Zach LarkinsTSK TSK
Well, it looks like those nasty old Canadians have been up to it again. Not satisfied with just gunning down terrorists in Afghanistan, they are now beating their captives up. Let's take a close look at this and try to figure out just how ridiculous it is.
We are in Kandahar to look for three Afghans who may have been injured while resisting arrest by Canadian forces. They may already be dead after a successful stint as suicide bombers, but let's not allow that to get in the way of some good old liberal thinking about playing nice with the enemy. Never mind that this war has already claimed 45 Canadian lives and maimed dozens of soldiers for life, let's, instead, have "a political storm" (to use the Globe and Mail's breathless hyperbole) erupt at some cuts, bruises and a couple black eyes which allegedly appeared on a detained trio of suspicious dudes. Let's get our overstretched military to waste time and resources defending itself against the hypothetical prospect it may have beaten up several resistant suspects ten months ago.
A board of inquiry has been set up to look into three men's alleged injuries and military police have been ordered to search for the missing Afghans, who were handed over to local authorities for further questioning. Let's try now to look at it from the soldier's point of view.
Your Kandahar deployment has endured the fiercest fighting of a Canadian mission in three decades and suffered three deaths in the previous month. The Taliban enemy is on the move back into the region by night and sheltered by locals during the day. One day, you find yourself busting down the door of a house fingered by informants as suspicious and find bomb-making devices and fertilizer used in making explosives. A "fighting age male" is ordered to hit the floor. He refuses. It takes four soldiers to force the yelling, kicking suspect to his knees. This may have caused some cuts and bruises. Go ask your local cop if this could happen when they have to arrest someone who's high on PCP. On the same day, a young Afghan is seen watching troop movements from a nearby hill. He tries to flee, but is apprehended and searched. A cell phone, address book, car keys and signal mirror are found. But he escapes, and after being re-captured the next day, refuses to answer any questions.
Revelations about upper torso injuries on the above suspects are brought to light and Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier is put under the media interrogation lights and faces comparisons to the 1993 death of a young Somalian in Canadian military hands. This is in no way comparable to the torture-to-death of a young Somalian, the hellish humiliations of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib or even on par with some victims of nasty RCMP custody. This is all the work of started Ottawa university professor Amir Attaran, who connected a random series of dots on documents released by the military to produce a picture of alleged brutality that even he admits may be wrong.
Attaran is an internationally acclaimed academic, and to his credit, he is willing to give the armed forces the benefit of considerable doubt. He admits his formal request for an inquiry was based on "guesses" or "inferences" and includes "the possibility of ambiguity and error". So why then are we going through this nonsense? Because the military served as its own worst enemy by censoring the documents Attaran obtained under an Access to Information request to the point where almost any academic hypothesis fits the sketchy field facts provided. If our secretive armed forces want to force an inquiry rather than release the evidence to prove it's all so unnecessary, that then becomes their own damn fault. Still, it seems like such a waste for military brass to shift into damage control for a prolonged inquiry if there's proof of a legitimate explanation for the detainee bumps and scrapes.
I'm not, nor ever have been a soldier, but the way I see it, if someone described as a "fighting age male" is caught with material for an "improvised explosive device", ignores verbal and physical commands, yells "belligerently" and moves in an "aggressive" manner toward four stressed-out soldiers, he's asking for injuries. In a land where suicide-murders are common place, stonings and beheadings are carried out in public for all citizens to enjoy, the fact a limb wasn't broken or a skull cracked only suggests the soldiers were being gentle.
Even the worst case scenario based on a creative analysis of the released documents, that a few soldiers used too much muscle in making some Afghan apprehensions, isn't enough to justify the attention this matter has received. Only in Canada could the cuts and bruises suffered by a few suspected terrorists give the entire Canadian military a black eye. The murderous take-no- prisoners Taliban can only be laughing at the insanity of it all.
Sources: Don Martin National Post
We are in Kandahar to look for three Afghans who may have been injured while resisting arrest by Canadian forces. They may already be dead after a successful stint as suicide bombers, but let's not allow that to get in the way of some good old liberal thinking about playing nice with the enemy. Never mind that this war has already claimed 45 Canadian lives and maimed dozens of soldiers for life, let's, instead, have "a political storm" (to use the Globe and Mail's breathless hyperbole) erupt at some cuts, bruises and a couple black eyes which allegedly appeared on a detained trio of suspicious dudes. Let's get our overstretched military to waste time and resources defending itself against the hypothetical prospect it may have beaten up several resistant suspects ten months ago.
A board of inquiry has been set up to look into three men's alleged injuries and military police have been ordered to search for the missing Afghans, who were handed over to local authorities for further questioning. Let's try now to look at it from the soldier's point of view.
Your Kandahar deployment has endured the fiercest fighting of a Canadian mission in three decades and suffered three deaths in the previous month. The Taliban enemy is on the move back into the region by night and sheltered by locals during the day. One day, you find yourself busting down the door of a house fingered by informants as suspicious and find bomb-making devices and fertilizer used in making explosives. A "fighting age male" is ordered to hit the floor. He refuses. It takes four soldiers to force the yelling, kicking suspect to his knees. This may have caused some cuts and bruises. Go ask your local cop if this could happen when they have to arrest someone who's high on PCP. On the same day, a young Afghan is seen watching troop movements from a nearby hill. He tries to flee, but is apprehended and searched. A cell phone, address book, car keys and signal mirror are found. But he escapes, and after being re-captured the next day, refuses to answer any questions.
Revelations about upper torso injuries on the above suspects are brought to light and Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier is put under the media interrogation lights and faces comparisons to the 1993 death of a young Somalian in Canadian military hands. This is in no way comparable to the torture-to-death of a young Somalian, the hellish humiliations of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib or even on par with some victims of nasty RCMP custody. This is all the work of started Ottawa university professor Amir Attaran, who connected a random series of dots on documents released by the military to produce a picture of alleged brutality that even he admits may be wrong.
Attaran is an internationally acclaimed academic, and to his credit, he is willing to give the armed forces the benefit of considerable doubt. He admits his formal request for an inquiry was based on "guesses" or "inferences" and includes "the possibility of ambiguity and error". So why then are we going through this nonsense? Because the military served as its own worst enemy by censoring the documents Attaran obtained under an Access to Information request to the point where almost any academic hypothesis fits the sketchy field facts provided. If our secretive armed forces want to force an inquiry rather than release the evidence to prove it's all so unnecessary, that then becomes their own damn fault. Still, it seems like such a waste for military brass to shift into damage control for a prolonged inquiry if there's proof of a legitimate explanation for the detainee bumps and scrapes.
I'm not, nor ever have been a soldier, but the way I see it, if someone described as a "fighting age male" is caught with material for an "improvised explosive device", ignores verbal and physical commands, yells "belligerently" and moves in an "aggressive" manner toward four stressed-out soldiers, he's asking for injuries. In a land where suicide-murders are common place, stonings and beheadings are carried out in public for all citizens to enjoy, the fact a limb wasn't broken or a skull cracked only suggests the soldiers were being gentle.
Even the worst case scenario based on a creative analysis of the released documents, that a few soldiers used too much muscle in making some Afghan apprehensions, isn't enough to justify the attention this matter has received. Only in Canada could the cuts and bruises suffered by a few suspected terrorists give the entire Canadian military a black eye. The murderous take-no- prisoners Taliban can only be laughing at the insanity of it all.
Sources: Don Martin National Post
