Harper "whips out" his ISIL lawyer joke

The Con bench seals laugh and clap at Steve's joke blowing off the UN and international law because grade six. 

Harper went on to explain that Canada will be bombing Syria as part of an international coalition, although the US is the only NATO member currently bombing Syria. The other coalition countries bombing Syria are Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, and the UAE. 

This same coalition of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan, Morocco, and the UAE minus Qatar also began bombing Yemen today. Egypt and Kuwait will be joining the offensive while Pakistan is still considering it. Nobel Peace Prize recipient President Obama has authorized the provision of US logistical and intelligence support to help bomb the Houthi rebels in Yemen who are fighting Al Qaeda and IS.
The Saudi-led air campaign against the Houthis in Yemen is dubbed “Decisive Storm”.

Harper says IS is a threat to Canada and will extend the mission for another year. 
DefMin Jason Kenney says they have no particular exit strategy..

h/t Maclean's for vid.

Update : Kenney whips out his "smart bombs", claiming Canada and the US are the only *coalition* bombing members that have them. David Pugliese shoots it down - both Saudi Arabia and UAE have 'em - in Saudi Arabia's case since 2008.

Harper and Kenney are leaning very heavily on the word 'coalition' in their bomb bomb bomb statements but as to who those coalition members actually are - not so much. 

Update2 : Aaron Wherry weighs in tonight on Harper joking about international law :
 Stephen Harper on the legality of bombing Syria: LOL

Shorter bonus grade six from Wherry : The government's position yesterday was that under UN Article 51, they 1) would be bombing Syria and 2) would not be informing the UN about it because it wasn't required. 
Turns out right in Article 51 it specifies that "Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council" so the government has now *clarified* its earlier stance and will be sending notification after all. 
World stage.

Update 3 : David Pugliese : 
Gen. Tom Lawson tries to dig Jason Kenney out of a bomb crater of his own making

Gwynne Dyer : Yemen: Unintended consequences   and 

Gwynne Dyer explains why terrorism is overblown and why Islamists want western countries to attack the Islamic State

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Eleven years and six months later, Steve finally gets his wish

Finally, eh?

A small deployment of 100 "special ops" at first to be sure, but still a significant addition to the ongoing campaign to fund and arm the Mujihadeen, al Qaeda, Al Nusra, ISIS/ISIL/Islamic State, and whoever comes after them next. Blowback. It's a never-ending job. 

Here John bomb-bomb-bomb-Iran McCain poses with Free Syrian Army rebels in 2013, in photos purportedly released by ISIS . McCain disputes claims these men are IS-related. McCain press secretary : "If the individual photographed with Senator McCain is in fact Mohamed Nour, that is regrettable."

"I believe there are ways to get weapons to the opposition without direct United States involvement,” McCain said in 2012 during his Mideast tour with Lindsay Graham. "The bloodshed must be stopped, and we should rule out no option that could help to save lives. We must consider, among other actions, providing opposition groups inside Syria, both political and military, with better means to ... to fight back against Assad’s forces."

In Syria, you see, IS are the good guys fighting against Basher Assad, while across the border in Iraq, they are the bad guys. 

Here they are rolling across the Iraq border in their column of 43 shiny yellow Toyota Hiluxes, allegedly a gift to 'moderates' from the US, in another photo of disputed origins.

Top GOP Senator Lindsey Graham warns of 'inevitable' next attack :

 "The seeds of 9/11s are being planted all over Iraq and Syria". 

Yup. Although technically you're still working off having invaded Iraq after the last one.

"Speaking to reporters at the NATO summit on Friday, Harper condemned the "barbaric acts" of ISIS, the jihadist group behind recent beheadings of American journalists."

Harper offered no comment on the 19 beheadings committed by our ally Saudi Arabia last month - some of them for "sorcery and witchcraft" - presumably because Canada has "two contracts totalling $14.8-billion awarded to General Dynamics Land Systems Canada of London, Ontario for the 2013-14 fiscal year to supply Saudi Arabia with military armoured vehicles."

