Who Do You Think Said This? 

Here is a rather strange article from Newsweek... which asks the question... When is it safe to release a terrorist? Featured prominently, and quoted with little rebuttal is a high level government official:

...identified only as "P.G.," declared his agency's "belief" that people who have joined militant "networks" linked to Al Qaeda and affiliated Islamic movements "maintain their ties, and their relationships to those networks, for very long periods of time. These ties are forged in environments where relationships mean a great deal, and it is our belief that the dedication to the ideology, if you will, is very strong, and is virtually impossible to break."

What?! He must be an agent of the evil Bushitler. What else did this torturer and warmonger say?

P.G. wrote that "Individuals who have attended terrorist training camps or who have independently opted for radical Islam must be considered threats to ... public safety for the indefinite future. It is highly unlikely that they will cast off their views on jihad and the justification for the use of violence." The paper adds that "Incarceration is certainly not a guarantee that the extremist will soften his or her attitudes over time; quite the contrary. The Service assesses that extremists will rejoin their networks upon release."

Who is this bastard? He works for the NSA, or the CIA doesn't he? He was probably groomed by that evil Dick Cheney... I can just smell it!

Actually... he's Canadian... and works for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

Oh... well then... that's different. What else did these polite, well meaning, and obviously astute members of an upstanding government have to say?

As to P.G.’s wider assertions that it was unsafe to ever release a jihadi militant, Campion noted that Canada only was detaining a handful of militants under its antiterror laws. She said that there might be a qualitative difference between the Canadian detainees (whom authorities believe could be truly dangerous terrorists) versus the hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo (many of whom were rounded up with Taliban forces in Afghanistan and may not pose a serious terrorist threat ).

While the Canadian government regarded them as dangerous, there might be a qualitative difference in the relative dangers posed by the release of the suspects held by Canada and the release by the U.S. government from the Guantanamo Bay detention center of captured suspects who fought with Taliban forces in Afghanistan rather than with Al Qaeda.

In other words, its perfectly OK for us to detain terrorists indefinitely without bail, and without any sort of judicial oversight. You see, the really bad terrorists are coming to Canada to get us, not you guys.

Never mind the fact that Canada has no troops in Iraq, and all of 1250 in Afghanistan (so practically no threat). And of course, whenever an American is in Europe or the Middle East, our government tells them to say they're Canadian so they won't be hassled. You know... but besides all of that, everyone is honestly scared of Canada. That's where all the really evil terrorists go to wreak havoc... on all the moose and caribou.

Isn't it amazing how such a well rounded, and pro-government story can come out of Newsweek... as long as that government is Canadian? I wonder what Newsweek's story would look like if it was discovered that their equivalent to the NSA was intercepting international phone calls with potential terrorists.