Wil Andruschak

About 450 protesters gathered outside the Telus Convention Centre during Bush’s Calgary speech. Many wanted Bush to be arrested

 To view our video of the protesters, click here.

An important bit of news came out of the U.S. the day before George W. Bush spoke in Calgary March 17. It was huge, really. American journalist Mark Danner got his hands on a confidential International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report that details the “enhanced techniques” used by the CIA to interrogate detainees in secret prisons around the world during the Bush years.

It’s a hellish depiction of what 14 suspected high-profile al-Qaida members faced in the prisons: they were apparently strapped to beds, beaten repeatedly, nearly suffocated with water, deprived of sleep and food and forced into small boxes for hours at a time. Much of it “constitutes torture,” according to the ICRC report; “in addition, many other elements of the ill treatment, either singly or in combination, constituted cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” — all things forbidden by international law.

In light of this information, it was strange to see hundreds of people lined up on Stephen Avenue to listen to the man who authorized these “black sites.” But there it was, an endless line of suits down Stephen Avenue — “looks like a funeral,” quipped one sharply dressed onlooker — waiting to get into the Telus Convention Centre to hear what the former president had to say. “He is a well-respected leader, a great hero in my opinion,” said one ticket-holder who gave his name as Rio. “Everyone has a right to their opinion. George Bush is a human being who made a human mistake. He is not perfect, but you can’t find one person here that hasn’t made a mistake in their life.”

It seems Danner’s unsettling article, posted on The New York Review of Books website March 16, made little impact in Calgary. The story was upstaged by Bush’s plate of pasta at a Kensington restaurant. The Calgary Herald opted to spill its ink on how Bush’s visit is “no small feather in Calgary’s cap,” how he’s “a vastly important figure upon whom no comprehensive judgment can be rendered until the history of the next 20 years is known.” And so on.

The ICRC report, however, suggests otherwise. The reputable humanitarian organization is politically neutral, which makes the report — excerpted at length in Danner’s story — even more damning. It contains accounts of Soviet-style torture techniques like forced standing, as well as repeated immersion in cold water, prolonged nakedness and constant bombardment with noise and loud music. Some detainees had towels wrapped around their necks before they were repeatedly slammed against walls.

There’s more: detainees were forced into diapers and denied the dignity of a toilet during transfers to and from the various “black sites.” The prisoners shared their experiences with the ICRC at Guantánamo Bay in 2006, but according to Danner, the report says the treatment was happening for up to four and a half years before that. Writes Danner: “Reading the ICRC report, one becomes eventually somewhat inured to the ‘alternative set of procedures’ as they are described: the cold and repeated violence grows numbing.”

For some, the Bush presidency is old news, a bad story that should simply be forgotten. That’s not the view of the 450 or so shivering protesters that gathered outside the Telus Convention Centre to chant slogans like “arrest George Bush” and “take Bush to jail, not to lunch.”

Toby Pollett, a construction worker who served in peacekeeping missions for the Canadian military in the ’90s, is one of many who wanted the former president to be arrested rather than applauded. “I don’t know why he’s receiving this kind of treatment,” said Pollett. Torture, he noted, is “frowned upon by normal thinking people,” regardless of their political convictions. “It spans religion,” he said. “It spans ideology. Nobody likes torture. And we’ve legitimized it.”

Bush, of course, never got arrested by the RCMP, despite calls that he be prosecuted for war crimes under Canadian law. Instead, city police arrested and charged four feisty anti-Bush protesters for offences like breaching the peace and breaking the city’s public behaviour bylaw (by doing what exactly, police wouldn’t say). If nothing else, the protesters got one thing they asked for: they told Bush to go back home. Which he did.