Jason Kenney uses fake Down's Syndrome suicide bombers story to try to discredit Dallaire

When Senator Romeo Dallaire drew an equivalency of disrespect for human rights between al Qaida and Canada and the US for not respecting the human rights of a child soldier, Harper's bulldog went apeshit:

"The minute you start playing with human rights, with conventions, with civil liberties, in order to say that you're doing it to protect yourself and you are going against those rights and conventions, you are no better than the guy who doesn't believe in them at all," he said.
"We are slipping down the slope of going down that same route."
Tory MP Jason Kenney asked if Dallaire really believes that. He pointed to a number of al-Qaida outrages, including an incident in which the terror group reportedly outfitted mentally challenged young girls with explosive belts and sent them to their deaths in a Baghdad animal market.
"Is it your testimony that al-Qaida strapping up a 14-year-old girl with Down syndrome and sending her into a pet market to be remotely detonated is the moral equivalent to Canada's not making extraordinary political efforts for a transfer of Omar Khadr to this country?" he asked.Dallaire was adamant.
"If you want a black and white, and I'm only too prepared to give it to you, absolutely," he replied. "You're either with the law or not with the law. You're either guilty or you're not."
He added, though, that Kenney was using "extreme scenarios."

Not just an 'extreme scenario' but one that has been thoroughly debunked and which even the US Military has backed away from.

The U.S. military said Wednesday that two women used as suicide bombers in attacks earlier this month had undergone psychiatric treatment but there is no indication they had Down syndrome as Iraqi and U.S. officials initially had claimed.Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, said the women used in the Feb. 1 pet market bombings had been identified as residents from the northeastern outskirts of Baghdad who were in their late 20s or early 30s.

In other words, Kenney used a false example to try to discredit what Dallaire was saying - and only discredited himself.

UPDATE: Dion's instant willingness to throw Dallaire to the wolves is disappointing, while not even remotely surprising. Dallaire stood up for the rule of law and against gulag show trials and Dion starts hinting at party discipline. How shameful and cowardly.

This is important; Kenney's use of a debunked piece of inflammatory propaganda to make his point perfectly illustrates Dallaire's.

The rule of law is what stands between us and unchecked tyranny. If a threat can be demonized, villified and propagandized to the point where we abandon the rule of law, we've already become what we are fighting.

Whether babies tossed out of incubators or Iran forcing Jews to wear yellow badges or terrorists forcing mentally handicapped little girls to kill themselves, these kind of dehumanizing propaganda myths are designed to reduce our enemies - many of them bad men, evil men - to monsters.

And any tactic, any brutality, any violation of law and conscience is acceptable when you're fighting monsters.