"The Canadian government hopes that over time, ISIS could be pushed back into Syria"  

where they will be our friends again.

Durka, durka, durka, Steve.

Monday Update : ‘Property of US Govt’: Islamic State jihadists armed with US military weapons

Islamic State fighters appear to be using captured US military issue arms and weapons supplied to moderate rebels in Syria by Saudi Arabia.

 ... “significant quantities” of US-made small arms including M16 assault rifles and included photos showing the markings “Property of US Govt”.

It also found that anti-tank rockets used by IS in Syria were “identical to M79 rockets transferred by Saudi Arabia to forces operating under the Free Syrian Army umbrella in 2013″.

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Q & A with Mr.Bin Laden and Mr. William Elliott

Last October, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott addressed a meeting of security intelligence peeps about Canada's current terrorism environment :

"As far as Al-Qaeda is concerned, Canada is the enemy.
We recall Osama Bin Laden’s famous communiqué to America’s allies in November of 2002, in which he asked:

“Why are your governments, especially those of Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia, allying themselves with America in its attacks on us in Afghanistan? This is injustice. The time has come to settle accounts. Just as you kill, so you shall be killed; just as you bomb, so you shall be bombed. And there will be more to come.”

To answer Mr. Bin Laden's question, here's David Rothkopf, Bill Clinton's Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce and former managing director of Kissinger Associates, from Empire : Superclass, posted here on Saturday (mark 18:31) :

"If there were no oil in the Middle East, the United States wouldn't care about the Middle East, it wouldn't care about Israel, it wouldn't care about Palestine, it wouldn't care about social development in Iraq, it wouldn't care about the Taliban. If there were no oil and the interests who benefit from that oil and advocate for that oil, and who have done so and who have shaped American policy over the course of the past 70 years as a consequence of that oil, are big businesses."

Call me crazy, Mr. Elliott, but I think not helping the US occupy a country for oil bidness would go some distance towards not attracting unwanted attention from Mr. Bin Laden and his new friends here at home.
Back to Elliott's address :

Canada does suffer an image problem with some Americans as a safe haven for terrorists. We must work to overcome that perception ... demonstrate a more proportional and comprehensive commitment to not only fighting terrorism but to advancing our shared security interests more broadly.

I note that this year the RCMP’s strategic priority of “Terrorism” will be expanded to “National Security” which is consistent with this broader objective.

More criminal prosecutions for terrorist offences would certainly be one step to enhancing security relations with the United States.

And just where are we going to find "more criminal prosecutions for terrorist offenses" for the benefit of the US?
Junkies rebranded as terrorist financiers for the war on drugs.

Put succinctly, Canadian criminals and Canadian drug users keep Afghan and Pakistani heroin traffickers in business and contribute to the continuation of a serious threat to the West, and to Canada and Canadian interests.

Proving such linkages in court would mean that drug couriers and their associates could face terrorism financing charges. That would help send a strong message to the world [aka the US] that we are serious about prosecuting accomplices to terror.

Perhaps it also explains why someone decided to send a strong message to the RCMP in BC to stand down from its presser with Insite one month later.

Elliott wraps up with a pitch for an expanded RCMP "capacity to conduct and support extraterritorial investigations" in national security:

I believe the time has come for law enforcement to be even more active in the realm of national security. We need greater capacity to put more terrorism cases before the courts and more terrorists in jail.

And voilà! - Project Samosa. Hope our new alleged terrorists appreciate their important role for us in "enhancing shared security relations with the US".
I know Osama Bin Laden does.
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GWOT - A Moveable Feast

Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan ... next stop - Yemen?

