Keep O'Connor In, Ignatieff Out

We are there to exact "retribution" for 9/11 (O'Connor); wage "war on evil people, just as we were doing during the First and Second World Wars" (Jay Hill, Conservative whip); do development work and liberate Afghan women (Josée Verner, minister of international co-operation), etc., etc. Afghanistan is to Canada what Iraq is to the United States. Just as Congress is demanding a withdrawal date from Iraq, so is the House of Commons from Afghanistan. Just as President George Bush is digging in his heels on Iraq, so is Prime Minister Stephen Harper on Afghanistan. Harper gave a very Bush-ian response to the political firestorm created by a Globe and Mail report on the torture of Afghan detainees caught by Canadian soldiers and handed to Afghan authorities. The report was by Graeme Smith, the Globe's correspondent in Afghanistan. While most Canadian journalists parachute for embedded stints with Canadian troops – to provide a useful but incomplete perspective, which, in the absence of other reportage, inevitably sounds like cheerleading for the military – Smith regularly talks to Afghans and provides a more balanced picture. He interviewed as many as 30 detainees and detailed their stories of being kicked in the head, whipped with bundles of electrical cables, hit by rifle butts and electrocuted by the notorious Afghan intelligence service. While the Canadian troops themselves were not implicated, they could face prosecution for handing the prisoners to their alleged torturers. And Canada's human rights credibility, sullied by the Maher Arar affair, gets further eroded. http://www.thestar.com/opinion/article/207201

Note: http://www.thestar.com/...