The Yes! is in agreement with the Rev posting at both his own site and the Beav:
If the allegation that Afghan prisoners were purposely sent to be tortured turns out to be true, I want people sent to jail. And by jail I don't mean country club Conrad Black minimum security jail, either. I want to see them walking the yard at Millhaven. And by people I mean every single person in the chain of command that approved or did not act to stop this - right up to the Cabinet level, including the Prime Minister. If it happened under the Liberals and Paul Martin knew about it, fine, jail his retired ass, too.
And if an "arms length" inquiry, as Kevin suggests, is the right way to do it, fine. But the moment a majority of MPs in the House of Commons voted to demand the release of unredacted documents to the special committee on Afghanistan and the government refused, it raised a separate issue. The government is in contempt of parliament. If a minority government can simply shrug off the will of a majority in the Commons then our democracy is broken (even more than we already thought) and the opposition is failing in a fundamental way to do its job. Compromises involving third parties, whether it's a single retired judge reviewing documents or a full blown public inquiry, doesn't change that.
You'd think there would be one among all those opposition MPs who's prepared to argue out loud that even if voters don't currently see the importance of this, it's necessary to gamble that they can be convinced if it comes to that.
Charles P. Pierce wrote a stellar piece for Esquire about Obama on the election trail. It has echoes here. Speaking of what Bush had done to America he says:
"He was offering a guilty country a nolo plea. Himself. Absolution without confession.
The cynic declined the deal. There were not enough people in handcuffs yet."
"There were not enough people in handcuffs yet" .... Sounds like our problem.
http://www.esquire.com/features/barack-obama-0608-2
It makes terrific reading ....
Your are absolutely right about the government being in contempt of Parliament and the retired judge the ReformaTories have tapped to "advise" them on what to release really has no other legal option than to tell them to release everything, as Parliament demanded before Harper decided to prorogue.
This whole thing is about civilian oversight of the military and the overseers being held responsible for the orders they give. Harper can throw all the shiny objects (olympics, changes to the national anthem, Jason Kenny being an antigay douchebag) in front of the press he wants, but eventually this is going to get investigated and the longer it is covered up the worse its going to be for the people responsible.
It's necessary even if Canadians appear to want to keep their heads up their asses.
As MPs they ought to have a vested interest in seeing that Canada's parliamentary democracy doesn't get pissed on with impunity.
If the members of the special committee receive the documents and turn around and hand them off to a judicial inquiry, that's just fine by me. But MPs themselves, the media and anyone else who's paying attention need it hammered into their heads that a prime minister with a minority government simply doesn't get to say "No, we'll do it my way" in the face of a majority vote in the House.
Yes to both, although on the whole I'd settle for the jail time.