Since that guy who detonated his underwear on a plane on Christmas Day claimed to have been sent by the al-Qaeda network in Yemen in retaliation for US/Saudi bombing raids inside Yemen, Saudi policy analysts are popping up in the Globe and Mail to report that Yemen is now more dangerous to the West than Afghanistan:

The botched attack on the U.S. plane came a day after Yemeni forces, with the help of U.S. intelligence, launched the second of two major air and ground assaults on major al-Qaeda hideouts in Yemen. [Ed : Odd coincidence, that]

Anwar Eshki, the head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies based in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, said al-Qaeda in Yemen “is stronger than it was a year ago and is turning Yemen into its base for operations against the West."

Yemen is al-Qaeda's last resort,” Mr. Eshki said. “There's no doubt that al-Qaeda's presence in Yemen is more dangerous than its presence in Afghanistan.”

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia, home to 15 out of 19 of the 9/11 hi-jackers, has been helping the US-backed Yemeni president with his Operation Scorched Earth assault against the minority Shiite Huthis, using "fighter-bombers, helicopters, heavy artillery and special forces" and shelling well into Yemen.

Once again the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies was on hand to explain :

"From the Saudi point of view the existence of a Huthi 'state' with the support of Iran is intolerable. They are going to squeeze the Huthis, to shut them down," he said.

The Saudis seek to create a permanent 20-kilometre (12 mile) wide no-go zone straddling the border, and has vacated scores of villages on the Saudi side to that end, according to regional security expert Anwar Eshki.

"The problem in Yemen gave us a good chance to fix our border problem," said the former Saudi general, head of the Middle East Center for Strategic and Legal Studies in Jeddah.

And right on schedule, from The Times, today:

'Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants planning attacks from Yemen'

Hundreds of al-Qaeda militants are planning terror attacks from Yemen, the country’s Foreign Minister said today.
“They may actually plan attacks like the one we have just had in Detroit.
There are maybe hundreds of them — 200, 300.”

The Global War On Terror moves on ...

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Richard Colvin's devastating letter of rebuttal

On Airshow MacKay's attempt to discredit Colvin by accusing him of not having brought up detainee abuse the one time MacKay met with Colvin in Afghanistan :
He, Colvin, had only been on the job for 10 days and had not met with any detainees yet.
And even if he had, protocol was to report to DFAIT, not the minister.

On Christie Blatchford's Con-fed column that Colvin had only been outside the wire once :
Colvin : 'Outside the wire' in Kandahar at least 11 times, in Kabul over 500 times.

On the claim his reports in 2006 did not use the word 'torture' :
Colvin : Six reports, one including the phrase " rife with torture"

On the government claim it heard no allegations of "torture" prior to April 2007:
Colvin : "... in early March 2007, I informed an interagency meeting of some 12 to 15 officials in Ottawa that, 'The NDS tortures people, that's what they do, and if we don't want our detainees tortured, we shouldn't give them to the NDS.' ... The response from the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) note-taker was to stop writing and put down her pen."

On the claim that it was only insurgents and Taliban who were detained:
Colvin : "... it was the NDS that told us that many or most of our detainees were unconnected to the insurgency. This assessment was reported to Ottawa. The NDS also told us that, because the intelligence value of Canadian-transferred detainees was so low, it did not want them."

On the government claim that it took action as soon as it was informed of abuse :
They were informed repeatedly of the risk of torture, the deficiencies of Canada's monitoring system, and delays in reports to the ICRC in 2006 in reports from the Provincial Reconstruction Team, the US State Department, and the US Secretary General. They finally sent someone in October 2007 who immediately confirmed torture.
The government also twice intervened to keep a torturer named by the PRT in place.

On Interdepartmental Coordinator for Afghanistan David Mulroney's statement that the only reason reports were edited was to remove 'opinion' or 'non‐fact based' information.

Colvin : Embassy staffers were told that they should not report information, however accurate, that conflicted with the government's public messaging. Ambassador Lalani instructed that we not report that the security situation was deteriorating.

