Blue Like You

Breaking - NATO agrees to 1,000 more troops in Southern Afghanistan: CTV. (They just changed the link. France has agreed to more as well!)

More here: NATO to meet Canada’s demand for more troops in southern Afghanistan - CBC.

As an aside, I have never been more proud of our Prime Minister than when watching him this morning on CBC Newsworld in the press conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Harper was so articulate and handled himself with such quiet confidence. I tried to imagine Stephane Dion in that position…

Things are looking good for a majority consensus on our Canadian mission.

I am very proud and relieved to see how the Government and the Official Opposition are putting partisanship aside to try to find common ground on this most important issue.

The lives of our troops depend on it.

Friday Update: Liberals to support Afghan Motion - Star.

CTV - Hillier urges Ottawa to extend Afghanistan Mission.

Joe Warmington - Taliban assessing our every word.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is holding a press conference at this moment regarding the Liberal motion on Afghanistan.

It sounds hopeful that both sides can reach a compromise. Harper says he will look carefully at the proposals.

Robert Fife says it is important to note that this will be a bi-partisan consensus, and that there may be enough common ground to keep forces in until 2011.

He suggests that this may even lessen the Liberal Party’s desire for a spring election, since they feel the economy will worsen throughout the year and this could be a disadvantage for the government.

In any case, I believe this could be the best possible scenario for our soldiers and the Afghan citizens. Canadians need to be united on the issue of Afghanistan.

Newstalk 570 reports that the Government is set to table a motion tomorrow for a confidence vote in March regarding Afghanistan.

Get ready for another election!

Update: Now 570 is backtracking and saying that it could lead to a vote of confidence. Hopefully we’ll get this all clarified soon. CTV has a updated statement here. (Dion will seek ‘amendments’ to Afghan motion.) Check out the comments.

Globe - Dion won’t give on combat ban.

Star - Afghan debate set to begin.

CBC - Confidence vote on Afghan mission expected for March.

Post - Afghan mission to be put to a vote.

I’m not a sports fan in the slightest, but my husband just asked me to watch the opening ceremony for the Leafs-Sens game tonight. I was blown away by the soldier who sang “Oh Canada”, and by the appearance of so many of our fine men and women in uniform.

This is a wonderful way to support and salute our troops. It makes me feel so proud to be a Canadian.

A huge non-partisan congrats to the Hon. Keith Martin for introducing his important private member’s motion M-446.

Please show your support to this eminent Canadian politician and ask your own MP to help push this forward.

In today’s National Post, John Ivison also mentions Dr. Martin’s role in brokering a way for the Liberals to heal the divisiveness within their caucus regarding Afghanistan and still save face:

...This refinement in Liberal policy was discussed at yesterday’s caucus meeting and emerged from a suggestion by B.C. Liberal Keith Martin that the Liberals propose hard targets, in numbers and timelines, for the development of the Afghan army, police, judiciary and correctional services. The imposition of timelines would satisfy Liberal concerns that Canada not be engaged in a “never-ending” war. But their adoption would also be in accord with Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s belief that our contribution should be reviewed within two to three years…

The constituents of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca must feel very proud of their MP.

Interesting how the Globe story from this morning seems to have disappeared from their home page. It’s still available using the search engine or by clicking on the Afghanistan special report link, but it sure isn’t getting top billing anymore.

Could it have anything to do with Maj. General (Ret’d.) Lewis Mackenzie’s appearance on MDL this evening, not to mention the PM’s dismissal of it this afternoon?

Oops!

What is the responsibility of the press concerning ‘anonymous’ leads and fact-checking?

Today’s Globe cites an ‘anonymous source’ as having some inside information on the Afghan detainee controversy - Detainee fallout: take few, free quickly. (H/T National Newswatch)

How is it that the Globe can publish operational security details? Don’t they know that the Taliban can read?

…One well-placed source who spoke to The Globe and Mail Monday on condition of anonymity said that, in addition to being told that Canadian detainees were being held at Kandahar Air Force base, he understood some insurgents detained in joint Canadian Forces-Afghan National Army combat operations were being turned over to the Afghan military in a “grey zone” action.

He said he has been told that Canadians have been content in some cases to allow operations to be labelled as Afghan-led military proceedings. Thus, detainees passed into Afghan military hands with no records kept…

But the Post reports that Harper calls this information “operational security”:

…Citing “operational security” and the desire not to tip their hand to the Taliban, Mr. Harper and his Cabinet refused yesterday to discuss what was being done now with detainees…

Politically, it would be to his advantage to disclose the information and be ‘transparent’ about the whole process, so there must be a reason to keep details on a need-to-know basis.

And so just who is this ‘well-placed source’ and why did he feel he needed to bypass national security and the safety of our troops to get this story to the Globe? And how do we know it is true? How can we check?

Where’s the accountability?

The CTV report here would have you think that Pamela Wallin is very critical of how the government has handled the detainee situation, but in reality she is just saying that people need to be made aware of all the good that is being accomplished in Afghanistan.

She emphasizes the difficulties of working with a country whose democratic institutions have to be built from scratch. She also mentioned that many Canadians seem to have forgotten about Afghanistan and were not sure why we are there. She credited the Manley report with raising consciousness and pointed to poll results this past week as evidence. When Pamela talks about ‘information deficit’, I think she is referring to the heavy emphasis on casualties and deaths, with little about the accomplishments. Now whose fault is that? I know - if it bleeds it leads…

Watch the interview here (click on QP - Pamela Wallin on the Manley Report) and compare.

Strange that the clip on the QP website gets cut off just as Wallin explains how she was touched by the interactions of the children and the soldiers and how she was so deeply moved by the Afghan people expressing their gratitude…

Anyway, good on Pamela Wallin for her non-partisan, classy handling of this issue. Craig Oliver must be frustrated that she didn’t play the game.

All this latest brouhaha regarding the cessation of prisoner transfers and who knew what when, is confusing at best to the average Canadian. The opposition parties are painting this as a terrible ’stain on our democracy’.

However, I would suggest that what we are fighting for in Afghanistan - the establishment of safely and democracy for the Afghan people - is the very thing which puts our soldiers in harm’s way with our obsession to need to know everything that is going on, no matter how much that information might compromise the lives of our brave men and women who are fighting there.

I think ultimately what Canadians want is to be reassured that the mission is under control. How far the government should be apprised of every military decision, and by extension how much Parliament and the public should know, is something I couldn’t even begin to ascertain. But I do think we need to temper our thirst for details with concern for the safety of our troops.

It’s a fine line, but until the Taliban starts broadcasting all its secrets, I’ll defer to those with more military experience than myself.