Mr. Dosanjh, I'm sure the other gentlemen will want to talk to parts of this too, but let me just say in response to the question, was I satisfied that I had met my command responsibilities as a Canadian Chief of Defence Staff, that I was. If I questioned that myself, actually I was held accountable by an entire team that helped me get to that satisfaction. My judge advocate general, Brigadier-General Ken Watkins, who is internationally renowned for his knowledge of international law, held me accountable every single day. Even if I had been willing to round corners or smooth out warts, he would not have permitted me to do that.
So yes, I was accountable, I was comfortable, and I was satisfied. In a complex situation, Mr. Dosanjh, that was as difficult as anything we have faced in our history, I was satisfied. That doesn't mean it was perfect.
Secondly, from the point of view of knowing the risks, I articulated.... First of all, thank you very much for buying the book. I hope you bought one for your extended family for Christmas, and if not, you should. I can tell you that.
From the point of view of the risks, Mr. Dosanjh, I would simply say that my aim in Afghanistan was to, for one, enable our young men and women to do the job and be successful, make our country proud, and come home safely. Two, part of that coming home safely was to reduce the risks to them to the very lowest level we possibly could in a whole variety of ways, but you can never reduce the risk to zero.
So even in a perfectly functioning society like our great country, if you walk into Millhaven penitentiary and you ask half the inmates there whether anybody's abused them, they'll probably all say yes, because that is the nature of the beast. So there is always a risk that something can occur, and are you comfortable that there is a follow-up process that would recognize that. That was the key.
Guy Laroche is one of those incredible commanders. I said my chain of command had never let me down, and he and a guy like Dave Fraser, who's here today, working through Mike Gauthier, were exactly like that. I relied upon them.
A whole bunch of peripheral things would come to me and I'd hear things, whether it was about the Graeme Smith articles or whether it was about the litigation that was taking place here in Canada in the spring of 2007. I took all of those things into my grey matter, but what I really looked to was a clear, concise assessment of the situation from those commanders.
When we all felt in November 2007 particularly that now we had lost our confidence that we could be responsible--back to my first response here on being satisfied--and that we should stop transfers of the detainees, Guy Laroche was absolutely at mind. He, Mike Gauthier, and I spoke and we agreed that that was the right step to do, stop detainees. We of course continued the work that was going on around town.
When I say there was pressure that came, what I meant was this. In fact, I think General Gauthier referred to it when he said that he had a letter from David Mulroney on 29 January or thereabouts saying, we think conditions have been reset. Everybody had a different view and we actually had a very high standard set.
So our view was different. Hence, it was going to take longer to get back to a level where we were comfortable to transfer, and that's the kind of pressures I referred to. People had a different view of what that comfort level was. We were the commanders, we had responsibility. I certainly didn't abrogate that responsibility. I didn't expect Mike Gauthier to do it and I certainly didn't expect Guy Laroche to do it, but the pressures were because everybody had a different view.
As for the people at that meeting, I think Margaret Bloodworth was there, I think Rob Fonberg was there, and I believe David Mulroney, who's ready to testify, was there, I was there, and there may have been one or two others, but I don't recall.