In September 2007, an embassy staffer, in response to a written request from DFAIT's Afghanistan Taskforce to contribute to a security assessment by one of our NATO allies, sent a report that security in Kandahar had got worse and was likely to further deteriorate. Mr. Mulroney severely rebuked the officer in writing.

On Assistant Deputy Minister Colleen Swords' testimony that she told Colvin to phone first, write later :
Colvin : "Her message to me was that I should use the phone instead of writing..."

On the claim from Goldie, Gallant, MacKay, Abbott that "Afghan detainees are trained to claim torture."
Colvin : They are not Al Qaeda; they are peasants. We arrest them and turn them over to torturers. Why would they make any claims of torture, false or otherwise, to us? They don't trust us. Besides, reports of torture based on physical exams, not testimony.

And so on and so on. Absolutely devastating.

When Colvin originally testified at the Afghan Committee, he was just doing his job - appearing as summoned. As he stated today - he is not a whistleblower.
Today's letter, on what he politely termed the "inaccuracies" of the government's witnesses and MPs and camp followers, is even more damaging than his original testimony.

Government response?
Fucking idiot Goldie Hawn : "Now is not the time to accuse our troops of war crimes."
Peter MacKay's spokesweasel, Dan Dugas : "We reject all assertions that Canadian troops have committed war crimes."

Which is interesting in light of Colvin's letter. Note that he does not even obliquely lay blame on the military brass, never mind the troops.
Nope, it's all on MacKay, DFAIT and the Privy Council Office.
And this is why Harper has refused to release the docs to Peter Tinsley's Military Police Complaints Committee and the Afghan Committee, has fired Peter Tinsley, has intimidated witnesses from appearing before the Afghan committee, has refused to allow the Afghan Committee to continue their investigation, and has refused to call a public inquiry as voted on by the House.

All because one civil servant insisted on doing his job.
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"Good Morning, Afghanistan"

On Sunday hundreds of Afghan students and protesters shouted slogans against the US, Nato and Afghan government and burned an effigy of the President Obama during a rally in Kabul before attempting to storm the parliament building.

- updated below -

Eric Margolis : Take poor Hamid Karzai, the amiable former business consultant and CIA "asset" installed by Washington as Afghanistan's president. As the U.S. increasingly gets its backside kicked in Afghanistan, it has blamed the powerless Karzai for its woes and bumbling.

You can almost hear Washington rebuking, "bad puppet! Bad puppet!"

The U.S. government has wanted to dump Karzai, but could not find an equally obedient but more effective replacement. There was talk of imposing an American "chief executive officer" on him. Or, in the lexicon of the old British Raj, an Imperial Viceroy.

Washington finally decided to try to shore up Karzai's regime and give it some legitimacy by staging national elections in August. The UN, which has increasingly become an arm of U.S. foreign policy, was brought in to make the vote kosher. Canada eagerly joined this charade.

No political parties were allowed to run. Only individuals supporting the West's occupation of Afghanistan were allowed on the ballot.

As I wrote before the election, it was all a great big fraud within a larger fraud designed to fool American, Canadian and European voters into believing democracy had flowered in Afghanistan. Cynical Afghans knew the vote would be rigged. Most Pashtun, the nation's ethnic majority, didn't vote. The "election" was an embarrassing fiasco.

Ironically, the U.S. is now closely allied with the Afghan Communists and fighting its former Pashtun allies from the 1980s anti-Soviet struggle. Most North Americans have no idea they are now backing Afghan Communists and the men who control most of Afghanistan's booming drug trade."

Scott Taylor : "Spending millions of dollars to stage elections — and run-offs — to exercise a democratic process to appoint a U.S. puppet hasn’t fooled the Afghan people.
It’s time we stopped fooling ourselves."

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The National Post reports a poll this morning showing Support for Canada’s role in Afghanistan has fallen below 50%.

Wesley Wark, Munk Centre : "Good news stories -- good news stories could change their opinion."

