Comments on: Canada’s soured Afghan mission

By: M Smiff

M Smiff — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:14:18 +0000

Why isn’t this story getting more attention outside of Canada? There are allegations of torture and coverup that have been coming out every day in the Candian media for 3 weeks.

By: cnon

cnon — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 19:51:57 +0000

“After all, handing over prisoners in the knowledge they could be tortured is a war crime.”

Said who? No UN charter regulations say so. No Canadian law say so. No Geneva Convention say so. It is only established that a military force is not allowed to torture its own war prisoners of the enemy.

No you don’t want to torture nor hand over prisoners to others to torture. That’s a sound and moral act.

What Canadian Forces did was to hand over some prisoners to the Afghan government under a transfer agreement which clearly specifies ‘no torture’. The Afghan government signed this agreement and it is up to them to honor it.

If they don’t they should answer for it. It is not the job of the Canadian gov or Forces to run or oversee a sovereign foreign government.

Here we have a diplomat who made an accusation without evidence. He made a single sentence to a non-legal body and and the whole opposition political and media heads jumped up and down like being burn on a frying pan. Quite childish.

By: Peter B

Peter B — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:35:01 +0000

The conduct of the Liberals on Afghanistan is becoming a joke of gigantic proportions, just when Canadians thought they may be on to something, other than political gamesmanship like we had with wafergate, Olympic logos, door knobs, course of the Torch relay, stimulus spending etc.
David Mulroney, the number one man in Afghanistan at the time, has volunteered to fly down to testify immediately, before the parliamentary committee, and we have the Liberals going to set up road blocks so he can’t be heard by the committee, and prevent Canadians from hearing him now. Liberals for their shameful short term political gain, want the accusations to float in the air as long as possible, before some credible evidence is brought forward, by a well qualified source like David Mulroney. Liberals set out a smoke screen, that they want all documents released before Mulroney testifies, knowing full well only some documents can be released because of security concerns, and some are classified, but this will only serve the Liberal game plan, because then they can make accusations of coverup – they are treating Canadians like turnips. This is all about political games and not a search for the truth and I am surprised members of the media are now being duped by the tactics being employed.

http://www.torontosun.com/comment/column ists/mindelle_jacobs/2009/11/24/11900496 -sun.html

http://www.torontosun.com/news/columnist s/peter_worthington/2009/11/24/11900501- sun.html

By: David Ljunggren

David Ljunggren — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 14:54:13 +0000

According to “The Unexpected War: Canada in Kandahar” by Eugene Lang and Janice Stein, it is quite clear that the Canadian military knew in 2002 that the Americans were likely to invade Iraq. The Canadian top brass in fact drew up a plan recommending deployment to Iraq rather than Afghanistan. The Liberals had no intention of getting involved in Iraq and chose Afghanistan instead. Indeed, then Liberal Defence Minister John McCallum told Donald Rumsfeld that (a) Canada would send troops to Afghanistan and (b) this mean they wouldn’t be able to contribute to Iraq. According to the book, Rumsfeld was quite happy with this.
Here are three paragraphs that didn’t make it into my initial post:

The issue of alleged abuse had already tripped up the government in 2007, when officials first denied there was a problem and were then forced to hastily renegotiate a 2005 agreement between Canada and Afghan on offender transfers to introduce safeguards against torture. The initial deal had been signed by Hiller when the Liberals were in power.
Eugene Lang, who was still chief aide to Bill Graham at the time, conceded in an interview with CBC over the weekend that the first agreement had not been good enough.
“We didn’t think we’d be taking a lot of detainees, partly because we didn’t think we’d be in Kandahar for more than one year,” he said. “We … grossly underestimated the ferocity of the insurgency in Kandahar at that time so we ended up fighting a war that frankly we didn’t really expect, and as a result, probably taking a lot more detainees than we ever expected.”

By: M Shannon

M Shannon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:15:00 +0000

I’ll explain why the $18 billion amount given by the budget office (the budget officer wasn’t hiding figures…he received little cooperation from the government)is low and when considering we are talking about at most two combat battalions worth of troops the cost is staggering.

It didn’t take into account spending by any department other than defence.

It didn’t account for major equipment purchases that would not have been made without the campaign: helicopters, tanks, drones and MRAP type vehicles etc.

It didn’t account for the cost of replacing damaged vehicles.

It didn’t account for long term health care or pensions or for the creation of hundreds of mental health jobs in Canada to look after soldiers.

It didn’t account for interest payments on money borrowed to fight the war.

$100 billion is probably closer to the mark.

By: M Shannon

M Shannon — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 05:04:33 +0000

Canada didn’t go to Afghanistan in 2002 to avoid Iraq, which wasn’t invaded until 2003.

It sent a battalion in February of 2002 to guard Kandahar airfield to show solidarity with the US. After five months it was withdrawn and a few staff officers stayed in country until two battalions served in Kabul with ISAF for ~ six months each. The major selling point of this 2nd mission was that it allowed Ottawa to avoid Iraq.

After losing the position (which rotated amongst NATO nations)for it’s battalion in Kabul in 2005 Canada went to Kandahar to continue to avoid Iraq, to fight in a small war that was Hillier’s ticket to expanding the reputation and resources of the Canadian Forces, and to use the mission as leverage in trans border economic disputes with the US.

The major Canadian government’s problem is that it got a “medium” war the Canadian Forces couldn’t handle. Most of the public very quickly figured out that the mission had nothing to do with Canadian security and a lot to do with maintaining governmental and corporate bureaucracies in Ottawa and Brussels.

Now we have a situation in which the honor and competence of the army,which most people assumed, from the almost 100% positive spin put on the mission by major media outlets, were first rate is in question.