Monday, January 28, 2008

Popcorn, anyone?


And no hogging the couch, damnit!

It should become clear today whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper accepts or rejects a conditional, indefinite deployment of Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

Harper will hold a news conference in the National Press Theatre to sketch out his government's response to last week's Manley commission report.

Riiiiight. Maybe it’s just me but I bet Big Daddy’s press conference will turn out to be whole lot of nothing.

Well, colour me shocked. Turns out this girl was right (I know, I was totally shocked, too) and Big Daddy's presser was a whole lot of nothing much.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper repeatedly refused to explain Monday what Canada is doing with its prisoners in Afghanistan as he was pounded with questions about the government's mysterious detainee policy.

Harper described the issue as a matter of national security, leaving opposition politicians scratching their heads as they pointed out that Canadians know far more about U.S. prisoners than they do about their own.

One human-rights lawyer has described the issue as a matter of national embarrassment - not national security.

But Harper stuck to his guns.

"We are not going to publicly discuss how many Afghan prisoners we have - and where they are," he told a news conference. "These are details of military operations and we are not going to answer such questions."

"A matter of national security" ... looks like that's the line they'll be wanking furiously. Good luck with that.

2 comments:

Niles said...

Oh cut the poor guy some slack. He's already feeling bad about having to hold the presser at the NPG, instead of his own spiffy all control all the time media bunker that the mean old publicity hounds exposed and drove into file 13.

I'm sure that his speech will be of the same mind boggling breathless delights as his speech on Friday.

MgS said...

Unfortunately for the HarperCrit & Co. BushCo has already turned the phrase "a matter of national security" into a synonym for political bullshit.