Independent : "At 6.30am Helmand time today, the words "Good Morning, Afghanistan" boomed forth from the first British Forces radio station in the country.

DJ Dusty Miller mimicked Robin Williams's greeting this morning."

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Oct 28 Update : [h/t Pogge at Bread 'n Roses]

NY Times : Brother of Afghan Leader Said to Be Paid by C.I.A.
That would be Ahmed Wali Karzai, alleged drug lord and fixer of the Afghan election, on the CIA payroll for the last eight years. In what sounds like a scene out of the movie Traffic, brother Karzai is said to finger rival drug lords to the DEA and then take over their territories.

Also :

"The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home."

Isn't that what we used to call Al Qaida?

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Malalai Joya on Democracy Now [h/t Waterbaby]:

"You know, my people call him “Small Bush” in Kandahar province, this brother of Hamid Karzai.
And this was the main project of the CIA in Afghanistan, that under the banner of women rights, human rights, democracy, they occupied my country. They imposed these terrorists, blood and creed of the Taliban, on my people. And also they changed my country to the center of drug."

Meanwhile the similarities to Viet Nam continue. Wherever the CIA goes, the drug trade follows.

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U.N. turning the screws on Abdelrazik

Yesterday, a mere three days after the government announced it will comply with the Federal Court decision ordering it to bring Abdelrazik home, the United Nations Security Council blacklist committee decided to publish their reasons for putting him on its 1267 blacklist back in 2006. The allegations mirror similar charges posted on the U.S. Treasury Board website three years ago. What impeccable timing.

He is, they assure us, "associated with Al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden or the Taliban" and "a key member of a Montreal terrorist cell". Their case :

He attempted to go to Chechnya to fight against the Russians - twice - they say.
Really? And we're holding that against him?

He knew Ahmed Ressam, the Millenium Bomber who attempted to attack LAX in 2000.
Yes and as an avowed repudiator of terrorism, Abdelrazik testified against him for the prosecution, an act he could be forgiven for coming to regret in light of how that is turning out for him.

He told one individual that he was "personally acquainted with Osama bin Laden."

He knew Abu Zubaydah, the schizophrenic halfwit waterboarded 83 times in 2002 in order to elicit a false confession linking Sadaam and al-Qaeda that could be used to justify the US invasion of Iraq.
"That information is the fruit of torture," responded Abdelrazik's lawyer.

Abu Zubaydeh again. Abu Zubaydeh is the sad source of many allegations under torture.
Rather surprised that the UN Security Council 1267 page would have the fucking audacity to bring him up actually, but now that they have, let's go with that :

Abu Zubaydeh's lawyer, Brent Mickum :

Who is Abu Zubaydah? He was born in Saudi Arabia, but is not a Saudi citizen. He was educated in India. Following his university training, he traveled through the United States, considering possible universities where he might pursue his master's degree. In an interview with ABC, former CIA agent John Kiriakou described him as "a very friendly guy" who wrote poetry and was keen to talk about current events and compare the differences and similarities between Islam and Christianity. That has been my experience as well.

Like many other young Muslims before him, Zayn ultimately embraced the teachings of the Qur'an and traveled to Afghanistan to fight against communist insurgents who remained after the withdrawal of the Soviet army. In 1992, while fighting on the front lines, he was injured in a motor attack that left him with two pieces of shrapnel that remain embedded in his head to his day. So severe were his injuries that he lost the ability to speak for more than one year. His memory is compromised even today. He cannot remember his mother's name or picture her face. He cannot remember his father's name, but recalls that he looked like a prominent movie star in the Arab community. Although Zayn ran a news agency with a partner, he cannot remember his former partner's name.

Later, when Zayn returned to the front lines, he was told that he was no longer fit for fighting because couldn't remember how to shoot.

