Minister's ''heart sank'' at news of Kandahar prison break.

David Emerson doesn''t seem to have read the NATO releases that say the breakout will have no impact on NATO operations. Even Emerson has more sense than to swallow that. The same thing is happening to NATO forces as happened for years to Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan. Of course no one in the media would ever talk of an occupation or the relationship of our mission to U.S. global aims. We now can see what 'supporting our troops' comes to--assuring that there will be more casualties and that we will further the global supremacy aims of the U.S. No doubt we will even hear great applause should Zalmay Khalilzad manage to be elected president replacing Karzai. It will be hailed as a great leap forward in the elimination of corruption ..blah blah..etc.



Minister's 'heart sank' at news of prison break TheStar.com - Canada - Minister's 'heart sank' at news of prison break
Taliban raid came after jail upgrades were urged
June 17, 2008 Allan WoodsOttawa Bureau
OTTAWA– Foreign Affairs Minister David Emerson said his heart sank upon hearing of the hundreds of insurgents, killers, rapists and thieves streaming out of Kandahar's main prison last Friday night.
The vital sources of intelligence on Taliban tactics were gone. The massive Canadian investments in the Afghan corrections system was squandered. The hopes of a robust local security force able to prevent the attack were badly hampered.
It is believed local officials were either complicit in the attack, powerless to prevent it or were killed in the massive explosion that ripped apart the prison walls.
"My heart sank because when you've got something like 1,000 prisoners, many of them Taliban, sort of wandering through the Kandahar area it's a real risk and a real threat and something that we have to take very seriously and we will," Emerson said.
"We've known all along there would be days where events did not go in our way, and this weekend we saw that."
The jailbreak indicates there appears to have been a breakdown in intelligence gathering aimed at anticipating and preventing such incidents, Emerson said.
That will require a "more comprehensive fix" that may include a concerted effort to tackle corruption.
"Obviously there are things that happened that we needed to know and we didn't know. We're going to have to find out why," he said.
In the Commons yesterday, the Conservative government was questioned about a February 2007 report from Canadian corrections officials deployed to Kandahar recommending urgent upgrades to Sarposa Prison.
"It has been recommended that our first priority be on securing the perimeter of the institution," said the report, released during a court challenge of the Canadian detainee policy.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay told the Commons "structural improvements" were made to the facility, but they dealt more with conditions inside the prison, not the outer walls.
In Afghanistan, the effects of the daring raid were apparently being felt, with reports of insurgents taking over key districts of Kandahar province, where Canadian troops had slowly but surely been asserting authority.
"What that should remind everybody ... of is how dangerous some of the prisoners in that prison indeed are," Prime Minister Stephen Harper told the Commons.