Editor, The Times:
Re: “Where is money, help for our soldiers?” in Aug. 10 issue.
In the movie adaption of John le Carre’s “A Most Wanted Man,” the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the role of a German counterspy in Hamburg named, Gunther.
In one scene a group of American and German intelligence types are sitting around a table discussing a Russian Chechen youth that has appeared among them in Hamburg. One American officer states that after 20 hours of questioning by Russian intelligence this youth had confessed to all kinds of terrorism and crimes. One of the others chimes in, “After 20 hours of questioning by Russian intelligence, you’d confess to anything!”
Actually some hundreds of years ago, a monk said the same thing about tortures inflicted by the Inquisition on certain heretics.
So why would one give any credence to a confession obtained under “torture” and duress in Guantanamo Bay? Yet obviously some do.
Is it because it’s Americans involved? At one point in Most Wanted Man, Hoffman in the role of Gunther states, “Whenever Americans get involved, it ends badly.”
And it has ended badly, whether it was George Bush’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction to Abu Ghraib to whatever. It’s all ended badly or, in the case of the Middle East, has not ended at all!
Even during the more “well meaning” years of Barak Obama, Guantanamo Bay through its population was reduced, was not shut down.
Now Donald Trump has declared he will expand Guantanamo Bay along with bringing back water-boarding.
How much would confessions obtained under these conditions be worth?
If the Trudeau government is trying to slim down our Canadian veterans like Stephen Harper did, then this is indeed an outrage and should be addressed.
However, to mix Omar Khadr’s proposed $10 million settlement and the treatment of Canada’s veterans? That’s apples and onions.
And the very sad subject of some of our PTSD suffering soldiers being shot by our police? That’s another subject, tragic as it is, altogether.
Dennis Peacock
Clearwater, B.C.