If you haven’t read Christie Blatchford’s fiery redemption piece from her earlier fall from grace at the Globe and Mail, then you can’t truly appreciate the full impact of the new information on the so-called “Afghan detainee torture scandal”, nor the extent to which the media has abdicated its responsibility of providing fair and impartial news.
As she writes in her article, few in the Ottawa press gallery have bothered to report on testimony to the Special Parliamentary Committee on Afghanistan given by Gavin Buchan, the former political director and senior official on the ground in Kandahar before he was replaced by lionized “whisteblower” hero, Richard Colvin. They were, after all, busy excoriating Rahim Jaffer and Nazim Gillani in the unending “busty hookers” saga, the same story that’s been leading because it’s bleeding for about 3 weeks now.
Major General Tim Grant, the commander of the Canadian military effort in Afghanistan during the same approximate time period, came to testify before the committee on Wednesday, and provided evidence along with Mr.Buchan that collectively provides a rather strong rebuttal to the claims of the whistleblower. Yet shamefully, this wasn’t reported with anywhere near the kind of energy and outrage as the “torture-rendition-war crimes” stories that brought Liberal MP after NDP spokesperson before cameras to talk about how much the Harper government is damaging our international reputation.
It wouldn’t surprise me to find the Ottawa press gallery of scandal-screaming sensationalists try and pass off their infotainment news as being more important than the truth. More than a few journalists have looked at their six figure salaries while trying to decide on whether to do real investigative journalism and being above the fold on page one, and chosen the latter. And boy, nothing sells quite like made-up stories of Canadians being “complicit” in torturing people, does it?
Why, the media had the Liberal and NDP voters so whipped up in a frenzy over it that they were calling for a veritable impromptu trial for Stephen Harper and the gang for war crimes, despite the fact that none of these alleged crimes have even been confirmed to have been committed yet. But the fair and balanced, impartial news networks like the CBC would never sensationalize something that wasn’t absolutely factual beyond a reasonable doubt, would they? You can trust them! They took ethics classes in journalism school, after all.
Perhaps the biggest rotting fish head in this entire affair is the fact that people are used to casting the worst kinds of aspersions on the Conservative Party to such an exaggerated degree, that the media groupthink had no choice but to oblige a willing public lapping up every last drop of pathetic manufactured innuendo. Let’s get Amir Attaran in front of a camera to tell us about all those documents he’s seen but can’t show us, and quickly! Hearsay and conjecture are valid forms of prosecutorial evidence in the court of public opinion, and the public jury isn’t too picky about it either.
If the government and the military are, at a later date, exonerated of all charges and allegations by the so-called whistleblowers, there will still be some penance to pay for those who participated in stirring the pot. The manner in which the opposition has acted has been nothing short of shameful, particularly at a time when our nation is involved in a military combat mission in which Canadian soldiers put their lives on the line to protect innocent women and children.
When all is said and done on the Afghan file, I think it will be remembered who stood behind the people struggling for a rudimentary democracy, and who decided to use wartime Taliban propaganda to score political points and sell newspapers.
RELATED
Tim Powers has also weighed in on this. No word on when the CBC bloggers will pull their heads out of their…
NATIONAL POST
I wrote a very modified version of the piece above for the National Post, including quotes from the testimony of Maj-Gen Grant and Gavin Buchan. You can read it here…
Christie Blatchford wrote a hard-hitting article about Afghan detainees on Friday makes mention of testimony given to the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan [AFGH] on Wednesday, April 28.
Aside from a few references in the media, littlehas been printed as to the contents of the meeting. What is significant about the testimony is that it serves as a rebuttal to the claims made by diplomat Richard Colvin that Canadian Forces and the Department of Defence ignored warnings that torture was commonplace in Afghan prisons, and that this was “standard operating procedure.”
Not many fair minded people are shocked the media have lost their perspective.
Colvin, Attaran and select others were wonderful for their narrative of framing the government and military responsible for secrecy and hiding those “tirture” documents.
Allegations and smears behind parliamentary privilege allowed the Special committee to lose sight of its’ purpose and has been reduced to taking cheap shots against our military and government.
Your article about a price to be paid will be at the ballot box.
I think so too. But there’s still a big focus on these released documents and we have to see how that plays out.
Nice post. I also missed this piece of news and would have missed it entirely without your post.
Colvin has been played like a fiddle by the LPC/NDP and liberal media. I have felt sorry for him for several months.
I wish the left had the courage to stand up and say what they really wish to say instead of provoking hard working people like Richard Colvin, and Frank Graves to do their dirty work for them.
But I guess the polls are speaking for them. No guts leads to no glory. Can’t happen to a nicer bunch.
As I said before, they are not “bias”, they are full frontal, bald faced liars.
They are aping what the despicable American media did to Bush. They engaged in a non stop viral campaign there, and that’s what they’re doing here. The parallels are right there in front of our face and they certainly are not a coincidence. The Toronto media is doing what they’ve always done, and that’s too obediently march in goosestep with the American leftist media. You have to wonder if they have a mind of their own, it seems as if they’re so infatuated with the Manhattan Limousine Liberal Progs and the Hollywood Phonies that they’d mindlessly destroy Canada in order to ingrate themselves to their false idols.
Let there be no mistake that this propaganda campaign isn’t being manufactured just from the low life journalists. This is also being pushed hard from further up the corporate and bureaucratic food chain, and don’t for a second think that it’s just Canadians, this is a international effort, just like it was with Bush.
I keep thinking of that CTV Vice president who takes a sabbatical every election in order to be a Liberal campaign leader. Sorry but I forget his name. Someone else will know.
It is a positive testament to the Conservative’s management to maintain a lead in the polls throught this partisan media onslaught.
I’m guessing that journalists are not paid that well considering the quality of people they seem to hire.
Well written. Finally some truth.
Many folk reel in horror when I casually make the remark that “journalism is not a profession”….there are good journalists and terrible ones……but they are not accountable to any journalist self regulating body. Getting a university degree in journalism does not make one a “professional”. Politicians who are so easily duped, or are party to spreading such un-truths, do not deserve out votes
with the canadian media one word will descibe the reason they say anything. agenda.
And to top it all off, we have continuous, slanderous, articles by Greg Weston against the govt. His latest is …it’s a safe bet,Harpers ministers won’t be sporting horizontal pinstrips, anytime SOON. A whole article about prison….leaving the impression that the govt.ministers SHOULD be locked up but won’t be. Don’t know how the media get away with the things they say? If an ordinary person said these things about a Liberal in a letter to the editor, it wouldn’t get printed.
Because of the increasing incompetence of the Liberals under Iggy , I predict the MSM will only increase the level of slander and misrepresentation of the Harper government , in a futile attempt to rally Canadians behind their beloved Liberals.
There’s a difference between “slanting” a story, reprehensible though that may be , and downright lies, and the media seem to be crossing that line more and more recently. There was the whole “Wafergate” debacle last summer, and a few weeks ago the front-page Star story by Tonda MacCharles that Rick Hansen had turned down the GG’s post. Both stories were subsequently completely debunked, although the apologies received MUCH smaller coverage than the initial reporting.
I guess the good news is that people are getting more and more sceptical about the accuracy of media reporting, but so far the scepticism does not seem to have spread to the biased coverage of the detainee issue. Unfortunately.