At least they don't shoot our generals

Babbling's earlier post is exactly to the point on the government's failure to communicate. I think its pathetic and abysmal handling of the Afghan detainee issue may well offset in public opinion any increased support for our mission resulting from the Manley panel report. And our scandal-obsessed media only make things worse. The Globe and Mail's Christie Blatchford (our Annie Oakley of journalism) hits the target as usual:

Oh, please: The Stephen Harper government didn't know that the Canadian military had stopped handing over Afghan detainees last fall, after Canadian monitors found what they called a credible allegation of torture?

This claim, made Thursday night by the Prime Minister's communications director, Sandra Buckler, was being hastily retracted by Ms. Buckler less than 24 hours later.

"I should not have said what I said to you," she told The Globe and Mail's Campbell Clark yesterday. "I misspoke, and I wanted to make sure you were aware of that." Then she refused to say whether she "misspoke" because she said something she shouldn't have or because she said something that was wrong, and declined further comment. And she - madness! -- is the PM's communications director.

Knock me down with a feather: Ms. Buckler misspeaks, slurs the Canadian Forces and gives credence to all those who were already, as Mike Duffy noted Thursday on CTV NewsNet, pointing the finger of blame at Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier and what? She gets to say, albeit in a magnificently unhelpful way, "Oops"?

Off with her head...

Yet what is far more interesting than the duplicitous double-speak coming from this government is what it reveals both about its control-freak mentality (that if its first instinct is to say nothing, its second is to blame someone outside the circle of wagons, often the military) and the troubling, giddy eagerness with which the claim was sucked into the 24-7 media machine and spun out virtually unaltered for hours at a stretch...

...with Gen. Hillier in the air Thursday when this story broke - he was en route to resume the rare holiday he had already interrupted to return to Ottawa to discuss the Manley report, apparently with the PM and cabinet - there was in his absence no one willing or able to risk disputing Ms. Buckler's now-discredited allegation that the Canadian Forces had kept the government in the dark.

A second factor, I think, is that every story now, whether it is about Paris Hilton or the mission to Afghanistan, is subjected to the same unquestioning hyperbole. We in the press seem to suffer somewhat from a version of what in badly behaved children is called oppositional defiance disorder; we mistrust our own institutions such that we are fully prepared to accept, at least for story purposes, that the Canadian military would try to keep the government, which soldiers know better than anyone else is properly its master, out of the loop...

There's a nice post on the whole "detainee" question at Barrel Strength.

Update: I am in complete accord with this comment at Milnet.ca:

I need to repeat: I am a card carrying, regularly contributing true blue Conservative; I wouldn’t vote for Dion’s Liberals if they were the only choice on the ballot and I think Gilles Duceppe and Jack Layton, and their parties, are bad jokes. But: I am not blind to the fact that Prime Minister Harper and his close, personal staff are anti-military and, at the very best, weak sisters when it comes to the Afghanistan mission.

They (Harper’s closest advisors and staff assistants) have lied, over and over again, about Gen. Hillier in an attempt to control or undermine him and to subvert his “message” to the armed forces he heads and to Canadians – the parents, spouses, children, brother and sisters and friends and neighbours of our armed forces’ members.

Prime Minster Harper has been a notable and singular failure at explaining (much less defending) the mission in Afghanistan – most likely, I believe because he only considers the mission as a partisan political device that he can use to sow dissention in the ranks of the Liberal Party of Canada. In other words: Prime Minister Harper – my prime minister, head of my party – cares little about the troops and their mission. His only concern is the next election.

Maybe that’s the way it has to be in 21st century Canada, but Blatchford’s description of a “disgraceful whirlwind” is spot on.

A much stronger presentation of thoughts similar to mine here.