Monday, November 30, 2009

Stephen Harper and the Chickenhawks

















Well I guess it was inevitable eh?

When you don't do anything unless Obama does it first. Or you try to hide behind him, just like you try to hide behind our soldiers to conceal your actions on the Con Torture and Rape Scandal.

Sooner or later you're going to be humiliated.

Our colleague Susan Bonner in Washington is reporting that although Obama is speaking personally with leaders from Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Denmark, China, India, Russia, Afghanistan and Pakistan... he will not be making a personal call to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

Vice-President Joe Biden will be phoning Canada's prime minister.


OMG. Not Biden? Not Italy before Canada? So much for Great Warrior Leader. So much for his "special relationship" with Obama. So much for punching above our weight.

Now will somebody please explain that to the absurd chickenhawk Rosie DiManno?

Who after detailing a million horrifying reasons Canadian troops shouldn't have handed any prisoners over to the Afghan torturers, attacks Richard Colvin for raising the alarm.

I am dubious, however, of a diplomat relying on journalists and embassy compound chatter for information and using that, in part, as a basis for copy-all email memos.

Nor does there appear to be, in any of that voluminous correspondence, an eyes-on grasp of the chaos on the ground in Kandahar in 2006 and 2007, when Taliban units engaged in traditional combat – standing and fighting, as they did during Operation Medusa – with Canadian troops taking into custody an unexpectedly huge number of prisoners.

What were they to do with them?

Golly that's a tough one. How about building our own prison compound? Oh we thought of that but decided we couldn't afford it. So what were we doing there in the first place?

Or should I ask Rosie's fellow chickenhawk Christie Blatchford that question instead? Because she's now accusing Colvin of being a Richard Johnny come lately.

By his own records, he was seized with the Afghan-detainee issue only after a series on alleged prisoner abuse appeared in The Globe and Mail in the spring of 2007.

When even she admits that the e-mails, so outrageously leaked to her by the Cons...the e-mails that Richard Colvin and members of the Canadian Parliament can't see but she can...show this:

The sixth (June 2), at five pages the lengthiest, revisited what he saw at the prison in May, and devoted all of four paragraphs, mostly un-redacted, in which Mr. Colvin's source described detainees being held in "unsavoury" or "unsatisfactory" conditions, though his description of what the e-mail actually said was considerably more florid in the précis in his affidavit, where he told the MPCC it dealt with "the risk of torture and/or actual torture of Afghan detainees."

Almost a year before the Globe story.

And never asks herself the question why SHE didn't break the story first.

Or explain why she spent all her time in Afghanistan writing about our glorious mission, and all those hunky young men, and all that manly manly musk. And not a word about TORTURE.

Oh boy. So much for our Warrior Nation.

Oh what a lovely war...



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Cartoon: Theo Moudakis/Toronto Star

2 comments:

thwap said...

It's "whose side are you on?" here people.

Belchford and DiMoron have chosen their side and it's no surprise.

And yeah, when i heard Obama didn't talk to harper personally, I couldn't help but smirk.

Canada has sacrificed more in proportional and in many cases in absolute numbers than all or almost all the other NATO countries. And there's their recognition for sacrificing Canadian lives and Canadian honour.

Simon said...

hi thwap...I agree with you we owe it to our dead soldiers to keep our noses clean. Because if we colluded in torture it was because of the actions of their superiors and their government not them.
So when I see Harper trying to justify a cover-up by claiming he's supporting our troops it makes me want to VOMIT...