It would seem the MSM is finally waking up to Coven's duplicity...
Richard Colvin's story of widespread torture and indifference is unravelling
November 30, 9:42 AMCanada Politics ExaminerBrian Lilley
Article Link
Leaks abound on the issue of torture in Afghanistan. Those supporting and those opposing the claims of Richard Colvin are trying hard to make sure that Canadian journalists have access to the documents at the centre of the controversy.
The Globe and Mail columnist and Newstalk 1010 commentator Christie Blatchford has her hands on redacted copies of Richard Colvin's emails and finds his evidence wanting.
As you read Blatchford's two columns, one Saturday and one Monday, it is important to remember what Colvin's allegation was in his testimony to the special Commons committee on the Afghan mission. "According to our information, the likelihood is that all the Afghans we handed over were tortured," Colvin told MPs. "For interrogators in Kandahar, it was standard operating procedure."
Blatchford's run down of the memos in today's column and the words of retired General Michel Gauthier testifying before that same committee tell a different story. Colvin was concerned about the amount of information Canadian soldiers were collecting on Afghan prisoners, lamenting that it was not enough to adequately track them through the prison system. That's a far cry from saying all were tortured and that the government knew this and failed to act for 18 months.
Given the email trail, I'll have to agree with Blatchford. Richard Colvin discovered the torture issue at the same time as Grahame Smith of The Globe and Mail. The memos warning directly of torture don't begin until The Globe reporting began, which makes me wonder which man was the source for the other? Was Smith the source for Colvin's sudden flurry of emails on detainees being tortured? That seems more likely at this point than a diplomat like Colvin giving vital information on torture to a journalist before alerting his superiors.
Much More on link
Christie Blatchford
These are the supporting links quoted in the article above
E-mail trail only adds to Afghan questions
Article Link
For a week, diplomat Richard Colvin's accusations about Canada's handling of its Afghan prisoners – and their subsequent alleged torture at the hands of Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security – dominated headlines and Parliament, despite the fact that no one had seen the e-mails in which Mr. Colvin said he had tried to wake Ottawa to the problem he saw as so serious.
The Globe and Mail now has what appears to be the entire collection of the e-mails Mr. Colvin sent on the subject during the 17 months he spent in Afghanistan from April of 2006 to October of 2007. A couple are virtually completely blacked out; some are heavily redacted, others rattle on at such length they could have done with a little more redacting.
It seems to have been Mr. Colvin's visit to the provincial prison in Kandahar city on May 16, 2006, that first triggered his concern. But that inspection and an earlier one upon which he relied, made in December of 2005 by the International Committee of the Red Cross, were, in the Afghan context, practically sunny about their findings.
More on link
Christie Blatchford
Memos show so-called whistleblower seized cause late in game
Article Link
The act of "whistle blowing" as it is commonly understood incorporates an element of the new, of being the first to raise an alarm. As the activist Ralph Nader defined it about 35 years ago, a whistleblower is someone for whom "the public interest overrides the interest of the organization he serves" and who thus blows the whistle on wrongdoing.
Whatever else, the diplomat Richard Colvin was no such creature.
By his own records, he was seized with the Afghan-detainee issue only after a series on alleged prisoner abuse appeared in The Globe and Mail in the spring of 2007.
Again by his own account, during his eight months in Afghanistan in 2006, he sent only six reports on the subject of detainees, three of which Mr. Colvin has described as being solely about process or policy and not potential abuse.
More on link
Red Cross rebukes diplomat over Afghan torture allegations
By Matthew Fisher, Canwest News ServiceNovember 29, 2009
[url=http://www.canada.com/news/Cross+rebukes+diplomat+over+Afghan+torture+allegations/2282914/story.html]Article Link
KABUL, Afghanistan — A senior Red Cross official has criticized a Canadian diplomat for publicly alleging the organization believed Canada handed detainees over to Afghan authorities knowing they would likely be tortured.
“What (Richard) Colvin has said publicly has put us in an awkward situation. What he claims to know should not be put out in a public place,” said Eloi Fillion, deputy director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan, where it has a staff of 120 foreigners and 1,500 locals.
Colvin, now deputy head of intelligence at the Canadian embassy in Washington, made headlines this month with his allegations that the Canadian government and the military turned a blind eye to widespread torture in Afghan jails.
The senior diplomat said he wrote more than 12 reports while he was posted in Afghanistan, beginning in May 2006, warning of “serious, imminent and alarming” problems about the treatment of detainees following their transfer by Canadian troops.
More on link
