Torture’s OK, As Long As It’s Bilingual

It’s kind of old news by now, but I have to comment on the surreal response of the Canadian government to the fact that a Canadian citizen was tortured in Saudi Arabia for 3 years.

This is the same goverment, of course, that gets its panties in a twist whenever some Canadian murderer in the USA is getting close to the death penalty, and the same government that condemns the USA for imprisoning terrorists in Guantanamo bay.

But just let a Canadian engineer get tortured nearly to death by some Saudi thugs and the response is… silence! Then some mumbling. Then, after public outrage becomes too much for even Chretien to bear… er, not much, actually. Maybe a letter: Dear Sirs. Please explain. Yours ever so Humbly, etc etc.

But the very best part of this–in the “very worst” sense–is the following admission, reported in the National Post on Sept 11, 2003. This, remember, is the explanation for why the Liberals (i.e. Minister of Foreign Affairs Bill Graham) did nothing while William Sampson was tortured for 3 years:

Isabelle Savard, a spokeswoman for the Minister, said last night that although Mr. Graham had suspected Mr. Sampson was being tortured, he did not imagine the abuse was so intense.

I sincerely hope this leads to a page or two in Red Book 4 (I think that’s where we are now in the Ongoing Electoral Saga of the Liberal Party).

Your Liberal Government's Policy on State-Sanctioned Torture: striking the right balance.

We, the Liberal Party of Canada, have a feeling that torture is notso hotso. I mean, a little is okay, you know, maybe a fingernail or two, a little light beating. But some countries go Too Far. We're not going to commit ourselves now to saying How Far is Too Far: maybe genital crushing, maybe not. Electrocution, probably. But these are hypothetical questions. What we can say is that we in the Liberal Party will closely monitor how Canadians are tortured abroad. If any Canadian's torture becomes too intense, we will respond with every diplomatic maneuver available to us: denial, strongly worded denial, and evasion.

The Liberal Party of Canada. We're not extremist anti-torture fanatics!