Globe editorial: The record and the falsehoods

It seems as though the paper who praised stephen harper with an endorsement before the last election, has finally realized what his government is all about. From the Globe & Mail

The record speaks for itself on what the Canadian government knows, or should have known, about the torture of Afghan detainees. It speaks far louder than the falsehoods from the government that have by now become routine. If these falsehoods are offered unintentionally, one wonders how senior government ministers can be so ignorant of the contents of such an important file.

Mr. MacKay should read the newspaper files if he can't be bothered reading the government files (no doubt he will deny reading either). Last January, The Globe reported that Justice Department lawyers announced Canada had found a credible case of torture, and therefore stopped transferring detainees. Canadian diplomats even found the instruments of torture (an electrical cable and rubber hose) under a chair in a secret Kandahar jail. “Canadian authorities were informed on November 5, 2007, by Canada's monitoring team, of a credible allegation of mistreatment pertaining to one Canadian-transferred detainee held in an Afghan detention facility,” the lawyers said in a letter to Amnesty International Canada and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association.

At every breach of the walls of secrecy that the diplomat Richard Colvin has alleged existed within government and the military, the government fires off untruths (the above list is by no means complete). But they are laughably weak armaments against the truth. As each one is knocked aside, the government's insistence it knew nothing about the torture of detainees becomes more and more tenuous.

Congratulations, G&M. It's about time.

Oh, p.s. Did you by chance leak a copy of this to Christie Blatchford?