A curse upon the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Rarely have I felt such rage against Mother Corpse. Their major news broadcast, "The National", ran an almost twenty minute segment, Feb. 2, demonstrating, amazingly, that the Canadian Forces are actually engaged in combat in Afghanistan. And that combat is not nice. And that our soldiers are in "not engaged peacekeeping".

The video was in fact shot over two years ago, in July 2006, though one would be hard pressed to know that from the CBC story (17:32 into the, er, "report"--see here). News? Or an agenda? How is it that the CBC just now discovered the video?

The piece was broadcast on February 2, a winter's day in most of Canada (though relatively mild in Ottawa). But at 13:21 into the video they have an interview, clearly done in an earlier, much warmer season, with Eugene Lang, a Liberal chief of staff to two national defence ministers, who says: "...if we don't have the stomach for the bad news then we shouldn't be there, in my view..."

Yet the Liberals sent the Canadian Forces to Kandahar. And even, to their then credit, tried to warn us that we would be in a war. And now the Corpse finds time, amazingly, to find a Liberal who wonders that we are in fact at war?

Upchuck to the max. Be Boy Scouts. Be prepared. Except to fight. Not that things are necessarily developing as one might wish--though fighting a war usually is not exactly a simple matter.

Update: A comment at Army.ca that well puts why I was so upset:

The video is great - too bad for the CBC and the photojournalist Mr. Scott (as if we need to do this lastname shtick) are so inept with their anti-war insights. Get a writer for your anti war diatribe - what ever you do you should be excellent in it - unfortunately it sits on the fence and falls off.

When I watched this, I absolutely noticed the spin that the CBC reporter put on it. I did not however pick up any anti-war drivel from Mr. Kesterson. So as the responses came on here, I had to go back to listen to it again. Still picked up on the disgusting amount of an agenda that the reporter put into it (I'm not convinced that it was the CBC as much as Mark Kelly individually), but I still didn't pick up much of an anti-war feel from Kesterson. He had words put into his mouth by the narrator non-stop, but when you listen to what he said personally, not what Mark Kelly said he thinks, or wants, or believes... he's just talking.

"This is an individual who is coming towards them with a knife. He's a threat, there is a fear that he may be a suicide bomber. They have an interpreter telling the man to 'Stop, put the knife down.' And the man keeps coming. Another warning shot is fired. " - Scott Kesterson

When talking about the same incident, here's how the reporter put it.

But is he the enemy? In Afghanistan, it's not always clear whose on your side. ... The Afghan did die. There. Where he was shot, and in the end there was no evidence that he was a suicide bomber, or that he understood the interpreter.

Really, the only thing that Kesterson said that bothered me at all, was when he was telling Mark Kelly that Canadians don't know that it's a war, and that we think it is peacekeeping. Aside from that, I found he was very balanced.

I found the amount of a personal agenda put into this by Kelly to be nothing short of shameful. Even compared to what the CBC usually spits out towards Afghanistan.

Asking the veteran if he 'killed a Taliban?'

Good God, buddy. All I can picture is a mountie going to a Kintergarden class and being asked umpteen million questions along the lines of "Have you ever shot anyone? Have you ever used your beater-uper stick?"

Oddball.