"In exchange for continued visa-free access to the United States, American officials are pressuring the federal government to supply them with more information on Canadians.You mean people like Maher Arar?
Not only about (routine) individuals but also about people that you may be looking at for reasons, but there's no indictment and there's no charge."
"People in Canada have turned the man into some sort of national hero, but if you expect the next administration to join you in sending him laurels, I think you're going to be mistaken. Even Barack Obama ... is not going to go near that with a 10-foot pole."
Arar "will not have his name removed from the U.S. no-fly list "in my lifetime," he added.
Sands recounts a conversation with Stewart Baker, assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security :Canadians have "had a better deal than anybody else in terms of access to the United States and for that they've paid nothing."
Now "we want to give you less access, but we want you to pay more and, by the way, we're standardizing this (with other visa-free countries) so you're not special anymore."
According to Sands :
"Homeland security is the gatekeeper with its finger on the jugular affecting your ability to move back and forth across the border, the market access upon which the Canadian economy depends."
Dr Dawg's Shorter Sands : "Nice country you've got there--be a shame if anything happened to it."
It's just too bad we mostly missed the boat on Iraq, isn't it?
Back in January 2007, Sands introduced Sockwell Day to the Hudson Institute thusly :
"I was struck back in 2003 after doing a briefing with some people in the Administration. It had been a rough year. We were getting ready to go to Iraq.Good Canadian Sockwell Day, our new Minister of International Trade.
Canada-US relations were somewhat strained by that. At the end of the riefing which had been a little bit grim -- about how Canada and the US could work together better in this war on terror that we were facing, the person I was briefing paused and said to me, 'Chris, where are all the good Canadians?'
When he said that it broke a little bit of my heart, because I'm an American but I love the Canadians. I think what he meant by that was 'Where are the Canadians of World War I and World War II, that people understood to be... even when Europeans didn't, those allies we had come to count on.'
Well, I have good news. Our speaker today is one of the good Canadians..."
.
5 comments:
With sockwell being a "Good Canadian," what does that make the rest of us ? ? ? ?
Wow...I think he shows a monumental lack of historial understanding.
It was US who rushed to the defence of the Allies in both wars. The US waited on the sideline for more than two years before they would deign Hitler and Hirohito important enough to get involved. In World War I we lost 50,000 people before the United States decided to come help.
So fuck you, Sands
Crap, that looks weird. I mean to say it was CANADA that ruched to the defence of the allies, us not the US.
Anyway, you get the point.
"Sands, a military historian and policy analyst"
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
Ian
I quoted this over at BnR:
Sands was also the guy who said :
Quote:
"some people actually genuinely think that being in Afghanistan is about helping the Afghan people"
when he touted the US taking over the whole of the Afghan mission as
Quote:
"bringing "U.S. professionalism" and "some of the success from Iraq into the Afghan theatre as well".
What Ian said.
Chris, I did know what you meant but it is eerie, isn't it?
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