper war without some torture’ (paraphrased, of course)?  How would a British citizen react to the pro-torture rantings of the likes of  co-Blogging Romper roomie founder,  Craig Smith? Something tells me that human rights and the rule of law would be more important to them than to many of the Harpercon Cheerleaders and certainly, more important than it is to the so-called ‘law & order’ Harpercons and Brother Steve.

A very famous Canadian politician (I don’t want to use this name because that would sound like bragging) once told me he never more than glanced at the news media. (Okay. It was Pierre Trudeau.)

I thought it was because he didn’t trust them. And that would be reasonable because the news media lie constantly, and they simply don’t report what their bosses don’t want reported. For example, when a Baltimore paper discovered about 1980 that the US army had a torture manual, and had been issuing it for years, nobody picked up the story. On March 10, 1999, President Clinton publicly apologized for American government involvement in the murder of over 200,000 Guatemala native people. The apology only made page twelve in the New York Times. Almost all other media in North America completely ignored it. But that wasn’t Trudeau’s reason for ignoring the media.

It was because he had a pretty solid knowledge from observation and from history of how people and governments behave. Once you have that, you can understand the day’s news with nothing more than a quick glance.

You want to know what’s going on in Afghanistan? Forget the news. Go to Youtube and search for the video clip on Singapore, 1942. That was the place and the time that marked the end of the Western Empire. It marked it as clearly as the sacking of Rome in 410 marked the end of another empire.

The Western Empire began in 1492. It was made possible with the development of ships capable of long voyages and large cargoes; and it was made possible by advances in navigation so that a course could be maintained and duplicated no matter how far from land.

That made the empire possible. What made it necessary in 1492 was a Europe with too many aristocrats and knights for the available land, and the lack of enough serfs to work it. And it was made necessary by kings who needed wealth to make themselves more powerful. That, more than the spices that the history books chatter about, was what Columbus was all about.

Spain and Portugal gave birth to the western empire immediately Columbus returned. They learned that even tiny armies, sometimes barely over a hundred men, could bring down whole nations into slavery to toil on uncountable acres of fine land. As for the kings, well, that tiny investment in ships and men returned a thousand thousand times its cost with the gold and silver looted from South America. That is where the King of Spain found the wealth to build his great armada.

Navigation and sea going ships made it possible for England and France to expand – to North America, to India, to China. The invasions were cheap and quick. Clive took India’s 50 million people and their land with an army of two thousands British soldiers. It was relatively tiny British, French and American armies that alternately slaughtered, enslaved, and then penned up the native peoples of North America. It was cheap; and it was immensely profitable.

British capitalists converted huge estates in India to growing poppies with cheap, Indian labour. It was soon obvious that the best market for the opium they could produce was China. But opium was forbidden by the Chinese government. It took two wars in the mid-nineteenth century and fifteen thousand soldiers to change its mind. But that was a small price to pay for a market of 200,000,000 people – and a guarantee that if the Chinese did not buy enough opium each year, the Chinese government would have to pay for any surplus left to the estate owners.

The dominance of the western empire shifted over the years – from Spain to France to Britain to the United States. But there was room even for the smallest western powers, as The Netherlands scooped up Indonesia, and tiny Belgium got approval to plunder the Congo at a cost of millions of African lives, a plunder that still goes on after more than a century with help from, among others, Canadians. The dominance shifted. But the base was always the same – west European nations (and their American offspring), with superior ability to move troops and goods over long distances.

As important as navigation and shipbuilding was a superior western understanding of how to go to war. The Europeans were always fewer than the conquered, but far superior in the crafts of war – strategy, tactics, logistics, concentration of power, discipline, transport. So it was that on the eve of World War Two, the Western Empire either owned or controlled the greater part of the world.

Transport, navigation, and military superiority….that’s where the wealth came from to industrialize the west, even to the building of the railways of Canada. Keeping others poor gave us ever cheaper goods and ever more powerful weapons. That is, it did until 1942.

