I wouldn't think that. I think most of us would rather be here listening to you.
Mr. Graham, I do have a copy of the book that you referenced earlier on, The Unexpected War. In that book you actually get a fairly glowing...with some nice testimonials about your abilities and what you wanted to accomplish at that time.
I was here in the House at the time. In fact, I got into a bit of a problem in one question period when I asked the former defence minister about transferring prisoners to the Americans. There was some hesitancy. As a new member of Parliament at the time, I found out from the Speaker that I could say that he misled Parliament, but I couldn't say he intentionally misled Parliament. But that was the crux of the debate that day, whether or not they were transferring.
I'm just going to quote a couple of sentences from this book, somewhat out of context. I'm going to take different sentences from a couple of paragraphs. It says:
Although Bill Graham had supported the Kandahar mission he was deeply concerned about one issue.
Then it goes on and talks about the operatives, and about the issue of transferring Afghan prisoners.
It also says that Mr. Graham was an international lawyer with a strong interest in international humanitarian law. He had serious concerns about the transfer. Then it says:
Nevertheless, for Bill Graham this issue was vital, and he would push his officials hard to get a resolution that satisfied his standards.
It was highly politicized at that period of time in terms of the Americans. We had one member of Parliament stamping on a doll of the President of the United States. We had others standing in the House slamming the Americans. It wasn't immediately after 2001, but it was three or four years after.
You were coming into an election. Was there any consideration to the thought that we just could not cannot transfer to the Americans for political reasons?
This book lays it out--your concerns about what was happening at Guantanamo, and what was happening in Cuba. But was it politics, or was it indeed the potential for concerns of their rights at Guantanamo, compared to an agreement, with conditions, that you absolutely felt would have the detainees in a safer position in Afghanistan?