Torture, in-verse
Christie Blatchford’s report on Richard Colvin’s torture allegations departs on a tangent that I hoped would never become a matter of public debate in this country (Re E-mail Trail Only Adds To Afghan Questions – Nov. 28). She criticizes his statement that most of the Afghan detainees weren’t “high-value targets” but rather “just local people, farmers, truck drivers, tailors, peasants, random human beings in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Ms. Blatchford notes that “Canadian soldiers were using gunshot residue tests … to sift the wheat from the chaff,” and detained “only those who tested positive for GSR.” When precisely did the question of torture become one of “wheat vs. chaff” rather than, as numerous international conventions have long stipulated, one of universal human rights, regardless of culpability?
That Ms. Blatchford chastises Mr. Colvin for failing to ascertain whether those detained were innocent or actually Taliban operatives, without regard for any evidence that those held were subjected to torture, suggests that Canada’s moral standards on the issue are in serious danger of compromise.
Liane Tanguay, Wolfville, N.S.
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“Canadians need to know”? (The Gap Between Warning And Action – Nov. 27) Does anyone really think the average Canadian family struggling to hang on to their jobs, put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads while otherwise going about their daily routine really care about Taliban prisoners in the hands of Afghan authorities half a world away? What a non-issue.
Gordon Friedrich, Woodbridge, Ont.
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Re Penning Lyrical Images Of The “Broken Beautiful Men” (Nov. 28)
In Afghan fields, the poppies grow,
Supporting drug lords, row on row,
To mark our place.
And in the sky, the drones look mild,
But quickly bomb an innocent child,
And make another Taliban.
Our many dead, our many maimed,
For Karzai’s democracy it’s claimed,
But torture now makes us ashamed.
Let’s give this mess a full debate,
Not the postures and lies of late.
As brave troops lay down their lives,
Our politicians sharpen knives,
And hide behind the Maple flag,
Redacting e-mails as they drag,
Us deeper in the Ottawa mud,
And waste all that precious blood.
John Prescott, Guelph, Ont.
Tarring Rex with ice
There was a remarkable epiphany in Rex Murphy’s otherwise predictable piece on Al Gore (The Oil Sands Have Been Gored – Nov. 28). There was the ponderous irony and an admission that he couldn’t understand Mr. Gore’s Prius-Hummer comparison (it’s simple: the carbon cost of extracting tar-sands oil is so high that even a Prius’s minimal consumption of it is equivalent to a Hummer’s use of fuel from elsewhere).
But then Mr. Murphy made (for him) an astonishing point: “In comparison with the frantic industrialization of all of China … or the great leaps that India and its population of 1.2 billion is making toward a modern economy – the oil sands are a mere pit stop on the broad raceway to our ecological doom.”
Hallelujah! For all his ridicule of the climate change “Jeremiahs”, he does actually get it! The scale of the problem is enormous, and to refuse to admit it is to conspire with calamity. Well done, Rex.
Robert Fothergill, Toronto
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Isn’t one definition of insanity to continue to assert something in the face of incontrovertible evidence to the contrary? While Rex Murphy continues his weekly attack on any kind of environmental protection just a few pages earlier in the same edition is a story showing the direct and irrefutable evidence of climate change (Arctic Sea Ice Has Nearly Vanished, Expert Fears – Nov. 28).
Climate change has gone from a vague worry 15 or 20 years ago to something happening directly in front of our eyes, with the predicted effects taking place … well, exactly as predicted.
Hansel Cook, Halifax
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