On New Year’s day of 1942, Singapore was the economic and military symbol of British power in the world. Just weeks later, it collapsed into humiliation. It was taken by the Japanese, one of the “lesser breeds” as Kipling called them. The Japanese took Singapore even though its British, Australian and Indian Army defenders actually outnumbered them. That was the beginning of the end not only for the British Empire, but for the whole Western Empire.

From that day on, wars against the lesser breeds became longer, harder, stunningly expensive, and usually losers. Britain was the first to realize it was over. It began withdrawing from empire in 1945, and completed the job within a generation. France lost long and brutal wars in North Africa and Vietnam. The Dutch were forced out of Indonesia, and the Belgians out of Congo. The Americans lost in South Vietnam. Even the base of the American portion of the Western Empire, Latin America, was shaken when Castro established himself in Cuba – and got away with it. Castro was a turning point. Since then, the idea of liberation from the Western Empire has flared across the continent.

The wars are are losers, and very expensive losers, too. The US became a debtor nation in the Vietnam war, and has plunged deeper ever since. The once despised lesser breeds have not only caught up to western principles of war; they have improved on them so that guerillas in sandals can defeat the most expensive and advanced weaponry in the world.

There’s no need to read the newspapers to understand what’s going on in Afghanistan. At a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of dead on our side and nobody knows how many dead in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we are losing to a relatively small and poorly armed opposition in one of the world’s most primitive countries.

The empire that began in 1492 is over. There are only two questions left.

Will we adjust to the new reality?

Or will we, as outlined in the neoconservative “Project for the New American Century”, go on making unimaginably destructive (for everyone) and losing attempts to bring back the world of Rudyard Kipling?

While you’re thinking what the choice will be, consider these points. The current leader of the Western Empire is the United States. It’s most popular news service is Fox TV. Among the most popular leaders of public opinion are people like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, and Pat Robertson. Congress is pretty much owned by banks, oil companies, and the health and defence industries.

And few of those have ever even heard of the fall of Singapore.

Ah, gotta love those Harpercon cheerleaders who claim their masters are great with the economy and the opposition parties do nothing but waste the tax payers’ money.

Well, Well, What do we here? Petey is in Afghanistan. And why? No, it isn’t to talk to the on-again, off-again, soon-to-be-again Taliban friend. He decided to do that oh so mature relay his messages to senior Afghan officials:

“I called for more constructive and active engagement. People need to see a more visible presence of the Afghan government in Kandahar province,” Mr. MacKay told the Afghan officials, explaining the President’s comments have a “corrosive impact on Canadian soldiers and citizens.”

Gee, ya think? So, Petey, why are you so hell-bent on even entertaining the idea of keeping troops in Afghanistan past the 2011 deadline? Just what do you, your puppetmaster, and the war president think you’re going to accomplish there?

This leads me to my next question: your boss has already told Hillary as well as pretty much the rest of the world that we’re pulling out in 2011; Petey,  like Ex-Lax Max and Helena, have you gone rogue (no pun intended) or is Brother Steve having you express his truest wishes? After all, nothing pleases him more than do anything for the Americans, including sacrficing lives, but, he has an election campaign to gear up for. Oh, what a dilemma!

Speaking of wasted tax dollars, what the hell was Rona Ambrose doing there? Did she think that that whole minister of public works and minister of state for status of women was all happening in Afghanistan?

Or did Petey simply need a date? In the picture accompanying Taber’s column in the Grope & Fail, it appears that Rona is dressed for a date more than for a government tour of a war zone.

Oh Rona! Sadly typical!  Now I’m even more convinced she’s dumber than Helena.  I guess she didn’t ask Belinda Stronach how Petey feels about women who cross him.  What’s sad is that in all that time working under Brother Steve, she still doesn’t realize she’s being exploited to play the typical conservative bimbette who’s sole purpose appears to be window dressing.

What’s worse is that today’s corporate media likes to portray women, particularly conservative women as just that: window dressing in parliament.

Well, you, the U.S. and the other NATO allies. What will it take for you to take a hint? And don’t act all hurt when he said he may well join the Taliban if the west didn’t stop telling him to be politician they would like to see.

