did you hear the CBC radio interview this morning about this topic?

perhaps we could look at these two statements:

“the afghan people are our friends, and we want to help them deal with their enemies, the taliban.”

“the taliban are our enemies.”

i don’t think the two are the same. the fact that SOME taliban came over and committed the atrocities of 9/11 in new york also does not imply that ALL taliban in afghanistan are the enemies of canadians.

btw, i am conflicted over our involvement in afghanistan but from what little i know, i am more for our involvement than against it. all in all, i am under the impression that we are helping not hindering.

still need to think about the idea of whether it gets too abstract when we we say that concepts are out enemies. stay tuned

PS. Most Canadians bloody well do care if *anyone* is rotting in a medieval-style dungeon. Those who don’t are nothing more than brutal, nihilistic thugs.

and the Libs and Nippers do not imo care for truth they seek only power. The lame stream media cohort are more interested in damaging the government than understanding we are at war.

If a crime has been committed justice should be pursued but cut the hyperbole.

They are also not aimed at our armed forces, (no one is accusing our soldiers of engaging in it) they are aimed at senior diplomats and administrators in Afghanistan who refused to take any action when faced with overwhelming evidence. They are also aiming to find out how far up the turn the eye mentality went.

The victims were allegedly not only hard core “taliban”, but regular afghans detained by the forces.

The opposition is asking for a judicial enquiry into why on the ground warnings were not acted on.

Frankly, your statements and that of the conservatives imply that torture is fine, as long as we do it to our enemies. That because we are engaged in a military conflict we should remain silent and not question our leaders. We’ve had enough of that sort of nonsense in the last 100 years.

If our allies are involved in torture, how then are they or us morally different from the Taliban? Because they torture women and our allies were only torturing men?

NO.

If we are going to justify our presence in an armed conflict based on humanitarian purposes, we must uphold the rule of law. If we are saying we are at war, we must uphold Geneva conventions. Our failure to do so not only undermines our legitimacy, but weakens our support amongst the people we are supposed to be protecting.

We must act questions, and not to be ashamed to do so.

That our current government, instead of taking these allegations seriously, turns arounds and accuses the opposition of being sympathizers for asking questions is absolutely ridiculous. The government is the one making this a partisan issue, by failing to do their job. Question period is the appropriate venue for asking these questions.

This is a serious matter, and should be treated seriously, especially if there were instructions in the diplomatic process to ignore allegations.

Your comments are indicating that you don’t believe we should be asking these questions, because it would undermine our case for being there. So in essence, you are saying that Canada’s role in Afghanistan is so important, that we must hide what is happening there from Canadians.

If these allegations are false, propaganda, then why try and suppress them? What is wrong with investigating them? Why won’t the government acknowledge that these are huge concerns and call an inquiry?

If Canadian diplomats were hiding information from our government, then frankly, we need to purge those diplomats from our core. If the government received these allegations, and failed to act, then it is a political issue.

From everything I see, the government appears to have something to hide.

And I must disagree with you that the Taliban are not our enemies. Undoubtedly, as part of a larger movement of radical extremists, they are the enemies of not just us or our allies, but all freedom-loving peoples. We can debate whether or not it’s necessary for us keep soldiers in Afghanistan (obviously, you know my position), but they remain the enemy in any case.

Lust for power at any price.

and take the exact opposite position over ”allegations of terrorism” ,
there the opps and media insist that evidence is not to be believed.