Zayn was never a member or a supporter of any armed forces that were allied against the United States. He had no weapon when he was taken into illegal custody. He never took up arms against the United States nor against its coalition allies. He was not picked up on a battlefield in Afghanistan at the time of his detention, but was taken into custody in Pakistan, where he was wrongfully attacked, shot, and nearly killed. So serious were his wounds that a surgeon from John Hopkins University was flown to Pakistan to perform emergency surgery to save the life of a man the Bush administration believed to be the number three man in al Qaeda."

We await the UN Security Council's explanation on why all their hardwon resolutions against torture should be laid aside to countenance the torturing of a halfwit on behalf of US colonialism.
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Abdelrazik is expected to land back in Canada on Saturday, accompanied on the flight by his lawyer, a Foreign Affairs official and two RCMP.
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"Then they were heroes. They were heroes."

Another brown Canadian citizen has been held in the US for 5½ years without charge, 4 of them in solitary confinement, for "allegedly assisting al-Qaeda", and his lawyer worries that he will suffer the same fate at the hands of the Canadian government as Omar Khadr and Abousfian Abdelrazik.

CBC : Ottawa not saying if Canadian linked to al-Qaeda can return

"Last month, U.S. federal prosecutors offered to drop the five charges of material terrorism if Warsame pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to support al-Qaeda."

Mohammed Warsame has accepted the offer - and after four years in solitary in the US, so would I - but Warsame does not deny his association with al-Qaeda. In 2000, he left Toronto for Afghanistan to train with al-Quaeda. Disillusioned by what he found there, he returned to Canada in March 2001 - six months before 9/11 - was picked up by the FBI in Minneapolis in 2003, and has been held in custody without trial ever since.

As his lawyer puts it : "Like many young Muslims, he was attracted by the notion of an Islamic state he believed was a sort of utopia."

Reading this I was reminded of a Chris Sands interview with the wife of an American diplomat stationed in Kabul. She spoke of her husband accompanying the Afghan resistance on their missions across the border against Soviet troops and of her friendship with fundamentalist Mujahideen leaders.
"Then they were heroes. They were heroes," she said.

Yes. They were praised as heroes, we now know, for being used by the US to embroil the Soviet Union in a crippling unwinnable war. But what is not often mentioned is the effect all that hero worship and propaganda in the western press would have had upon young Muslim teenagers in Canada and the US.
Warsame's crime was to have believed it.
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UN : Canada free to bring Abdelrazik home

Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon in the House of Commons on Monday :

"Mr. Abdelrazik is on the list established by the United Nations Security Council as an individual with ties to al-Qaeda. Therefore, he is subject to a travel ban and an asset freeze. Our government is taking its obligations seriously and that is why we are not going to issue him a travel document to return home."

G&M : Richard Barrett, co-ordinator of the UN's Al-Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, which oversees the various United Nations resolutions establishing the blacklist on which Mr. Abdelrazik was placed at the request of Washington in 2006 :

"Canada is free to bring Abousfian Abdelrazik home and doesn't need to ask for permission"

Addressing the Justice Department's argument that "it is geographically impossible for [Mr. Abdelrazik] to travel from Sudan to Canada by air, land or sea without transiting through the sovereign territories (land, airspace or territorial waters) of numerous UN member states which are bound at international law to prevent such transit, " Mr. Barrett stated :

"The overflight states don't come into it and they haven't ever come into it."

Well there goes legal bullshit argument#1 of the Government of Canada vs Abdelrazik, being argued today in the Supreme Court of Canada.

This just leaves Justice Department bullshit legal argument #2 : that Abdelrazik is :

"close to Abu Zubaydah, a former lieutenant of Osama bin Laden, involved in al-Qaeda training and recruitment."

That would be Abu Zubaydah, the half-wit waterboarded 83 times to coerce a false confession linking Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda in order to justify the invasion of Iraq.

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For those able to attend, the hearing today is at Supreme Court, West courtroom, 301 Wellington Street, Ottawa at 9:30am.

Wear a suit, bring pitchforks.

Harper's quest to turn Canada into an outpost of apology for the worst crimes of the Bush era shames us all.