Karzai has stirred concern around the world with a string of remarks that include blaming “foreigners” for fraud in Afghanistan’s presidential election and accusing the West of wanting a weak “puppet government” in Kabul. Mainstream media also reported that he told some Afghan parliamentarians that continued foreign

meddling might prompt him to join the Taliban -

Ryan ends up having this little chickenhawk tizzy with the mother of a dead soldier who sounded like a bloody ice-queen on his show last night. She gave the usual spin about how she doesn’t want her son to have died in vain or how we must finish the job; you know, the usual talking points. She even sounded cold, almost like she’s down and would like to see other families go down with her. I can sympathize with her loss, but wishing more loss on other families, just so her son ‘wouldn’t have died in vain’ ?? Not only is that cold, but it’s stupid. She, of course, was not alone as many family members of dead soldiers went to Afghanistan over Easter week-end to commemorate the deaths of their troops and pretty much raised those same talking points.

I wonder if the family of the late young Jonathan Couturier went? After hearing his brother and the rest of his family talking to the media, it looked like Jonathan didn’t want to go to Afghanistan in the first place; that Jonathan believed the war to be useless.

As the body of 23-year-old Pte. Jonathan Couturier was being brought home yesterday, his brother and sister-in-law lambasted the mission and said the young soldier lost his life for a cause he considered hopeless.

I imagine that if the Couturier family went, they would no doubt have been considered the black sheep in a group of war mongers. They probably would have dismissed them as simply being typically French Quebecois.

By contrast, there is an organization of military families who lost family members in Afghanistan and Iraq.  By contrast to many of the Canadian families above who are calling for an extension past the 2011 deadline, these families want Congress to honour their dead by pulling out of both Iraq and Afghanistan.

What’s wrong with this picture? St-Stevie emphatically tells Hillary that we’re pulling out in 2011 as planned, yet, a group of American Military families are the ones calling for a pull out as soon as possible.

Enter Redneck Ryan. He is busy lambasting St-Stevie for putting his permanent election campaign before the troops; before the mission. Hell, he even thinks we can win this modern day ‘Vietnam’, in spite of evidence to the contrary. He thinks we should extend the mission, shed more blood and money (our tax dollars, which could go to our strugging health care system among other social programs for folks at home). Let’s look at this. Yah, the only upside for Stevie extending the mission is that he could be hammered in the next election, which I (as well as others), believe it will happen as early as this fall. Hell, judging by many right winged blogs I’ve read, it seems that this is another rare time the right and the left can agree on something: they too, see this war as useless.

Yes, Ryan, the Soviets even knew when to pack it in and cut their losses. Afghans are generally not accommodating to foreigners, and the more this war goes on, the more they want all of us out.

And, why should we be shedding more money and tax dollars  for  people who don’t want us there, a Karzai government which is corrupt.

Speaking of corrupt, not only did he appoint a disgraced minister who was as corrupt as the lot of them , but lately, we hear in the news of Karzai’s latest insult to the west, proving what a political whore he is and how he would get into bed with anyone who will keep him in power.

“If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban,” Mr. Karzai said, according to the Parliament member.

Well, why should that be any surprise? If truth be told, it doesn’t really matter when we pull out, we know the Taliban will be back in power: Karzai knows this, being the political whore that he is. A lot of folks, yes, including women, believe things are a lot worse for them now than before the occupation, when the Taliban were in power.

Yes, Steve, the Liberals may not be doing all that well, but never let any opposition members lull you into a sense of false security. You could well lose your fall election if you say ‘yest’ to the Whitehouse.  Obama decided to become the war president on his own, in spite of pleas to the contrary. He only did it, once again, to attempt to prove to the tea-bagger hit parade, GOP and the Rush and Fox news crowd that he is not the Kenyan-born, Muslim Marxist they think he is. I think he is only realizing now that nothing he does or says will change that.

What I’m not getting is why are Liberals calling for Steve to discuss what will happen after 2011, if anything? Well, it is possible that Peter MacKay may well be planning to stick around, in some so-called rebuilding effort or something like that, like he said last October. Or is it because the Liberals are more eager to please the Obama government? If that is the case, it is political suicide, that would surely cost them the next election. Even the Donolo camp ought to know that. I realize Peter Donolo is more than likely losing his midas touch but even he wouldn’t be dumb enough to suggest such things.

