'The "bizarre disconnect between the here-and-now reality of Afghan detainee transfers in the real world, in Kandahar...

The question that keeps percolating up in my mind is,"will the media finally drop their lib fed nonsense now that they lost one of their own".

Wasn't this a story when Gordon O'Connor was defense minister and had to clean up the Liberal prisoner transfer process he inherited?

Oh look who was responsible for the poor supply of H1N1 vaccine for Canada. "We don't need no two stinking suppliers when these good folks which can do the job just like they did getting the money to us, its good to be King." JC

The left wakes up every day to a clean blank page of nothing happened before now.

joe

nope,it'll be just like climategate, to stupid to say "I was wrong"

Jpe

The spittle-lipped beer swillers in Ottawa will find a way to blame Harper for Michelle's death. They are a sad bunch of compost.

Sorry to sound like a Neanderthal, but this poor woman needn't have died. She shouldn't have died.
She shouldn't have been in that vehicle. There shouldn't have been any media in the vehicle, as they are all a distraction, especially a woman, and the brutal and unnecessary death of her or any woman, is absolutely horrific.

"People trying to compare this to Somalia . . . the cavalier use of the term war crimes. . . we are not even within a million miles of reaching any of these points. It is a tremendous slur to ever invoke words like these. These are words that were used, and with reason, for the holocaust, for the genocide in Cambodia, for the horrible things that happened with tens of thousands of people being slaughtered in Rwanda. . ."

Pretty much says it all

"It is a tremendous slur to ever invoke words like these"

Not to leftards it isn't. He should have added but then all these ACTUAL war crimes and such were committed by Canadian leftard brothers-in-arms.
If nothing else,can we at least cut all the PC crap and start calling a spade a spade in the new year?

It's good to get Terry Glavin's perspective on this.He reminds me of the old time war correspondents,he knows who the good guys are.

He's one of the last of the principled west coast lefties and has put lot of work into trying to improve the lives of Afghans. It must be discouraging for him to have to hear all of the treasonous nihilism that most of the "progressives" have been peddling this past decade.

Glavin and Fisher have spent a lot of time in Afghanistan. They understand the nature of the mission, they know what the soldiers are going through, and they have a thorough knowledge of the procedures and protocols of various state and international agencies, so it must be very frustrating, almost insane-making, to watch twiddle-fingered partisans - opposition members and complicit, partisan media - whose only true concern is political power and domestic political strategy casually leveling - essentially specious - charges, in an almost prurient manner, at a time when Canadians soldiers and Afghan civilians are in mortal peril.

When Mathew Fisher, referring to the interminable hammering focus on "the minutiae of emails," says "I believe it's because the news managers here in Canada have trouble understanding the Afghan story," I think he's being far too charitable. I doubt he's motivated by a sense of charity towards journalists, I just think that maybe the accurate and true explanation is too plain, and low, and too small to be grasped by those who've spent time in that other, more real, realm.

The elephant in the room on this whole issue is that the opposition politicians and their messenger boys in the media *don't care* whether their broadcast accusations of war crimes are true or not, or what the effect is on the troops or in the war effort; all they care about is whether the narrative they're trying to float will work, whether the story has legs and causes damages to the current government. This "scandal" isn't being plied in Canada because of any lack of understanding on the part of journalists, or because of the lack of a recent history of Canadian war correspondence (although these things may contribute to a lack of journalistic context which would otherwise have given a quick-response ability to counteract the ridiculousness) but rather because domestic politics and self-interest - the war at home - trumps all for these players.

In the same way that putative economic analysis in the media is often political, rather than economic, in nature, there are instances in which genuine considerations like "human rights" and "justice" are appropriated for political reasons and plied disingenuously in a way that makes a travesty of those appropriated terms. When someone like Michael Byers writes "Canadian soldiers have not only transferred detainees into a known risk or torture, but actively participated in the interrogations the alleged torture was intended to aid," or asks "Is Canada's defence minister a war criminal?" it's not like he's *finding* himself innocently drawing such insane conclusions as a result of him mistakenly and earnestly focusing on minutiae about emails, and similarly, when Conservative-unfriendly journalists try time and time again, to energize this "scandal" it's got nothing to do with Canada lacking a recent tradition of war correspondence journalism. The motivations of the opposition and much of the media in this scandal is a lot more fetid, and plainly evident, and tiny, than that.

I understand the desire to not see it that way, and to look elsewhere. We like to think of people as being honourably mistaken, but it needs to be understood, as a fact of life, that honour, and human life, and integrity, ARE pushed aside frequently in this world for the sake of tiny self-interest. If the politico-proxy-journalists who've been pushing this story were concerned about the truth, as opposed to how much damage they could cause the current government, they could have, for example, read Glavin's blog over the last year and quickly disabused themselves of their own ignorance. But they're simply not concerned with what the truth of the matter is.

"If nothing else,can we at least cut all the PC crap and start calling a spade a spade in the new year?"

Dream on ...

Oh ... Wait!

Isn't "spade" a racist epithet?

Or do you mean a small manually operated dirt relocation device?

EBD I think the dishonesty of the press promoting their own agenda in line with their political puppet masters is about to take a turn for the worse with the recent Supreme Court ruling. In referring to the media Chief justice McLachlin had this to say in the unanimous ruling;

The court has defined “responsible communication” much as most Canadians would define responsible journalism — diligent checking of facts, seeking alternative viewpoints and so on. It’s simply a recognition that, as Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin writes in the unanimous ruling, it’s sometimes in the public interest to grant immunity to untrue statements made in good faith. “In the course of debate, misconceptions and errors are exposed,” she writes.