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And thank you, Paul Koring at the G&M, for your ongoing excellent coverage of Abdelrazik's plight.

Update : Dr. Dawg attended Thursday and will update again when he returns from Friday's hearing.

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Canada oks torture intel on Abdelrazik

G&M : "More than 16 months after Canada's security agencies cleared Abousfian Abdelrazik, government lawyers are now pressing him to admit to being a senior al-Qaeda operative, echoing American accusations apparently extracted from Abu Zubaydah, the al-Qaeda leader water boarded more than 80 times under the Bush administration."


POGGE : "While the rest of the world is coming to terms with the fact that the Bush administration was actually using torture to elicit false confessions in an effort to justify their invasion of Iraq, the Hapless Government™ is trying to use statements from a man who was waterboarded 83 times to prove that Abdelrazik is a terrorist."


In a March appearance before the public safety committee, CSIS lawyer Geoffrey O'Brian caused a media stir by refusing to unequivocally deny Canadian intelligence agencies' reliance on foreign intel obtained via torture. "Clarifications" were demanded and obtained, the media was apparently placated, and it all went away.

Indeed CSIS Director Jim Judd, appearing before the public safety committee on April 3, said :

"In the past we used information received obtained by torture. Such information is not to be relied upon. We've changed our policies. Our policy now is under no circumstances do we condone the use of torture for any reason."

and went on to emphasize that intelligence agencies take direction from the federal government. CSIS has also called for a formal probe into its role in the Abdelrazik affair to clear its name.

But here is what Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan actually said when he appeared before the same committee to offer his "clarification" on torture:

"We do not condone the use of torture in intelligence gathering and our clear directive to our law enforcement agencies and intelligence services is that they are not to condone the use of torture, practice torture, or knowingly use any information obtained by torture."

Knowingly. Also known as "don't ask don't tell intel".

The rest of us have known of Abu Zubaydah's torture just to provide a pretext for invading Iraq since April 19, so this is perhaps not the best week for the Canadian government to air its filthy laundry in a Federal court on its role in condoning intel possibly derived from torture to prevent a Canadian citizen from returning home after he has been cleared by CSIS, the RCMP, and Sudan.
And, as pointed out by Lib Andrew Kania at the same public safety committee cited above, this also sends out a message to other governments that if they're selling info derived from torture, we're buying.
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Update : Dr. Dawg and James Bow
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The show trial must go on! Arar and Khadr

Just days before nearly-President Obama is expected to shut down Guantanamo Bay and disband the off-shore military show trials, US prosecutors get perhaps their very last chance to smear both Maher Arar and Omar Khadr at the same time in the court of public opinion.

The Star yesterday : Omar Khadr linked Maher Arar to terrorism, court hears
"Pentagon prosecutors dropped a bombshell on the last day of the Bush administration's war crimes trials, linking the case of Canadian detainee Omar Khadr to torture victim Maher Arar in stunning testimony ..."

CBC yesterday : Khadr saw Arar at al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan: FBI agent
"Omar Khadr pointed out Canadian Maher Arar, who was cleared of any links to terrorism by a public inquiry in 2006, as someone he saw at al-Qaeda safe houses and possibly training camps in Afghanistan, an FBI agent has testified."

What "bombshell"?

The Star, Mar 18, 2008 :
"Khadr was also questioned about Maher Arar, according to the affidavit. Arar, a telecommunications engineer from Ottawa, had been arrested in September 2002 by U.S. authorities in New York on suspicions of terrorism. He was sent to Syria, where he was tortured and detained without charges for a year.
"They showed me pictures and asked who people were. I told them what I knew," recalled Khadr, adding the Canadian officials also questioned him about his father, Ahmed Said Khadr, a reputed Al Qaeda financier.
"I tried to cooperate so that they would take me back to Canada," he said. "I told them that I was scared and that I had been tortured."
The affidavit does not reveal what Khadr told the Canadian delegation about Arar or his father, but he was considered to be a treasure trove of information, said Khadr's military lawyer."

