Prime Minister Harper and the Temple of Doom...

WTF? Provincial tight-comber Steve Harper is the man to swoop in on Guantanamo and liberate his unjustly-detained fellow citizens, swinging off into the sunset with Omar Khadr like he was Short Round?

The Nova Scotia Chronicle-Herald and the Times of London have leaked footage of an interrogation of the now 21-year-old Khadr, who was captured at age 15 during a firefight in Afghanistan. He's officially accused of aiding and abetting terror, but he's been held for six years because his pops, like everyone else in South Asia, is Taliban-connected. A kidnapping, essentially, to get the dad to cooperate. Footage is here and here. NYT story here.

Gitmo goes down with a whimper, and this is its feeble beginning. Lawyers have successfully obtained evidence of inhumane treatment -- at least, torture at worst -- at Guantanamo. More will come; it will all be YouTubed. Prime Minister Harper and the leaders of any other democracy signatory to the UN Convention Against Torture, or the European Convention on Human Rights, will then be bound by treaty to sue for the release of anyone suspected of being tortured, or anyone detained without just cause or legal remedy. Either you're a good samaritan, or you too will have a date at the Hague. Harper has to visit Cuba.

So will everyone else. A massive media shitstorm ensues when, say, Angela Merkel is refused access to some Gitmo hard site and storms off in outrage. Military tribunals will move too slowly to avert the wave of indignant dignitaries sudddenly cruising over for inspections (particularly since military lawyers are sick of the brass' bullshit). The administration will then step up efforts to repatriate the remaining detainees. The only stumbling block will be nations who don't want these dudes back. In which case, we will dump them in Egypt or Syria, and wash our hands of the matter.

In this scenario, despite the Supreme Court's several pronouncements, the rights of detainees and their access to the federal courts, and jurisdiction in the War on Terror would remain practically unresolved. And no footage would make it into court. The wide distribution of torture footage would itself argue against its legitimacy, the way that the sheer number of Abu Ghraib images made them seem more like the prank-work of a few bad apples. The court of public opinion doesn't count.

I think Mr. Harper should bring home souvenirs from his impending tour of Cuba. A collection of videotapes. And he should sit on them until Canadian prosecutors can get indictments handed down. Video needs a legitimating framework: enter it into evidence, or it's just another upload...
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