Thursday, January 14, 2010

John McCallum blames Martin and Graham...

and forgets that he was part of the government of Paul Martin too.

(UPDATE RALPH GOODALE playing political games with the Haiti earthquake @ bottom of post)

John McCallum, the star Liberal MP, who yesterday caused quite a stir with his war crimes allegations was busy today trying to suppress the self immolation.

Here is McCallum on Charles Adler. (starts approx the 7 min mark with Adler, and McCallum comes on @ 24min @

This is priceless spin.

McCallum: When I was Minister of Defense the buck stopped with me, not the soldiers that took orders from the government. (*)

Adler: .....(Asks why his government handed them over to the Afghans when the possibility of abuse was suspected)

McCallum: When I was Defence Minister we did hand them over to the Americans. I was Defense Minister under Chretien It was the Martin Government that made that decision; I was not in Defense at the time.


Wow, the guy tosses Martin under a bus for this decision and never mentions that he was a member of that very same Martin Government. In fact he was a Cabinet Minister in Martin's Government, but I guess that if you can forget the type of car you drive why not that you were a member of a government and a minister.


Attention Liberal war room. More face time for McCallum please.


---------------
More games: This time it is Ralph Goodale politicizing the earthquake in Haiti.




Peter Donolo is a communications genius I tell you. Genius!





18 comments:

The_Iceman said...

Fantastic Post! Right around the time a certain someone was lobbying to boot me from the Blogging Tories and I was faced with the possibility of needing a new home, I wrote "John McCallum, why I could never be a Liberal"

Bec said...

The Minister of Defense, under a Liberal Government was the equivalent of being an invisible backbencher, I would conclude.
A job description that must have been orders from the top (or the Finance Minister) to continue cutting funds and humiliate the morale.

This portfolio has never been a priority for these clowns so it is no wonder that the ball was dropped by them big time.

McCallum is a joke and I am baffled why Goodale (Mr. Anger Management) is supported in Regina of all places. What an embarrassing man. Wow!

Fay said...

CBC working 24 hours a day to put the Liberals back in power.
Kudos to CTV and Robert Fife on reporting the fast action by Canada in the National News last night.
CBC focused on the USA action!!!

Erick said...

I watch the local news on Global this morning in Calgary and they showed the Dart team leaving but that was it most of the focus was what the Americans are doing.

Bec said...

Well if it makes you guys feel any better (it's hard dealing with these slimy networks)the U.S. networks, have mentioned CANADA more than a dozen times being one of the first, out of the shoot. Air Canada, on the tarmac in Port Au Prince.....so CBC and GLOBAL, you suck!

UsualSuspect said...

Bah.

I am just sick of all of this gotcha crap. While Adler is right to pillory McCallum for his hypocrisy, it is also wrong for us to play the same game here.

Canada is not Cambodia and neither Chretien, Martin nor Harper are Pol Pots. We all know what real war crimes look like. And we all know what the letter of the Geneva law is meant to prosecute and there is nothing about Canada's effort in Afghanistan that even approaches any meaningful threshold.

War Crimes are hanging offenses. It doesn't get any more serious than that, but the Liberals wave this thing about like they are handing out a speeding ticket for passing on the highway. They trivialize everything and smear everyone they pretend to care about with their war crimes talking points. And for what?

When will they realize they've gone much too far this time? When the first group of wing nuts take them at their word and throw blood on the next group of returning soldiers in protest? The Prime Minister perhaps?

Enough is enough.

maryT said...

The Dart has landed, and was getting ready to go when Goodale made that stmt. Did you get his take on how questions would be asked, blah blah.
If parliament had been in session, those questions would have delayed action for weeks.
And these guys come back on to diss the PM, when the truth is out there, and they don't even look ashamed.
Regina voters, vote this idiot out, he will get a huge pension so doesn't need a job to diss Canada for 4 more years.
Between him and McCallum, and the cbc, they have called everyone who supports the PM a supporter of a dictator, approve of torture, and so much more. Should we blame everyone who voted for PET, Chretain and Martin for being a crook, and approving all the theft of our money, of delaying for days or weeks a reponse to disasters in the world.
I support the PM of Canada and his government.
One can find many comments today on the lack of action from Martin and Chretain, refusal or delays in sending Dart or whatever.
Again, every time the harperphopiacs try to pin something bad on the PM, it comes right back and brings up inaction by the libs. Shouldn't they learn by now.
And ctv deserves some credit for praising the PM last night. Fife can actually report on the PM without that pinched face.

Ardvark said...

Somebody needs to remind Ralph that he is STILL on a Christmas Break and Parliament is NOT currently prorogued so there is zero effect on our response.

Anonymous said...

Not only is McCallum an incompetent twit, he is a turncoat who is willing to sell out his old boss for the sake of his own skin. It's no wonder this jerk is a Liberal...he fits the mold perfectly.

wilson said...

