The thickness of Peter Mackay

Let's face it, Peter Mackay is not among the sharpest implements in a drawer full of dull blades. His latest attack on women demonstrates a thought process that is not only overly-simplistic but flawed to the point of being dangerous. Tabatha Southey does a low-level strafing run on Mackay demonstrating his consistency in being wrong on, well, everything.

At this point, I’m impressed with the sheer breadth and scope of Justice Minister Peter MacKay’s ineptitude. These days he’s wrong about so many things and manages to communicate this wrongness in so many mediums, I’m in awe.

The man is wrong everywhere! He just keeps popping up wrong! Peter MacKay is like the Zelig of wrong! He’s wrong in the House of Commons – and throws papers on the floor. He’s as wrong in four-year-old as he is in adult.

It gets better and is a great Sunday morning read.

Of course, nothing about Mackay would be complete without pointing out his failure to keep it professional in the House of Commons when his steady squeeze gave Harper the finger. It also showed what he thought of women.

Liberal MP David McGuinty asked Mr. MacKay how the Conservatives' newly unveiled green plan would help his dog in Nova Scotia. Mr. MacKay is said to have looked up, pointed to Ms. Stronach's empty chair and said "You already have her."

...

Added Mr. McGuinty: "I mean, this is the kind of conduct that you expect from a schoolyard bully, not a Minister of Foreign Affairs ... It is not the conduct that is becoming of a minister of Foreign Affairs.

Mackay ran away from further questions on the matter.

But one has to wonder: What's motivating this mono-synaptic twit?

He sold out a "big tent" party (which admittedly had been shredded by Mulroney) to a bunch of intolerant, racist, small-minded, knuckle-dragging, low-life fascists just to get a seat at a particular table. This is not someone motivated by a sense of public service.

Could it be that Peter Mackay is so dumb that he believes he can outlast Harper and, because he sold out his once centrist party to the Calgary republicans, that he is the anointed monarch?

Please ... he can't be THAT stupid. 

Thundering in on the F-35 Boondoggle - foreword

I've been wading through piles of paper. Some of it is recent correspondence received after the Auditor General's report on the unbelievable mess that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has become. Other material has been out there for a while.

Later on today, (hopefully), we'll examine what the costs were known to be for the F-35 JSF, long before Harper and his minions decided to lie and feed the Canadian public a bill of goods.

First though, lets look at a definition you should have planted in your mind: Life Cycle Cost. (LCC)

The Harperites have been pushing a talking point that the figures they were feeding the Canadian public before, during and after the last election did not include full life cycle costs. From a procurement standpoint, that is simply ludicrous. From my own experience, nobody ever procures capital equipment for the military unless a complete life cycle cost analysis is done and a thorough life cycle cost estimate is produced. The following is from a current publication in use for military project personnel working on LCC for aquisitions:

Life-cycle cost (LCC) can be defined as the total cost to the government of a program over its full life, including costs for research and development; testing; production; facilities; operations; maintenance; personnel; environmental compliance; and disposal.

For a better idea of what all that involves, take a look at this from MTain. (Good idea to read the page on that link. Great comparison on buying a car vs buying a military aircraft)

 

Now, if you want to look at something even more graphic, educational and understandable, go here.  That is using an iceberg, most of which is underwater, to show that the acquisition cost is much less than the overall life cycle cost. 

The Harper talking points that their figures did not include wages, fuel and training are nothing more than the desperate flinging of poo. An equipment acquisition always includes those estimates in the total life cycle cost. That's how you manage your defence budget over the life of your equipment. (Any good fiscal manager knows that, but hey! We're talking about Harper here.)

With that information, it's now time to head on over to The Gazetteer. RossK has put up this morning's interview on CBC The House with the Auditor General and then the weaselly Chris Alexander, parliamentary secretary to the minister of national defence.

Listen closely because that is your primer for my next post.

Later. 

Finally ... they drop the gloves

The Disaffected Lib wants the Governor General to intervene. He links to the latest offerings by Andrew Coyne and Brian Stewart who lay out exhibits which should horrify any Canadian.

Coyne:

This was, until last year's shipbuilding contract, the largest single purchase in the country's history. And yet it was carried out, as we now learn, without proper documentation, without accurate data, and without any of the normal procurement rules being followed. Defence officials simply decided in advance which aircraft they wanted, and that was that. Guidelines were evaded, Parliament was lied to, and in the end the people of Canada were set to purchase planes that may or may not be able to do the job set out for them, years after they were supposed to be delivered, at twice the promised cost.

