"The Secret War", Redux

I wrote in December about the Danish Documentary, "The Secret War" and the flap it then generated on the political scene here.

To recap the scandal for you, in 2002 Danish special forces [jægerkorps] turned over people they had taken prisoner in Afghanistan to the American military who tortured and sent some of them to free vacations at Git-mo where they were served yummy food like chicken breast in lemon sauce.

The government of Anders Fogh, aka "Bush Lite", of course denied the facts revealed in the documentary. Of course Denmark abides by the Geneva convention and would never do such a thing. Furthermore, we didn't know the Americans did torture and anyway we didn't give them that many prisoners and not that many times.

This is known as the Waffling BS defense.

Well, the flap has started up again and now it is the Defense minister, Søren Gade who is in hot water because he lied (again) to the Danish Parliament [Folketing] -- he said that Danish special forces don't have the distinctive Danish flag on their fatigues when they are doing special ops and therefore the movie was lying about this.

The press talked with one of the soldiers and he said that not only did they were their flag patches when delivering prisoners to the American compound in Bagran, they were in fact ordered to wear their patches.

The press has also talked with the American interrogator shown in the movie and he confirmed that he personally had seen Danish soldiers turning over prisoners up to a half dozen times.

Ouch! On top of this the Defense Minister has been caught with his foot in his mouth over the case of the translators the Danish military employs in Iraq.

As is well know, the Danes are getting ready to leave Iraq (their area of ops there is in the Brit zone north of Basra). As is also well known, the reason the Danes are pulling out is because the Brits are pulling out and the reason they are pulling out is because things are peaceful and the Iraqis can manage their security in a secure way.


Things are so secure there that the twenty some translators the Danes have employed fear for their lives and the safety of their families when the coalition forces leave.

The Danish military asked if the Iraqis could be granted asylum in Denmark and the Defense Minister replied in no uncertain terms that there was no way that could happen.

The logic I guess is that you are leaving because the mission is accomplished and it's peaceful and secure, it just doesn't jibe if you take the translators with you because they are in danger of being killed.

Hell, things are so peaceful there that two Brit soldiers were killed y'day by a road side bomb.