'Wow, the guy tosses Martin under a bus'

Exactly what Chretien's man, Donolo, intentions were.
The Chretien-Martin wars are not over.

re: Haiti
the entire Harper TEAM worked at the speed of light to aide Haiti.

For any media or opposition member to say otherwise,
is a liar, and they know it.

The Harper Government response proves that EVERY Ministry is competent...
EVERY Team member, EVERY aspect of EVERY department is prepared to go into action at the call of our PM.

I am so proud of the whole lot of them!!!

Ardvark said...

From a comment I left @ Springer's place.

Compare with our response to the 2004 tsunami. PM PM was on vacation and took 6 days to return to Ottawa.

As for Martin's foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew "So far, he's suffered from the widespread perception that on most hot files, he's been way too far from the spotlight. Instead, he's been in his cozy Paris flat on rue Aristide Bruant, a side street at the base of Montmartre. The existence of the apartment, which Pettigrew already owned before he came to Ottawa in 1996, has never been a secret. At one point he actually appeared in footage the BBC used as an illustration of la vie française, sunning at an outdoor Paris café. But at some point, the minister's Parisian pied-à-terre became a source of acute irritation back home. That's where Pettigrew was on Boxing Day -- when the Asian tsunami struck. And it's from there, sources say, that Pettigrew gave his initial response to requests to return home, including one from his colleague Bill Graham at National Defence, to help deal with Canada's response. It was a curt "No." Hours later, Graham was chairing a cabinet committee on the disaster and Pettigrew's parliamentary secretary, Dan McTeague, was sending the first shipment of Canadian aid from CFB Trenton. As for the minister? Pettigrew was in Paris, refusing media requests to go to a studio for interviews. Departmental insiders say he didn't want to draw public attention to his whereabouts. It took several days -- and an unfriendly command from the PMO -- to pry him back to Canada, where more than 150 employees of his department had been putting in 22-hour days to locate missing Canadians"

http://www.vivelecanada.ca/article/145004191-out-of-touch

The difference in response between the Harper Government and that of Martin is telling.

Ardvark said...

I should add that Springer, who is a go to guy on climate gate, has a great post up on the response from our government.

The Liberals are going to fall victim to their constantly playing political games with EVERYTHING.

maryT said...

Against my better judgement I am watching P & P, re the latest ekos poll. And the question will things change after the earthquake. Ivanson brought up that the pollster had mentioned earlier that things were starting to turn back to the tories in the last days of the poll so maybe the prorogation has lost its punch. Ivanson said canadians expect our PM to take proper actions during a disaster and the bipartisan support will be good sign. And both he and Evan compared the quick response to the 2004 tsuami, when not one liberal was in Ottawa. Martin took six days to get back to Canada, and Pettigre refused to come back.
I await the next poll. It was also mentioned, at some point that problems in AB with the Stelmach govt could have been responsible for some drop, and that would not mean a drop in seats elsewhere. I don't think Stelmachs problems will cause a loss of seats in AB.
OT, but I asked someone what they thought of the cabinet shuffle-reply-same sh** different toilet.

Ardvark said...

Shhhhh. Let the Liberals continue to think they are getting ahead with all of these foolish games.

CanadianSense said...

Thank you for the link!

The endless games and mudslinging has helped frame the opposition.

In 2009 what policy or platform have they put forward as an alternative to the government in the HOC?

A few speeches were from the

The opposition has been reduced to props and political stunts. Their grassroots have not filled their coffers.

The relentless tweets, scandal-crisis interview on MSM by the Liberals demostrates the lack of strategic planning and vision.

The communications discipline that exists with the CPC does not exist at LPOC.

I suspect the Bob Rae faction will continue to undermine the MI leadership.

Leadership Campaigns 2010-2012
What camps are McCallum, Dusanj, Goodale (Martin, Chretien, Rae, Trudeau)

Jen said...

As I sent this to CS, so we I, here.

O/T, Here is our NEW MILITARY:





Our (new) military
National Post
Published: Saturday, January 16, 2010


When we first sent troops to Afghanistan, they had to hitch a ride with the Americans. In 2004, when we sent a team of medics and engineers to Sri Lanka following the Boxing Day tsunami, they had to wait for days until we could pay a transport company to fly them to the disaster in old Russian aircraft. For most of the decade before the Tories came to power in 2006, our peacekeepers and troops had to endure the indignity of thumbing a ride to the world's hot spots. We had the will to help, but not the means.

But now, that has changed. Thanks to Tory efforts to rebuild our military, within 24 hours of Tuesday's devastating earthquake in Haiti, Canada had aid flights heading to that beleaguered country. Within 48 hours, the first 272 Canadians stranded there were in the air on their way home to Montreal.

Read on



http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/story.html?id=2448354


PS, this story like msny others like it, will never be heard or heard in the MSM(cbc ctv.)

Anonymous said...

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Anonymous said...

Hey, I like a beverage as much as the next guy.
as long as the next guy isn't John McCallum