Could it be that the Liberals also remember Peter MacKay’s words from last October and they want to hammer Steve over the head with it?

Yes, indeedy, Steve is secretive about a lot of things lately, isn’t he? Must be tough being on permanent campaign mode. Must be tough not being able to live out his wildest dreams. We know him to be a war monger. Remember, he wanted us to go to Iraq when Jean Chretien said no.

As for Redneck Ryan and the other chicken hawks from Astral Talk and other corporate media outlets and yes, those gung ho military families: Either enlist or shut up!

Oh, I bet about now Steve is missing his old buddy and puppeteer Georgie Bush just about now, while the  Horrible Hillary just continues to give Stevie these very public spankings.  Way to go Hill! If  only she really deserved that kind of praise.

Other than criticizing him for leaving out three Members of the Arctic council and pretty much omitting Aboriginal  concerns in a meeting of the Arctic Ocean members las Monday, progressives shouldn’t be all that proud of her jabs to St-Stevie, however,  certain blogging romper roomies shouldn’t be so quick to condemn her neither.

Hillary was absolutely right about criticizing the Harpercons’ rather pathetic approach to funding mothers and kids in developing countries, leaving out not only  safe accessilble abortions but contraception as well.

“You cannot have maternal health without reproductive health,” Ms. Clinton said at a news conference after a meeting of G8 foreign ministers in Gatineau, Que. “And reproductive health includes contraception and family planning and access to legal, safe abortion.

Well, no shit, Shirlock! Unfortunately, when con hacks like Norman Spector get their knickers in a bunch with near glee, I have to wonder if this debacle is so great for our side. This simple Harpercon response would be to “Go Tell Obama” as Spector puts it, in referring back to that pathetic health care reform package where Dems tied themselves in a knot, pandering to fetus fetishists, to pass that pathetic bill. Really!

Yeah, yeah, one can argue they had no choice but to add that anti-abortion stuff in order to pass this pathetic watered down health care bill, but it doesn’t wash, as Obama did have every opportunity last summer to pass something much better if he weren’t so busy pandering to Rush and Fox News Crowd and trying to convince the tea-bagger hit parade he wasn’t any Marxist Muslim out to take over the world in vain.

I’m glad they passed something, I guess something is better than nothing, but it also takes away credence from her statements regarding contraception and abortion funding in Developping countries.

I would say that it’s about now Stevie should start missing the old guard of Georgie and Dickie: evangelical Christian Fundies of a feather.

Monday, she had also went on CTV to strenuously request the Harpercons to extend our mission in GW Bush’s war in Afghanistan: Ya know, the one President Obama took ownership of so unnecessarily?

Her willingness to ruffle feathers here – on Monday, she criticized Canada’s convening of a meeting on the Arctic and publicly asked for Ottawa to keep troops in Afghanistan past a 2011 deadline – is hinting at underlying tensions between Washington and Ottawa that have surprised some diplomatic observers

Tensions between Washington DC and Ottawa, hmmm! Wouldn’t be the first time.  Was this a tactical ploy to convince St-Stevie to extend the mission beyond 2011? St-Stevie maintains that he will not extend the mission. Of course he wouldn’t: for two reasons.

First and foremost, most Canadians want this mission to end yesterday, let alone 2011.  To most, that is still too far as it is.  Don’t be fooled, St-Stevie has proven that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Canadian population and to this day, he still hasn’t proven otherwise.  St-Stevie is every bit the war monger Georgie W Bush was (and more than likely, still is). It is for this reason I don’t think he’s flat out refusing rather than postponing a formal agreement to extend the mission.

For more than likely the same reason Steve is reintroducing that whole taking away that per vote subsidy from political parties, he is planning an election for this fall, perhaps even sooner.  If he agreed to extending the mission now, even if a Rethuglican like Georgie or even See Sawah Run or hell, even Johnny Boy McCain asked him, it would be the biggest act of political suicide.