You nine bloody idiots, now it’s open season on the truth, at least before you could believe some of what was said in the media. Wrong ruling. Dumb ruling.

Pok,

OT: I do not believe it is a racial term in that context. The reference, I believe is to playing a straigt card game, not having spades as special card that can trump etc, or other cards being spades. It means speaking honestly without tricks.

If I remember, Chretain woke up one morning and decided to send our troops to Afghan. He did not have it discussed in the HofC, or even a phone call to the opposition. The troops had very little notice they were going. They had not trained for this. When they got there they had to borrow uniforms and equipment from others there as their greens were a perfect target.
And didn't Chretain have to rent a plane from Russia to get the men and women over there.
And wasn't the real reason he did this was his hate for Pres Bush and all things american.
Would we have gone to Afghan if the matter had been debated in the HofC.
The whole problem with everything that has gone wrong in Afghan is Chretain's fault, and his alone.
We must give great credit to our troops who have survived and fought bravely, despite the lack of support of the media and liberals.
If an inquiry is eventually held, we must insist that the role played by the media to mislead and distort the truth is brought out.

I watched "Passhendaele the other day , I wonder how the press would cover 120,000 dead and 600,000 total casualties today.

It is "too bad" about the death of the female journalist from Calgary, just as it was "too bad" about the capture of the freelance female journalist in Somalia. But honestly, "what were they thinking??" Somalis (sp?) and Afghanis are a traditional patriarchial society which treat women like dirt. These young women think that life will be like it is in Canada, they do not realize that these countries are basically "Not nice" - you MUST exercise care and vigiliance. I for one, have NO PROBLEMS with the way the Taliban prisoners have been treated - they certainly have been better treated than the treatment they gave to their fellow citizens.

Re. the Blatchford column update, for some strange reason the comments' section has been closed. (And scrubbed?) Gee, I wonder what could possibly have motivated that move?

Thanks EBD for excellent post. I think many journalists are doomed by their ignorance and laziness, and consequent incompetence.

They are dinosaurs in the true sense of the word, and is their industry, soon to be consigned to National Enquirer status.

Most journalists have little real life experience, and zero training in areas of military affairs, economics and many other disciplines.

WRT Michael Byars, he is the lowest of the low. He demonstrates little knowledge of the issue and is the lead defence attorney for the Taliban (they should put him on retainer); as Stockwell Day so deftly described the de-facto supporters of the "underhanded" (thank you Michaelle Jean) Taliban (who are mostly Pakistan with a lot of help from their foreign friends). He is a pedagogical political pussy.

Byar's accusations would be laughable, except his partisan smears are akin to calling our soldiers violent (war) criminals. He using an in(s)ane legal stretch to say that if, well maybe, it's possible we (eek) KNEW someone (oh yeah, no direct evidence) was MISTREATED, then we are "complicit" in war crimes, apparently without need to put on a case.

Like I said lowest of the low. OTOH the public doesn't know or care about this issue; nor do the soldiers in Afghan know anything about the smear. If the koalition is silly enough to keep pressing on this non-non-non-issue, then likely it will boomerang right back at them.

I plan to bring this circus up during the next federal election campaign. Maybe it has legs (probably not) but not for the koalition, who have wrapped themsleves up nicely in a progressive, leftist package.

The "detainees" issue has been the subject of coffee break discussion on a lot of construction sites I work on.

During informal chats with dozens of fellow workers, I have not heard ONE mention any empathy for the Taliban prisoners,and have not heard ONE word doubting our troops.Most referred to the MSM in obscene terms for calling our boys down.

Perhaps we blue collar workers are just too unsophisticated to understand the subtle agenda of the compassionate men and women of the MSM who are flogging this dead horse back to life.

Support for our troops on the average construction site; about 100%.

Care about the detainees; roughly 0%.

If only all the world was made up of Toronto latte sipping professionals.

Yesterday my local rag covered the story of our fallen, and right beside that story in big ole headlines was the usual Detainee Liberal Propaganda piece. MSM couldn't even write about our fallen without including a sidebar story about the detainee issue. What issues, our troops broke no rules of engagement, the only evidence of abuse is hearsay from a snivel servant. Week after week writing stories about the detainee issue but they can't be bothered to include the fact no one did anything wrong. They can't let our fallen have one day of respect without printing their Liberal Propaganda pieces.

Am I alone in wondering what role MSM played in the death of our soldiers? Really' the Taliban must rejoice in their caves when the read the sniveling whining op eds about alleged abuse of detainees coming from MSM. The detainee issue should never of been made public, debating military precedures in a public venue during an active mission is nothing short of dangerous to our troops.

While our men in uniform and our embedded reporters are being blown up by the Taliban in Afghanistan,what are the media focused on?The so-called torture of Taliban detainees by their OWN people...Paul Dewar and Ujall Dosanjii should be ashamed of themselves!
These Taliban are killing our brave soldiers and these two reprehensible pols (NDP&LIB) are trying to make political points with an issue that most Canadians don't give a rat's ass about. THESE TALIBAN ARE KILLING OUR SOLDIERS!If they suffer some abuse at the hands of their own people ,SO WHAT?
And if you think that proroguing parliament will stop these self-important pols...think again.They will hold more informal meetings,invite EVERYONE who sides with them and proceed to try to embarass the Harper government...And you have to know that the sycophantic left-leaning media will cover every session and write every word in their newspaper columns in order to keep this dead issue alive.
There are NO political points to be made on this issue and every new commitee meeting just shows how desperate the Opposition are to keep themselves in the spotlight...Let's just remember their stand on this and other issues when the next election rolls around!