holding the bully's coat

When I saw this...
The Canadian military has established a special intelligence unit to do spy work on overseas missions, in places like Afghanistan, CBC News has learned.

CBC obtained documents that show the Canadian Forces is spending about $27 million over the next three years to purchase equipment for the new unit, which is actively recruiting soldiers.

Many details about the unit are considered classified, and not being released to the public, but the documents show that members analyze information gathered by other soldiers in the field, such as the information soldiers might pick up while interviewing motorists and searching cars at roadside checkpoints.

The intelligence unit can also be tasked with recruiting and overseeing local intelligence agents who are already operating in a country.

...I thought of this.
The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.

The proposed detention center would replace the cavernous, makeshift American prison on the Bagram military base north of Kabul, which is now typically packed with about 630 prisoners, compared with the 270 held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.

But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

. . .

Military personnel who know both Bagram and Guantánamo describe the Afghan site, 40 miles north of Kabul, as far more spartan. Bagram prisoners have fewer privileges, less ability to contest their detention and no access to lawyers.

Some detainees have been held without charge for more than five years, officials said. As of April, about 10 juveniles were being held at Bagram, according to a recent American report to a United Nations committee. [Emphasis mine.]

I don't worry about Deep Integration. (Borders are less porous than ever.) But I do worry about "holding the bully's coat".

Thanks to Allan for the links, and to Linda McQuaig for her great expression.

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