It passed 146 to 129, not that this means we'll actually get one.
Here, via Hansard, Con MP Cheryl Gallant presents the Cons' closing argument for why we should not pursue an independent inquiry, unsullied by partisan political gamesmanship :
Mrs. Gallant's musings can frequently be heard from her perch on the Parliamentary Committee of National Defence."Mr. Speaker, on the weekend I had an opportunity to speak to a soldier from Canadian Forces Base Petawawa who had served several rotations in Afghanistan.
He urged me not to go forth with an inquiry on this issue. He said that every time the Afghan deployment is debated in Parliament, it puts the lives of our soldiers in theatre at greater risk. He recounted that when the motion to withdraw from Afghanistan or to end the combat mission in 2011 was before Parliament, they were in a operation where they heard the insurgents on the radio saying to each other that they should kill as many Canadian soldiers as possible because we were debating this in the House of Commons and that when Canadians saw the caskets of soldiers coming off the plane it increased public pressure. They wanted the MPs to vote to get out of Afghanistan as quickly as possible.
I asked him if they listened to Al Jazeera while they were fighting at the front, so to speak, and he said, “No, ma'am. We heard this chatter on our coms”.
So they had heard Taliban talking to one another, urging each other to kill as many Canadian soldiers as possible. He credits the leader of the NDP directly for the death of his best friend as a consequence of that."
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h/t Scott
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12 comments:
So, if the mission hadn't been debated in Parliament, the Taliban would have been all blasé about the whole "let's kill as many Canadian soldiers as possible" thing? I'm surprised that military command didn't counter with a "let's defeat the Taliban, once and for all" strategy, you know, just to win back that PR battle. There's such a simple elegance to it that I can't imagine why it wouldn't be successful. Of course, then some Islamic fundamentalist shill would blame Taliban com operators for being too harsh with their rhetoric and directly causing the death of his buddy.
Warn your kids: bravado can be deadly serious lethal, yo.
Cheryl Gallant is obviously insane.
Kady live-blogged about that and credited Layton with his measured response.
Ms. Gallant might want to look into whether the PM's who put the troops in Afghanistan have anything to do with their deaths while she's spinning her bizarre theories.
Christ, what a vile bunch of lackwits.
Yeah, because you just know the Afghans are using the same radio frequency as the Canadians, and deliberately speaking in English.
If they were, it was specifically to demoralize the troops. Cause no military wants the enemy listening in. ("Hey Brad, just heard on the radio that the Taliban planted IEDs on route 32 by village X! They're in culvert by the dead tree and the rusted barrel."
How very typical..... south of the border "every time you ask a question another soldier dies" rhetoric brought home by our crawlamentarians on the hill.
The comments thus far are terrific! I Love "crawlamentarians"! And "Lackwits", & the dialogue of the English-speaking enemy! Thanks everyone!
Who would believe this utter baloney?! Oh. yes. The Con supporters. That HAS to be how Steve ever got elected to anything. Bravo to Paul for the Bill. Could we please start to act like Canadians again & do some good stuff, like we used to!
It's time Gallant identified this soldier to the parliamentary committee where he/she can be asked to testify.
Since Gallant seems to apply so much weight to the opinion of one soldier we should all enjoy the benefit of his/her wisdom.
Now,now.
Part of the honoured tradition of disinformational spin is to cite 'unnamed sources' as part of the mystery as to why we should believe any of it.
Perhaps we should start thinking of ourselves as Austria working with Nazi Germany. Certainly one part of the 'Afghan Mission' is clear : it will kill people who live there and object to foreign occupation.
Did you pick up on the name for foreign mercenaries raising Hell ? Al Qaeda. I wonder if that could be the division attached to Turkish intelligence and run by NATO secret ops.
( Are you saying WTF about that ? Have a look at Sibel Edmonds' tweets, blog, and coverage in BradBlog. )
A Dave sighting! Hi Chief!
Opit, have you got a specific link for that?
Comments at Stageleft's very funny.
Any minute now someone will drop in there to remind everyone that people are dying but of course they aren't dying in Cheryl's head which is the actual subject at hand.
Its a sad business isn't it, when a bitter soldier blames his own country's democracy for his friend's death.
Alison...'specific link'
Not at the drop of a hat...though http://ken-welch.com/index.html was tagged for info on Al Qaeda in my del.icio.us file. If it looks a bit wild...I collect a few such. My index is at http://my.opera.com/oldephartte/links/...but it's really a bunch of sources and articles roughly indexed by topic as I note them for special attention.
Thinking about it, Alison, I think I'll go with 'snide comment that might well be true' on that one. I have a friend who gives me some great tips, including stuff on secret NATO armies, Color Revolutions and more...but there is a certain amount of realization that some intel is literally too hot to handle with the amount of electronic snooping going on. ( Though this particular idea wasn't covered by that party. ) It's not the first time I've been in contact with a person who gives really different views and is in fear. Such is usually called paranoid.
Uh-huh. I'm familiar with 'Poisoning the Well' argumentation and cover stories, too, however.
Mostly, chasing things like that down is as bad as an episode of 'X-Files' : which is why search is fun but made better by new toys.
Phair enough, Opit.
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