The Star, G&M, and Canwest forced to CHANGE reporters at Gitmo.

Michelle Shephard of the Toronto Star, Steven Edwards of Canwest, and Paul Koring of the Globe & Mail have been banned by the Pentagon from returning to Guantanamo Bay.

The Pentagon noted that this ruling can be appealed and now Canadians everywhere along with the Obama administration await to hear what Canwest, The Toronto Star, and the The Globe and Mail have to say?


Initial reports from the NP here. The Star here. Globe and Mail here.



Pissing off our allies. Just another reason why military documents should not be seen by the press or any Gilles, Jack, and Iggy who happen to temporarily occupy an office in Ottawa.

A Future Liberal Cabinet Minister.

This guy has the makings of a future Liberal Cabinet Minister to be sure.

Bill Prout, the Liberal candidate for the riding of Dufferin Caledon stepped in it big with his comments: "I was getting a little tired of the afghan detainee thing, but I am thinking the only reason they would do this is there is a lot more in there then even we as Liberals know, or believe is in there. I think the government maybe feels it would be very badly embarrassed. Listen, I think most Canadians believe we’re at war, and if a little torture happens to save lives, most Canadians feel it’s ok, if it saves lives. But it’s not even that, I think it’s that we feel we’re being lied to, and by our own government. If they’ve got something to hide, then ok, it’s time to come out with the facts...”

So now he does what Liberals do best, spin spin spin.

Not only does he claim that the damaging quote was taken out of context, a claim which the Caledon Enterprise totally destroys with the transcript of the original interview, as an added bonus he also contradicts and shoots down his own party's propaganda with the claim that he sent his "22-year-old twins on a plane this past Wednesday to Europe for a two-month tour. They sewed Canadian flags to their backpacks, which for my generation gave you a sense of security while traveling abroad."

Speaking without thinking, back peddling, denial, and shooting down other Liberal claims.

As I said earlier, this guy is definitely Liberal Cabinet material.

Breaking: Liberals want to overturn Nuremberg Trials.

Liberal MP John McCallum apparently believes the "I was only following orders" defense was valid.

"McCallum: "I think the bigger weight is bread-and-butter issues, jobs and getting your children to school and all of those things. But I also think Canadians do care about democracy and about the high-handed, undemocratic attitude and actions of this government, and I think proroguing adds to the total character picture of Mr. Harper, and the fact that they may have been committing war crimes, handing over detainees knowing that they were very likely to be tortured, that is a war crime. And the fact that they're covering it up, I think many Canadians do care about those things as well as caring about economic issues."

Meharchand: "You know, we could digress here and talk about who's handing over, is it the Canadian soldiers who you're accusing of war crimes, is it the government, I don't want to go there in this interview."

McCallum: "It's the government."

Do you idiots ever think about the real consequences of your actions? You cannot have this both ways Liberals. You cannot say that this has nothing to do with our troops and at the same time claim that the government committed war crimes. No MPs were in the field handing anyone over, it was OUR TROOPS and as the title of this post suggests; the defense of only following orders does not cut it.




FYI John McCallum was the Minister of Defense from June 26, 2002 – December 11, 2003. What did he know? He should brush up because if an inquiry does come HE is going to be called to explain the lack of policy and thought on this from the Liberals who committed us to this war.

More on the Liberal star John McCallum here, here, and here he is helping out his boss Ignatieff.

More on McCallum: He became widely known and criticized in 2002 when he admitted, while serving as the Minister of National Defence, that he had never heard of the 1942 Dieppe raid, a fateful and nationally significant operation for Canadian Forces during the Second World War. Ironically, he wrote a letter to the editor of the National Post in response, but committed a further gaffe, confusing Canadian participation in the 1917 Battle of Vimy Ridge in France with the Nazi-puppet state of Vichy France from 1940 to 1944.

This WHILE he was the Minister of Defense!!

Is Paul Martin trying to rewrite history?

From the Star:(highlighting mine) Martin also writes that under the Conservatives, the military "bit off more than we can chew," by expanding its mission in Kandahar. As a result, reconstruction efforts were all but abandoned during the first year of the mission there. "We never envisaged a broad military campaign that would make reconstruction efforts more difficult."

"Under the Conservatives"?? Give me a break.

DND News release May 2005

CBC Time line.

CTV Story July 2005

The road to Kandahar.

Bill Graham on the Liberal plan.

John Manley on Martin sending our troops to Kandahar.

All the above found in about 2 minutes with a simple Google search.

Conservative Reporter has a much more detailed timeline here. Thanks =)


Is it like some kind of disease that Liberals get where they cannot ever take responsibility for their own actions and blame others, or do they just think Canadians are stupid and will believe anything they say?

A bad day for Bob Rae.

Stephane Dion's choice as foreign affairs critic for the Liberal Party of Canada, the unelected Bob Rae, had what might be called his worst day since his defeat as Ontario Premier in the 1995 elections where, as leader of the NDP, he took his party from a majority of 74 seats to a dismal 17.

Today Bob Rae not only came to the realization that Canada may indeed be involved in counter insurgency operations in Afghanistan, he also showed the country that he has no clue about how military operations are carried out, nor about just how far a government should be micro managing those operations from Ottawa.


If the Liberals are deluded enough to think that they should be directing the daily combat actions of our military from Ottawa, than I hope the troops do get pulled out of Afghanistan because these arrogant clowns in the LPC will end up costing lives on the ground. Canada has a very well trained and responsible Armed Forces who know how to handle their military operations, and they do so without broadcasting their plans and protocols to the world. How they quietly handled the prisoner issue goes to enforce just how professional our troops are in the job they have been tasked with by our government, NATO, and the UN.