Great way to lose a general election.  According to what I’ve  read in the Blogging Romper Roomies from time to time, the Afghan war is wearing thin on Conservative voters as well. 

The other thing is, as much as Steve has been sucking up to Obama to get some table scraps of hi “Buy American” legislation,  the ‘wrong’ people are asking him.  As mentioned, he may well have still refused to extend the mission from even the Rethuglicans…today. That certainly doesn’t mean that St-Stevie would even say no to them later…like after he wins a majority come this Fall, or sooner. Hell, he may even accept extending the mission to the Dems if and when he gets his precious majority, or even now if he wasn’t planning an election.

Funny, how Conservative pundits and their cheerleaders alike lambasted the likes of Jean Chretien and Paul Martin for being anti-American because they just couldn’t make enough of an effort to respect such a hero president like Georgie. Now, it seems that Steve is faster being shunned by Americans and naturally, those very same pundits would switch gears.  In their little world,   St-Stevie can never do anything wrong in their little worlds.  However, I digress…

Yes, as I’ve mentioned above, I’m quite certain that Steve would want to seek comfort with Georgie because, Hillary is just too mean and clever for him, if not a bit hypocritical herself.

Or, it never seems to stop. This time, it appears that the CBC is now afflicted with LDS. It is now helping the Harpercons do that whole “blame the Libruls” thang  back in order to deflect and distract. Yikes!

OK, once again, whatever part the Liberals played in this whole torturegate debacle doesn’t really appear to concern them a whole lot, given that they voted along with the N.D.P. in favor of an investigation dating back to 2001.

It would seem that the most the Liberals are guilty of was, along with Gen. Rick Hillier, signing on to a very flawed agreement with the Afghan Gov’t regarding detainee transfers in 2005; right smack before a federal election campaign which led to a Harpercon minority.

Even if the Liberals didn’t vote along with the N.D.P. in favor of a full investigation into torturegate; and even if they did so much more than sign a flawed agreement with the Afghan Gov’t if international laws were broken, it is incumbent upon the current government to try to correct the situation. Especially Steve, as he campaigned on Government accountability. Accountability is not blaming the previous guardians of the castle so to speak; it is most certainly not deliberately continuing the bad acts and making a bad situation worse and looking away.  An accountable gov’t is also a transparent gov’t; it’s not a government that runs, hides and contorts themselves worse than a circus performer to avoid facing the music. Canadians deserve to know if their government knowingly broke international laws in breaching the Geneva Conventions in their name.

If it were an honest mistake on either the part of the Liberals or Harpercons or both, to err is human, most folks can get that. Even St-Stevie should get that. Or is willing to risk the whole enchilada in order to drown in his own arrogance?  No, I’m not inclined to believe it was a simple mistake for obvious reasons.

Yes, the Liberally deranged can say the Liberals were involved with torture until they turn purple, but at the end of the day, it is the Harpercons and Stevie that refuse an investigation and refuse to be accountable. Pity that his cheerleaders of the Corporate media (and yes, I’m starting to count the CBC in with this motley gang) and the Blogging Tory disciples of the Stevie fan club seem to care more about keeping Stevie in power and allowing the torture of detainees to go on (after all, ya can’t fight a good war without torturing da enemy: Right Blathering Blatchford??) rather than true accountable government.

Now we allow a retired Mulroney- appointed Supremee to decide whether or not to release documents regarding the Afghan detainee issue. I guess my lawyer made me do it isn’t really working for him anymore.

It would appear that Rob Nicholson is going to allow retired Justice, now big corporate lawyer (surprise! surprise! Friend of St-Stevie’s: what other type of law would he be practising?) to decide on the release of  un redacted documents and how many of them can be released.

Just one question,  why does a corporate lawyer decide the release of documents and how many? Why isn’t it, say…a lawyer who specializes in international laws?  Because the latter is not a friend, that’s why.

Given that Iacobucci was a Mulroney appointee: does this play in St-Stevie’s favor, or not, given Stephie’s fallout with Mulroney?