CBC, Mar 26, 2008 :
"Khadr says he was also interrogated about Maher Arar, the Canadian who was deported to a Syrian prison over alleged links to al-Qaeda. An inquiry later cleared Arar of any links to terrorist organizations.
Khadr says he was also shown photographs of about 20 people and asked to identify them.
He says he ripped off his shirt and showed the Canadians his injuries. He also says he told them he had lied to his American interrogators and told them whatever they wanted to hear because he was scared and wanted them to stop torturing him.
Khadr says they accused him of lying, and passed information from their interviews to U.S. officials."

Nonetheless right on cue the newspapers all across AsperNation are going with variations on "Accused terrorist fingers Arar".
Well, sure. A person the press call a "terrorist" accuses someone else, since exonerated, of being a terrorist to stop his tormentors from torturing him, so suddenly they're both suspect? Nice circular smear!

Also Interrogator 11 testified yesterday that Khadr had admitted to throwing the grenade that killed a US soldier :
"Under cross-examination, it was revealed the agent destroyed her notes of the interrogation sessions after she had typed them up -- something she could not explain."

Khadr's chief interrogator at Bagram was charged and convicted in the death of an innocent detainee two months after the 15 year old Khadr was shipped from Bagram prison to Guantanamo.

Update : Dr. Dawg

Late Tuesday Upperdate : "In contrast to testimony he gave Monday, [FBI]special agent Robert Fuller told Khadr's war-crimes hearing that the young Canadian was not immediately able to name Arar, but did say he looked familiar."
He looked familiar. You people slay me.

The Pornography of Power

Journalist Robert Scheer on his new book "The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America"

From a rough transcript of an interview on Democracy Now :

AMY GOODMAN: The Pornography of Power—why pornography?

ROBERT SCHEER: Because it’s not the real thing. It’s a trick. It’s like—I liken it to a lap dance. You know, you’re promising something that doesn’t exist. They’re promising security. These defense contractors, lobbyists, politicians, they pretend they’re dealing with real issues in the world, and they’re not. They’re just getting your money, and they’re deceiving you."

"I say, we had a situation where Bush vetoed an extension of child healthcare that would have involved $7 billion, OK? That’s two subs that we don’t need that are built every year. Alright? We have the F-35, an airplane that’s a $300 billion program. Why do we need new planes? The F-22, a $65 billion program. So we are wasting trillions of dollars on this old-fashioned defense budget that benefits Boeing, benefits Lockheed. Everyone knows it’s a scam. Everyone knows there is no military function for this, there’s no national security. And what happened is they got a license to steal. 9/11 was their license to steal."

"The irony now is that when these defense hawks—when they challenge my book and they say, "Well, of course, we don’t need these submarines to fight al-Qaeda. They don’t even have a rowboat. And of course we don’t need, you, now, new stealth bombers to fight al-Qaeda. But there’s the China menace."
The irony is here, China is financing our arms development. They are charging us interest to lend us money to build weapons ostensibly to attack them, and they’re laughing up their sleeve. They know this is a joke."

"Imperialism doesn’t pay. You know, here in California, I’m paying, what, $4.40 for gas, and we have seized the second-biggest pool of oil in the world? And we’re now paying—you know, the price of oil has gone up six-fold since George Bush has been president, and you want to tell me imperialism pays?
So I think the failure of the neoconservatives really is the failure of the imperial model. The Germans learned that. The French learned it, the English. Everybody in the world knows old-fashioned imperialism does not pay for the average person. It pays for Halliburton. It pays for, you know, Exxon. But it doesn’t pay for the taxpayer."

Interesting that Scheer nearly dedicated his book to Richard Nixon, who, he said, "was a horrible man, and he killed a lot of people and should have been tried for war crimes. But the fact is that Richard Nixon was the enemy of the neoconservatives."