Thursday, November 26, 2009

Rick Hillier and Second-Hand Information ...

Private Mann:"General Hillier, 'Amnesty International' has a scathing report about Afghan prison conditions."

Hillier: "Those detestable peacenicks and bleeding-hearts! Why should I care about such second-hand information!!"

Private Mann: "The PMO just called. Prime Minister Harper wants us confined to our bases until the election's over. Soldier deaths hurt him in the polls."

Hillier: "What's that?? Listen private, until I hear those words from Harper, from his own lips whispered into my pretty little ears, it's business as usual! I can't run this mission based on second-hand accounts of what the government wants!"

Private Mann: "Errr, yessir, general sir. Forward Base No. 12 reports an increased Taliban presence in their area. They're calling for helicopters and reinforcements. They believe an attack is imminent!"

Hillier: "Did you actually get that from them, or might'n't it have been THE TALIBAN trying to get me to move troops around according to where they're least likely to strike?!?!? How do you know that one of those detestable ragheads doesn't know English and can pose as a Canadian soldier over the phone? I'll need a first-hand request, via webcam at the very least before anything is done!!"

Private Mann: "Yessir. You're insane sir."

Am I missing something? Is Colvin saying that he sent warnings of prisoner abuse in 2006 and Hillier is saying that he didn't? Is it as simple as that? That the harpercons are refusing to release Colvin's reports and simply trying to say that Colvin doesn't know what he, himself wrote in them? Is the government (and the detestable Hillier) basically counting on their not having to release Colvin's reports to protect themselves?

Let this be a test of the legislative branch vs. the executive branch then. EVERY SINGLE OFFICIAL who obeys harper and refuses to give the committee its requested evidence should be jailed for being in contempt of Parliament. Empty out the Justice Department, the PCO, if need be. Every power that parliament has should be used to the limit to get to the bottom of this!!!

2 comments:

Alison said...

"Is Colvin saying that he sent warnings of prisoner abuse in 2006 and Hillier is saying that he didn't?"

Yes.
However Mulroney is cleverer than that.
Although Colvin said in committee he first visited the prison on May 16, 2006, Mulroney is saying that Colvin didn't report it till 2007 and they'd fixed the problems by then. We don't know the actual date of Colvin's report because, unlike the civilian generals who testified yesterday, the opp members on the committee have the report dates blacked out.
Check out Peter MacKay's sniggering response to that here

New line of attack is that the prison Colvin visited did not hold prisoners captured by Canadians. No way of confirming or refuting this as prisoners were jockeyed between 3 prisons and the record-keeping was crap.
Really good post on this from Pogge.

thwap said...

Sickening behaviour on the part of the harpercons, but then, they're sick individuals.

But it's quite clear that they should have known about this long before and their pretensions of ignorance are insufficient for them to evade war crimes charges.