Canada Adds U.S.A. to Torture List
Canada to diplomats: U.S. tortures people
Truth - Another reason to move to Canada.
A training document produced by the foreign ministry openly admits the United States is a country where prisoners are at risk of torture. “The manual - part of a training course on torture awareness for diplomats - also includes Israel, China, Iran and Afghanistan on its watch list.”
This really shouldn’t be news at all. Our American government tortures people. Period. And those who chose to vote the current administration back into office, while knowing from the media that the government allows torture, are complicit.
Back in 2005 the U.S. openly admitted to its torturing ways. AFX News Limited reported that the “acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, said a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity. ” Sources at the UN said “this is the first time the world body has received such a frank statement on torture from US authorities.”
Our Canadian friends to the north should be applauded for their honesty. Friends tell friends what they need to hear, not what they want to here. The foreign ministry, though indicating this is not a policy document representing the views of Canada, deserve credit for ’speaking truth to power’ as they say, even if indirectly.
Excerpts from the BBC article:
[The document] also classifies some US interrogation techniques as torture.
“The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government,” said a spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier.
The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under “definition of torture”.
It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa’s claims that Omar Khadr is not being mistreated.
There was no immediate response from either the US or Israel.
The torture awareness course was introduced after Ottawa was strongly criticised for its handling of the case of a Canadian who was deported from the US to Syria in 2002.
Syrian-born Maher Arar - who was accused of being an al-Qaeda member - says he was tortured during his 10 months in a Damascus jail - a claim strongly denied by Syria.
A Canadian government inquiry exonerated Mr Arar of any links with terrorist groups. It also showed that Canadian diplomats had not had any formal training on how to detect whether detainees had been abused.
Read the full article here.
With the 2008 election now in full swing, public discourse on the subject of torture appears to have been moved to the back burner. It is amazing to me that the elimination of torture is not higher on the list of priorities of the presidential aspirants. Here is a small sampling of what the current crop would do on their first days as president.
Fred Thompson - First day in office
Bill Richardson - First day in office
Rudolph Giuliani Ad “First Day”
Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson - First days in office
John McCain - First day in office
The only presidential candidate with the sense to close the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba on the first day of his presidency is the same man who said it would be “fine with me” if the U.S. military stayed in Iraq another 100 years.
McCain on U.S. forces in Iraq
Wonder what the other Republican candidates think about “enhanced interrogation techniques”? Here is a small example:
Mitt Romney on Guantanamo Bay
And the torture continues…
- Waterboarding: The New American Crawl
- President Bush’s Mukasey Approves of Torture
- Romney OK’s Torture With Knive
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Stumble it!
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