There are some who call Nicholson’s decision to pawn the decision off Iacobucci a small step in the right direction, but CTV’s Roger Smith called this move the government’s attempt to buy time in order to come up with a compromise. Oh yeah, of course, the compromise. That sounds funny as the whole concept of compromise doesn’t exist in St-Stevie’s modus operendi.

So what is this all about?

The usual St-Stevie stand-by of blaming the liberals for the start of this whole torturegate debacle didn’t work. They voted along with the N.D.P. in favor of an investigation, going back to 2001; from the time the war first started under the Chretien government, thus proving the Liberals are not that concerned about whatever their role may or may not have been.

St-Stevie then prorogues parliament, thus, disolving the committees formed to investigate the Afghan detainee issue. That, however, didn’t work neither as one of the first things the opposition parties demanded at the first Question Period back.

Then, there’s the lawyers won’t let me talk about this.

Now, it is before Frank Iacobucci. Besides the fact that he practises corporate law since retiring from the bench, thus that whole corporate = con friendly.

No, there is more to it than that. It would seem that when Iaccobucci was still on the bench in the 90′s, he did sign onto Justice Maclachlan’s majority opinion regarding the case of CBC v The Assembly of Nova Scotia, a case where the Nova Scotia Legislature refused to allow cameras in the assembly. In this case, the CBC lost; the justices ruled that the N.S. legislature could ban cameras. More on that case here.

Given that little piece of Iacobucci the corporate lawyer’s history as a supreme court justice, I have a feeling that we’re never going to see or hear the unredacted story.  Basically, St-Stevie and the Harpercons want to hear that it’s ok to blatantly ignore what was voted on in the House of Commons.

Now the Harpercons and their cheerleaders will all yuck it up in celebration. I only wish they can be honest is all.  I mean, if they believe in their hearts that their ‘heroes’  (Harpercons; not troops) are innocent of any wrong doing and want to proove this to us ‘lefty loonies’ , then why continue to vehemently defend St-Stevie’s right to hide? Why not, instead, insist on St-Stevie producing the unredacted documents. If as they say, there is nothing to read, then I say get them to prove it by opening the documents.

Or, is it because they are such Islamomophobes that they think the idea of ‘torturing little brown people is fun’ (Wendy Girl on the Wrong Sullivan saying that while giggling and flirting with Andrew Lawton on one of her last radio shows) and thus, we should leave the Harpercons alone so this ‘fun’ can continue? Repulsive idea, I know, but if we were to force the truth out of a real neo-con Islamaphobe, I am sure that would be it, pure and simple.

Playing politics or not; the fact is, an investigation was voted upon in the House of Commons prior to prorogation. Rightfully so, whether we like these detainees or not, most haven’t passed through a court of law. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty? If any lawyers are out there reading this, perhaps you can answer that question via email or comments.

And, a goody for Blathering Blatchford,  Blogging Tory, Alberta Girl and other blithering idiots like her, there is a pesky piece of international law known as the Geneva Convention.  Unlike that Copenhagen agreement, the Geneva Convention is actually binding.

Harpercons like Nicholson love to talk that tough on crime talk. Well, how’s about talk on a possible international crime? Wouldn’t facing up to this set the real example for a law abiding Canada?  What’s good for the goose ain’t  good for the gander?

And a question for the insufferable ass, Beryl Wajsman who replaced Redneck Ryan Doyle this week on CJAD (just my luck; my computer had to go down earlier; missed Michael Williams doing the TO end); how do you know it’s only one detainee, as you mused over the radio this fine evening? An investigation hasn’t begun.  This is what the opposition is working on.

So, if Nicholson carefully picked Iacobucci because the Harpercons can pretty much count on him to rule in their favor, why did they go to all the trouble of blaming the Liberals and proroguing parliament? It seems to me he could have skipped all those steps and gone right to Iacobucci.

Perhaps the answer is obvious: Iacobucci is retired from the bench; he is in the private sector now, practising corporate law. Would anything he ruled on be even binding or legally valid? Again, if there are lawyers (or law students seasoned on this)  reading this, please share.

Hands up if you’re starting to lose hope that we’ll ever get to the bottom of torturegate?

Update: Read CanNurse’s comment below, she may well have answered this question.