You shouldn’t be sorry
Canada FM regrets ‘torture list’ – BBC News:
The Canadian foreign minister has apologised for including the US and Israel on a list of states where prisoners are at risk of torture.
Maxime Bernier said the list, which formed part of a manual on torture awareness given to diplomats, “wrongly includes some of our closest allies”.
You know, friends can disagree about things. It’s o.k. to disagree with the Prez and his merry band of hoods. Hell, I disagree with him on many issues, and you won’t catch a whiff of regret on me.
Besides, hasn’t it been pretty well established that (some) prisoners in U.S. custody have been tortured? If you’re making a list of states that torture, and the U.S. tortures some of the folks it takes into custody, is it really a mistake to include us on the list? It’s certainly not a mistake of fact anyway. It may be a political mistake, of sorts, but read what I said above about friends again.
We apologized? How bizarre. Last month Amnesty International along with a couple of other orgs successfully won a court battle to have the U.S. delisted from being considered a “safe third-party” nation. Safe third-party status meant that if a refugee fled to the U.S. (where there are more daily international flights) but wanted to come to Canada (where immigration is kinder), Canadian border guards would have to turn them away. There were entering from a “safe country” and; therefore, not at risk. Since the Canadian courts have now recognized the U.S. as being unsafe, why would our politicians apologize?
On the other hand, it was a group of scientists at McGill that created the American-used protocol for torture, so I hardly think we should be patting ourselves on the back any time soon.