Sunday, March 7, 2010

Attaran And Canadian Press Prove Government Wise Not To Release Sensitive Documents

National Newswatch, the new voice of the Liberal Party of Canada, continues to inadvertently show why the government has worries about releasing military documents that are sensitive to national security.

Let's start with the Attaran story:

"If the allegation is true, such actions would constitute a war crime, said University of Ottawa law professor Amir Attaran, who has been digging deep into the issue and told CBC News he has seen uncensored versions of government documents released last year.

"If these documents were released [in full], what they will show is that Canada partnered deliberately with the torturers in Afghanistan for the interrogation of detainees," he said."

So exactly how was Attaran able to see uncensored documents? A university professor has connections to view documents regarding the government and military? More importantly, who passed along the uncensored documents?

Next is the Canadian Press, another bastion of Conservative hating propaganda:

"A copy of the document was obtained by The Canadian Press.

Military police “were involved in that, but they weren't necessarily involved in interviewing or interrogation related issues; that would be (censored) or some other parade that had special training in interrogation.”

Sources familiar with the unedited version say the blanked-out references are to CSIS.

Intelligence expert Wesley Wark says the revelations are disturbing, partly because CSIS would have had no specialized knowledge of how to elicit information from Afghan prisoners.

“I find that stunning,” said Mr. Wark, a historian at the University of Toronto."

OK, so who exactly are the sources? And again, how is it that a university historian is able to see such documents uncensored. Both of the above noted professors have ties to Michael Ignatieff, Attaran at the Carr centre and Wark at the Munk Cente (Professor Wesley K. Wark, Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto):

"In 2005, Ignatieff was appointed a senior fellow at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Prior to that, he served as Director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University for five years."

Perhaps in the next session of question period, the PM might point out to Ignatieff that the reason the government is apprehensive about releasing sensitive documents is that professors with Liberal ties are blabbing about in the the media the next day.

6 comments:

The_Iceman said...

The Globe and Mail story on this topic included at least a dozen quotes from this Wonk guy. His opinion seems to be the basis for the entire Globe story.

Anonymous said...

nice to see you are more concerned about how the story broke, and not the actual story being broken. blindly support the conservatives and torture much?

paulsstuff said...

A story about CSIS interviewing detainees? Shocking!

wilson said...

Westley Wark was Pres of CASIS at Munk Center when Iffy was hired.
(Cdn Assoc of Security and Intellegence Studies)

wilson said...

CSIS Director, in response to a February 19th editorial by
Amir Attaran which was critical of CSIS:

http://www.csis-scrs.gc.ca/cmmn/dr_ntpst_lttr-eng.asp

Alberta Girl said...

Hey Nony...Maybe, just maybe the reason the "esteemed" professor just hints at "government involvement" is because it is the previous government involvement that would come out.

But if you hint at "government invovlement", but don't say which government, well then, just let Canadians think what they want to think, huh.


Like you.

What's "Harp" hiding? Hmmm...maybe a better question would be, what is the professor hiding.