“Whereas we could have eased into a non-combat role that would have rotated out our military from the hot zone, ”

So basically, wuss out, is what you want Canada to do? To take the easy roles rather than what is asked of us by the UN or Afghanistan’s people?

I don’t really think rotating out of combat roles is wussing out, but you can’t have it both ways, claiming the Liberals dithered by not invading with a conquering force, and then say the Conservatives are screwing up now by retreating because they are continuing the Liberal’s war in the same manner.

I don’t believe for one moment that Colin Powell was lying when he presented the evidence of Iraq’s programme. He was mistaken. I also do not believe that Colin Powell could be fooled by others in the administration who lied to him. He’s just not that naive.

What we had was a nasty dictator who was actually trying to convince the world that he had WMD’s, presumably so that the world would fear and respect him. Unfortunately for him, the US (and the French intelligence service I believe) fell for it and rather than fear and respect him they choose to fight a war. The US administration were not lying, they were just completely and utterly wrong. One could make a strong case that mistakes of that magnitude require a willful ignorance, but that’s another argument.

In any case, the war wasn’t waged under false pretenses, it was waged under seriously mistaken pretenses. We shouldn’t go to war for mistaken pretenses either of course, but the deed is done.

That might be true, but that would be self-interest. We don’t carry out wars so we “get credit”. Furthermore, whatever the benefits of Hussein’s removal, the justifications for the war, (WMD’s and an imminent threat), turned out to be completely incorrect.

It was Afghanistan that harbored and protected those who attacked a NATO treaty member.

I have not read any new commentary on the detainee issue. Could it be that the facts about who did what and when had been forgotten by the Opposition? Have they come to the realization that there are issues more pressing to the electorate?

I don’t think going to Afghanistan was a bad idea at all, despite the casualties and criticism. The recent rousting of the Taliban on a couple of fronts and the sandwich being created by Pakistan appears to have put a serious dent in the Taliban’s hold on a number of key areas.

Other than the foiled terrorist attempt at Christmas, which seems to have originated in Yemen, there have been no major incidents on allied soil that I am aware of. Perhaps efforts in both Iraq and Afghanistan are beginning to pay off.

I enjoyed this article. Thank you

I also blame the Conservatives. They stonewalled on the documents issue for no good reason. As I’ve said before, they are only recently discovering that a retired Supreme Court judge might be trusted to render judgement on releasing the documents or portions of them. Great idea, but the I completely blame the Conservatives for not doing this MONTHS ago and thus fueling the opposition’s obsession with the documents to the exclusion of anything else.

Meanwhile, Saskboy urges us to “cut and run” as some might phrase it.