Gordo's Brain

Just when I think that the minority-rule Conservative government has hit the bottom, they dig the hole a bit deeper:

The Harper government is training its guns on a diplomat whistleblower who says Canada was complicit in the torture of captured Afghan prisoners, trying to undermine Richard Colvin’s credibility as pressure builds to hold a public inquiry into the matter.

Now, these are very different allegations from what the US has been accused of doing. Believe it or not, “extraordinary rendition” (scooping a suspect and delivering them to some other country for interrogation (usually also involving torture)) isn’t as serious as what it appears that our government has done.

Transferring a prisoner to another entity when you know or even suspect that they may be subject to torture is a war crime. Mr. Colvin, number 2 man at the embassy in Kandahar at the time, alleges that he repeatedly warned his superiors (all the way to the Prime Minister’s national security advisor) that there was very credible evidence that the Afghan army was torturing prisoners that our military had handed over to them. The problem was the response that he and another diplomat received. they were told to stop writing things down and, effectively, shut the hell up.

I heard an interesting interview with the man who was effectively Mr. Colvin’s equivalent for the E.U. in Kandahar at the time. He says that everything Mr. Colvin alleges was accurate and he expects every one of the allegations to be proven.

The Tories are in a bit of a tough spot with respect to undermining Mr. Colvin’s credibility: they promoted him:

The awkward fact for the Conservatives, however, is that Mr. Colvin is trusted by the Canadian government on sensitive matters. He is currently working for Ottawa as a senior intelligence officer at Canada’s embassy in Washington.

Hmmm. Oh, there’s this bit, too:

Even as he attacked Mr. Colvin’s credibility, however, Mr. MacKay conceded that the bolstered prisoner-transfer agreement in 2007 came about in part because of the diplomat’s warnings.

Lovely. So, they changed the prisoner-transfer agreement to allow for post-transfer visits to check for signs of mistreatment, but the man who provided the information to prompt this tells a story with “incredible holes”.

Politicians. Hmph. You stay classy, Peter MacKay, we’re counting on you.

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