Friday, June 24, 2011

The Opposition and the Media Pundits Should Now Apologize To the Troops

The opposition and the media should immediately apologize to our troops.  This whole Afghan detainee issue has been nothing but a witch hunt from day one. The Liberals used this cabal to find a "gotcha," a "smoking gun" moment on the Conservative government for shear political gain and  the media played right along.  This as with other faux scandals was unfounded and a total waste.

In the process they used the troops waging a smear campaign against our them.  Remember this from John Macallum on CBC when he accused our troops of war crimes?


Over 4000 pages of documents on the Afghan detainee issue was released on Wednesday.  There was absolutely NO evidence our troops or the government was complicit in any war crimes at all. Matthew Fisher  a correspondent for Post Media who has spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan knows a little bit of what goes on there, has a must read piece today in the Calgary Herald says it's time to give this detainee nonsense a rest.
There is still not a jot of proof that Canada and Canadians did anything wrong while overseeing and handing over Taliban prisoners of war during the early days of the combat mission in southern Afghanistan. The so-called scandal has been much ado about nothing. 

I agree with Mr. Fisher. This has been much ado about nothing.  The smear against the troops was disgusting and uncalled for. They do deserve a public apology.  The taxpayer deserves an apology too for that matter for a waste of 12 months and $12 million for this fiasco. 

I advise you to read the whole article, he also has some interesting  info about Richard Colvin,remember him the one who the Tor Star who portrayed  as a "whistleblower"?  
I have known Colvin for nearly 20 years. I spent several hours with him the night he left Kandahar at the end of his brief tour in 2006. I have always found it strange that during our discussion that lasted several hours, the treatment of Afghan detainees by Canadians or by the Afghan authorities never came up in any way.
Colvin spoke at great length that evening about three things: how troubled his love life was, how Foreign Affairs had repeatedly passed him over for promotion and how because of the death of diplomat Glyn Berry in a suicide bomber attack a few months earlier in Kandahar, he had not been allowed to go out into to field to get a sense of what was going on.