Combat operations should not be run in public by consensus, nor should they be run from a classroom run by a nerdy professor with Marxist ideas. Only fools, incompetents, or ones who choose to play politics on the backs of our military would 'think' otherwise.

Which of these would better explain the actions of either Bob Rae or Field Marshall Dion? Either way, the Liberals have again shown Canadians why they are not capable of forming a government for some time to come.

BIG UPDATE: Dion knew about this a week ago. Watch the Liberals try now to spin and explain Dion and Iggy both knew about the change yet allowed Bob Rae and the rest of the attack machine to try to embarrass the Harper government.

As I said, playing politics.

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Very late update: Canadian Cynic linked to this post 3 times to incite and spin this non issue.

Links at the bottom of the comments.........But be warned that CC uses his free speech rights to offend people and not work friendly. It is strange considering that CC goes out of his way to offend while he supports the HRC's abusing the free speech rights of Levant and Steyn.

Bob Rae, best wishes for the upcoming year 2002.

Yes that is correct, 2002.

Either Bob Rae must believe that we are about to into the year 2002, or he is totally incompetent at his job of being the Liberals foreign affairs critic.

Bob Rae (Globe and Mail)

“If we continue down the path that (Prime Minister Stephen) Harper wants to take us on, we're really going to be essentially engaged in a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan, and I think that's extremely unwise,” he said.

“I don't think that's where people want to be. I think they want to see us in a peacekeeping role. I think they want to see us in a peacemaking role.”

Is Bob Rae, a person whose job it is to know, the only person in Canada to not know the reality of what are troops are and have been doing in their NATO lead and UN approved role in Afghanistan since January of 2002? Hey Bob, I mean you must know, it was in all the papers and it was the current group of people you hang around with that first sent our troops there to begin with.

Either that or maybe Bob Rae does think it is still 2001. Possible, because he does seem to have issues with his memory in remembering other things from the past as well.

This is almost too unbelievable for words, the Liberal critic for foreign affairs has shown himself to be a clueless idiot and he is not called on it by the press. Do you think if any conservative said anything even half as stupid as what Bob Rae said that we wouldn't all be hearing the screams of the Liberals in every MSM source out there? Yes, me to.

H/T Freedom is my Nationality.

The Liberals miss the good old days?

I find the Liberals to be full of nostalgia as of late for a time when they were still in power. For them everything was rosy and much better than it is today, take the Afghan prisoner ruckus that the Liberals and their close friends are trying to milk for all it is worth as an example.

Care to join me in a trip down memory lane......

Does anyone remember this picture?

For those that do not, this picture is of Canada's own JTF 2 in Afghanistan with prisoners that they had taken and was published Jan 2002 (AP / DarioLopez-Mills) .

Please note the date of the photo January 2002. A time where the Liberal led Government of Canada was not even admitting to Canadians that we had troops in Afghanistan; never mind that they were already involved in active combat and were taking prisoners.

When asked in QP about how Canadian Forces would deal with prisoners, PM JeanChrétien said "You are asking me a purely hypothetical question at this time." totally unaware that the event(s) had even happened and having no idea what was going on with prisoners. CBC NEWS SOURCE

The Prime Minister of Canada, Jean Chrétien, the man that sent our troops into war, did not know what our forces were doing on the other side of the world in the name of Canada!

Good times, good times.

A more positive note for the Liberals was that after a few years in Afghanistan, and after numerous prisoners were handed over to the Afghan authorities, the Paul Martin government negotiated a prisoner transfer agreement. Does anyone want to guess why the Liberals negotiated that deal? Could it be that allegations of coercion and torture just did not start in March of last year when the CPC took over, and that this has been an issue from the time Chrétien first showed all that "Liberal compassion" for the Canadian Armed Forces in question period?

That same transfer agreement, which was good enough for the Liberals, remained intact right up until yesterday when the Conservative Government negotiated the right for Canadian authorities to visit all detention facilities to check on prisoners. Why this was not in the agreement in the first place is beyond me, but maybe while those Liberals are going back down memory lane they could ask themselves why they didn't add this clause when they negotiated the deal!

Thanks for the memories, Liberals.

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On another related point; I am getting tired of Liberals deliberately misleading Canadians on the role of the International Red Cross with Afghan prisoners.

From a Liberal Press release: "...Minister O’Connor told Canadians the Red Cross was responsible for monitoring the treatment of detainees, until the Red Cross came forward to confirm that was not its mandate."

This from the ICRC: "According to its international mandate, the ICRC visits detainees held as a result of armed conflict and other situations of violence being held by the Afghan authorities and forces such as the United States and NATO. Delegates regularly assess the conditions of detention, the treatment of detainees and respect of their fundamental judicial guarantees."

I don't think the truth could be any clearer. The Liberals again are lying for their own political gain and while lying may bring back memories of the good old days for many Liberals, it just goes to show the rest of us that the Liberal good old days should be remembered for what they really were.

What would Dana Carvey say?

Well, if he was in character as the Church Lady he would probably say:

"Well isn't that conveeeeenient"

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Steve Janke does it again as he looks at the timing and very convenient relationship between Michael Ignatieff, the second-in-command of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Amir Attaran.

You may know Amir from his recent 'very' media friendly statements on the Taliban prisoner story. His last press conference consisted of the very same mud the Liberals are now throwing at the government in an effort to find something, anything, to stick.

Nice timing.

A little tease from Janke's blog:

He brought his troubles to Mr. Ignatieff, who gave him office space and mentoring support until he could find another academic home. "Michael stuck up for me against some extremely nasty attacks," Prof. Attaran says.