Today Richard Colvin, a current Intelligence Officer and former diplomat in Afghanistan, testified before a House of Commons committee that Afghan detainees transferred from the Canadian Forces to Afghan officials were knowingly tortured by the Afghan officials and prison system.

To make this worse, Mr Colvin claims, that many of the detainees transferred were actually innocent Afghan civilians. Mr. Colvin goes further to say that his department made the government, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper's foreign policy adviser aware of the situation. They were told in no uncertain terms to stop writing details of torture into their reports and to handle reports of such claims verbally. Also Mr. Colvin claims that his department was told not to report or speak publicly about the deterioration of security in Afghanistan in 2006-2007 even though it was plain to them that things on the ground were getting much, much worse. Mr Harper stood in front of Parliament and the Canadian people and said that Afghan detainees were not being tortured and if there was reason to believe they were that they would not be handed over to the Afghan government. This was plainly either an informed or uninformed lie. Now begins the Conservative smear campaign. Mr Colvin will be attacked both professionally and personally by the Government in an attempt to make this all go away.

The most pathetic part of this is that Harper will most likely win a majority in the next election as the Canadian populace seems to be much more concerned about who plays the best Beatles tune on the piano than human rights. We are supposedly losing soldiers in Afghanistan to make the country a free and better place for its populace. I may be mistaken, but allowing the torture of Afghan civilians to proceed doesn't seem much like nation building to me.


-Son