Blogging Kandahar

Western Standard writer Kevin Steel covering the PM's tour of Afghanistan:

Lots of other cool stuff happening that I can’t write about at the moment, but should be able to discuss in full later. I can say we had a couple really good briefings this morning, including one from the Provincial Reconstruction Team management. As an aside, I should mention it was critical here for the media that the Canadian ambassador, bureaucrats from CIDA, military personnel and RCMP all sat at one table, spoke on the record and took questions. Yesterday at the palace, there was a bit of a verbal tussle between the Canadian media and the Conservative politicos about getting bureaucrats (in that particular case, from CIDA) to talk on the record and take questions. It wasn’t so much that the Conservatives didn’t want the CIDA bureaucrat to talk directly to us as it was the bureaucrat herself. Today that whole issue seemed to be resolved, somewhat at least, in favour of the media and as a result with all these people going on the record and answering questions, it should make it a little easier for us journos to explain what it is Canada is actually doing around here with regards to redevelopment.