The Globe is speculating that the detainee outrage is stalled, mainly because the special Parliamentary committee to Afghanistan has nothing new to report, other than testimony from Paul Champ that it’s taking too long for the documents pertaining to Canada’s involvement in former prisoner transfer to be reviewed by Justice Iacobucci.

As John Ibbitson writes, starved of any new information, the opposition may be forced to either give up on it for now, or force the issue with a vote in Parliament. Neither opportunity is particularly appetizing, since neither plays into the political plans of the Liberals or NDP.

The simple fact is that no matter how long it takes to review these documents, it doesn’t change the matter that this is about ancient history, and has nothing to do with the current arrangement in Afghanistan. Did Canadian Forces hand Afghan detainees over to local authorities in 2006 knowing they might be tortured? I don’t know.

But the overhaul of the transfer agreement in 2007 would suggest it was faulty enough that they decided to fix it. And while the opposition continues to frame this issue as a contemporary one, the facts remain that the International Red Cross has no issues currently with any prisoners who have been handed over by ISAF soldiers to Afghan authorities.

There are a number of holes in the Afghan detainee torture story, not least of which being the premise that NATO has to somehow guarantee the cessation of torture in a part of the world where torture is as commonplace as corruption. Take the recent Paul Koring article for instance. It says that Canada has repeatedly broken a pledge to build an Afghan prison in Kabul, to protect Taliban fighters from being tortured by the NDS. But in the story, the main source used in accusing Canada of breaking its promises is the NDS. You know, the ones being accused of doing the torture ’round here.

But let’s be clear here. The Conservative government may not be hiding anything when it comes to the detainee documents, although of course quite a few people think they are. No, the biggest problem with the Conservatives is that they stopped communicating about the Afghan mission back in 2008 when it was decided by a bi-partisan vote to extend the mission to 2011, and then leave.

Since then, the Conservatives have done nil to none in promoting the benefits, the progress, the breakthroughs that we’ve made there, all the while taking a barrage of propaganda from the opposition that could not serve the interests of the enemy any better than had they consigned them to do it. The largest failure in this mission is the almost complete refusal of NATO nations to properly explain the imperative of mission success and the high stakes involved [save for Denmark].

Beyond the impasse of the detainee affair and the radio silence coming from the PMO on Afghanistan, we have yet to find out what Canada’s mission is beyond 2011. Or even what it’s going to look like in our harried exit from the theatre of conflict. As Lauryn Oates writes in the Calgary Herald, one would think that sustaining an investment of over $18 billion would be at the very top of our country’s political agenda, and on the minds of the public at large.

Afghan National Army soldiers. Photo credit: Master Corporal Robert Bottrill, Canadian Forces

The opposition attacked the federal Conservative government over Afghan detainees in Question Period again today, with the NDP picking up on the word “rendition” that had been used by federal MP for Vancouver South, Ujjal Dosanjh, the day before. The increasingly exaggerated language is based almost solely on the recent hornets nest stirred up by University of Ottawa Professor Amir Attaran, who inexplicably claims he has seen unredacted documents that show that Canadian intelligence officers ordered high-value targets to be tortured in Afghan prisons.

Following that CBC article was an rather vague report by the Canadian Press that CSIS has been used in some unknown, undeclared capacity in Afghanistan. But that doesn’t preclude the report from speculating about a number of things, such as the idea that CSIS has been playing a “crucial role” as interrogators of a “vast swath” of captured Taliban fighters. There’s no evidence to suggest this is true.

Picking up on these two unsubstantiated pieces of hearsay journalism, Ujjal Dosanjh spoke in the House of Commons on Monday:

“Mr. Speaker, the CBC and the Canadian Press have both reported that the government ordered the transfer of detainees to the notorious Afghan NDS for the purposes of extracting additional information.

We are not questioning the actions of our troops, as the Prime Minister continues to say, we are questioning the actions of the government.

Did the government conduct a deliberate policy of rendition, the outsourcing of interrogation and torture of Afghan detainees for extracting additional information?”

Well, transferring detainees to the NDS is hardly as surprising as Mr.Dosanjh makes it sounds. The Afghan NDS, whether the Liberal member thinks it is notorious being largely irrelevant, frequently rode along with Canadian Forces and joint task force operations, taking control of detainees on site. In fact, Afghan Police and NDS took custody of suspected Taliban fighters with no questions asked by Canadian Forces, and often without any documentation of the so-called transfer.

After the Prime Minister gave an answer that more or less insinuated the previous Liberal transfer policy was to blame for whatever problems the Liberals are looking for, Mr.Dosanjh asked again:

“Mr. Speaker, did the government conduct the policy of rendition? Each week media are reporting more troubling information. None of this information so far has helped the government’s claims.

Allegations as serious as rendition require more than just a vetting of the documents. They require a full and transparent public inquiry to look at all the facts.

Will the government do the right thing and call a public inquiry?”

The “information” referred to by Mr.Dosanjh is unsubstantiated and uncorroborated speculation in newspapers based upon claims made by a single University Professor and the extrapolation of torture from several unrelated events. But further to the point here, how exactly does one “rendition” an Afghan from his own country into the custody of his own police force? That word doesn’t quite make any sense in this context. When the police in Canada pull a gang member in for questioning, there isn’t any question that he’s been “renditioned”.

The main problem with the current theory being flogged by the Liberals and NDP right now, which is that CSIS has been acquiring “high-value targets” [based on words taken out of context by Richard Colvin] with the assistance of JTF-2 special forces [also unconfirmed], has been “outsourcing” interrogation to the Afghan intelligence services for the purposes of gleaning intel for NATO, is that there’s no logical explanation for it.

For one thing, the vast majority of detainees went directly to Afghan police, and hence NDS interrogation, anyway. For another, there was never any “vast swaths” of captured detainees to begin with. This concept that Canadian Forces captures dozens of Taliban fighters a day is something largely fabricated by an imaginative mind. Then there was the 72-hour rule for ISAF, which meant that all NATO players, like Canada, were required to turn over Afghan detainees to the proper authorities within 72 hours, or let them go.

The final red flag is the idea that CSIS would be working with the NDS in any capacity that would personally benefit Canada’s intelligence agency. There’s no reason for the Afghan intelligence agency to interrogate anyone for the benefit of Canada, nor that CSIS would get any information extracted from a detainee back from NDS.

Given the recent inventions of torture, rendition, and secret spies, you have to wonder what the opposition is going to come up with tomorrow. It kind of makes you want to tune in to Question Period and find out, doesn’t it?