Sunday, March 7, 2010

Questioning Prisoners

I read in the newspaper today that CSIS officers questioned Taliban prisoners captured on the field of battle prior to being turned over to Afghan officials. The objective was to identify the rank of the prisoner and to obtain any information that may assist our troops fighting the Taliban in the field. Our intelligence officers were not torturing prisoners themselves, which is suggested by the headline "Canadian Spies Interrogated Afghan Prisoners."

I'm wondering how this is a controversy? I would be upset if we weren't asking any questions when we pick these fighters up on the battlefield. The alternative would have been handing over 100% of POWs directly to Afghan officials without any screening process by our military police of intelligence services. The longer it takes to obtain operational intelligence, the less effective is. If a Taliban militant knew for example the location of a planned ambush, the sooner you get the information the less likely Canadian soldiers are to be caught in a death trap.

When Paul Martin led our military into Kandahar province, they were completely unprepared to handle or process POWs. According to "intelligence expert" Wesley Wark "They didn't have a trained body of people with the language skills, knowledge of the country, knowledge of the tribal situation, who was in charge of which warlord group, what was the nature of the Taliban. Those are all issues they had to develop an expertise on after 2006." This suggests that our CSIS officers were not adequately trained for their purpose when the Liberals were running the military, and were only provided proper training after the Conservatives were elected. Wasn't John McCallum a defense minister once? Conservatives cleaned up the woefully inadequate Paul Martin prisoner transfer agreement.

This is the exact same debate we were having at the end of November, except that now the left is now accusing the Prime Minister of personally committing war crimes. There are even allegations on the CAPP website that Stephen Harper stole Sidney Crosby's hockey stick. I would be interested to see just how many times the word "neo con" has been used on that site since its beginning? It has to be at least a few thousand.

11 comments:

  1. http://www.johnmccallum.ca/about.asp

    there you go Iceman...read all about it in John's Webmaster's account of his life....yes he was once a Defence Minister

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  2. The Harper haters and anti-military left are wading into some dangerous waters with this one..

    It's funny how their selective memory only includes things that happen post 2006, after the Conservatives came to power.Whether it is prorogation or the Liberal led mission in Afghanistan, nothing seems to matter(or indeed exist) prior to 2006.It doesn't seem to matter to leftists that Trudeau prorogued Parliament 9 times, or Paul Martin's Liberals negotiated the original detainee transfer protocols..

    The left would like to hang on the Conservatives the anger and the scorn that should be rightfully placed on themselves.

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  3. 'CSIS officers questioned Taliban prisoners captured on the field of battle prior to being turned over to Afghan officials'

    and today is sunday, followed by monday....what is their problem!!!!!
    OF COURSE CSIS interrogated prisoners, is this the big Attaran story fleshing out?

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  4. All you conservatives out there

    GO SUCK AN EGG

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  5. Make that 2 eggs

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  6. Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't John McCallum admit that the Martin Administration were aware of torture allegations back in January? The story was burried by the media because it occured right around the same time as the earthquake in Haiti. But some of us remember.

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  7. The "go suck an egg" defense. Solid.

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  8. Why are trolls so void of intellectual grey matter? It's frustrating frankly that they visit, uninvited, lack the courage to identify themselves and then conclude by making themselves look like all of their other troll-mates,extremely shallow and silly.

    As credibility seems to be a theme in all of these discussions, my vote goes to the guys carrying the weight, CSIS. I can't wait for the Liberals to be outed on this file as they were (oh so quietly hey CBC?) with others.
    They can't do peace keeping well or NATO combat missions, they are a disgrace!

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  9. Ahh... the wit and witticism of the left..move over,Noel Coward.

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