It is now the second full week of Parliament of this session, and Question Period has continued to build pressure on the government to release underacted documents on the Afghanistan detainee torture scandal to determine who knew what and when.

It was December 2009 when Stephen Harper and his conservative government prorogued Parliament, ostensibly to avoid continued questions about what they knew about Afghan prisoners being tortured, when they knew it, and what they did about it.  The government was in no mood to talk about the issue, let alone give into opposition demands to for a full public enquiry into the scandal, simply repeating over and over again that such questions were an insult to the brave men and women of the military.  Frankly, it's rhetoric like this that turns people off of politics.

When the United States experienced the shocking abuse of prisoners in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, the military, politicians, and the majority of the public, all called for the prosecution of those soldiers involved.  The problem was that everyone who was convicted was a low ranking grunt, while their commanders and those higher up the proverbial food chain were set free of any culpability.

The Canadian situation is different in the sense that no Canadians are accused of torturing anyone.  Rather, it was several international organizations like the Red Cross, who warned Canadian officials and the military, that detainees were being tortured by Afghan intelligence agents after being handed over by Canadian troops.  Former Canadian diplomat to Afghanistan, Richard Colvin, testified that he warned his superiors in government and counterparts in the military that torture was occurring.  When he was called to testify on his experiences he became subject to a smear campaign by the conservatives for weeks, and although he was later exonerated after dozens of members of the diplomatic corp signed a letter of condemnation over his treatment, finally his testimony was corroborated.

Parliament was suspended just when things were getting interesting, although the Prime Minister said at the time the uncertainty in the economy forced them to take some extra time off to come up with a killer budget to fight, what they would hope would dominate the headlines, the evil deficit and debt.  Unfortunately for the conservatives, fortunately for everyone else, the opposition didn't forget about the detainee scandal and continued to hammer away until Harper seemed to acquiesce and decided to appoint a retired Supreme Court Justice at $600 an hour, to the task of reading all of the redacted files to determine if it's in the best interests of the country for members of Parliament to read what's in them.

Seems strange right?  Untold numbers of bureaucrats and even an ex Supreme Court Justice is cleared to read these papers, but when it comes to the duly elected members of Parliament, in a minority government I might add, they can't be trusted.  This is truly a case of the rhetoric not matching reality and is simply par for the course for a government which has no problem smearing a Diplomat when they tell the truth, or shutting down Parliament to avoid questions, buying them enough time to stack the Senate with its own appointees to dominate the agenda in a minority government.

It's really quite embarrassing.