But of course it's much worse than that. If department officials played two successive ministers of defence, Gordon O'Connor and Peter MacKay, for fools, the evidence shows they did not have to exert themselves much; if they did not offer evidence to back their claims, whether on performance, costs, or risks, it is because ministers did not think to ask for any. Nor was this negligence confined to the Department of National Defence.

And he concludes with ...

So this is also what comes of Parliament's prerogatives, its powers to hold ministers to account, being ignored or overridden. These aren't procedural niceties, of concern only to constitutional law professors — "process issues," as more than one member of the press gallery sneered at the time. They're the vital bulwarks of self-government, the only means we have of ensuring our wishes are obeyed and our money isn't wasted. Parliament having long ago lost control of the public purse, it was only a matter of time before the government did as well.

It's good of Coyne to finally recognize the clear and present danger to this country's parliamentary democracy. We have been filling these pages with warnings of such impending events for years.

Be careful, Andrew. Someone will accuse you of being "reactionary" or "hyperbolic". And I might point out that the people who accused the writers here of those things have not returned to call us what we actually were: right all along.

Stewart:

The who-knew-what about the real costs of the F-35 fighter jet Canada wants to purchase is worrisome enough. But at the heart of the fiasco is a far more serious concern about what public honesty means to this government.

It's a sad state that few Canadians appear surprised by the auditor general's findings that Parliament was kept in the dark over the real costs of this program and what looks to be a $10-billion overrun.
Many seem to assume that misleading and denying whenever it suits is a government's normal default position. After all, this government seems to have done it for years on Afghanistan and with its other problems in national defence.

In my own attempts to unravel the F-35's real costs I never once met a single soul outside government and knowledgeable about defence purchases who believed the prime minister's promise that the planes could be delivered for a bargain-rate $75 million each.

I never met anyone inside the Canadian military who thought so either.

I'm sure thousands in the aviation industry who follow these programs, especially in the U.S. and Europe, simply assumed Ottawa was dealing in fairy tales for public consumption, from which it refused to budge.

This is why we need to see if this current mess is part of a pattern of official "misstatements" on defence matters. If so, we've got a serious national problem.

Brian Stewart has been on the beat for longer than I can remember. His article should be read in its entirety because he goes on to describe the obsessive secrecy in which the Harperites surround themselves on all things. But the highlight was the continued attempt to suppress information on the Afghanistan adventure.

Unlike Coyne, Stewart never offered us Harper as a "good thing". He just kept chipping away at things that seemed to exist in the strange shadows of the Harper government.

This trend towards denial makes everything about the misstated F-35 billions a deeply serious affair.

We really need to know how deep the deception went in this case. And we ought to be much more curious about what is being carried out in our names under the cloak of secrecy.

Yes, we do.

And we need to know who knew what when back in May of 2011, when thousands of calls went out misdirecting voters to bogus polling stations. 

The rumbling and shaking at 101 Colonel By Drive

I was all prepared to post exactly what I thought about the Auditor General's report with respect to the the procurement of ... any number ... of F-35 Lightning II Joint Strike Fighters. And I was going to conclude that all the fault with the total cluster-fuck that this procurement has become lies in the lap of one person: Peter MacKay.

Then the editorial board of the Ottawa Citizen released a salvo fit for a major newspaper. All except for one little problem, but we'll get to that shortly.

It is the Department of National Defence that failed, in the auditor general’s estimation, to exercise due diligence and properly inform Parliament. But it is the minister’s duty to make sure that department does its job, especially when billions are on the line. It’s the minister’s job to ask questions, to be sure of his ground before he stands up and invokes the protection of Canadian troops in the service of his opinion.

It is the minister who is, oh, what’s that old-fashioned word … responsible.

Peter MacKay either didn’t know what his department was up to, or he was complicit in keeping the whole truth from his fellow parliamentarians and from Canadians.

To be fair to MacKay, there are others who ought to be ashamed of themselves. The auditor general’s latest report says the year 2006 “represented the most critical period concerning Canada’s participation in the (Joint Strike Fighter) Program and future acquisition of the F-35.” Gordon O’Connor was the defence minister at that time. That’s when Canada accepted the procurement regime and signed memorandums of understanding with manufacturers Lockheed Martin, Pratt & Whitney and GE Rolls-Royce.

The next year, MacKay took over the portfolio, and he has been a staunch defender of the F-35 process since. In 2010, the government announced it was buying the F-35. It was after this announcement that the defence department went through the required process to justify its decision to buy the planes without holding a competition.

And it goes on. This part is particularly delightful. (Empasis mine)

Both MacKay and Prime Minister Stephen Harper were stubbornly insisting, in 2010 and 2011, that this was a done deal and that there was no other good way to replace the CF-18s. They insisted that the costs of the F-35s were known and transparent, and they repeatedly used phrases such as “rip up the contract” or “cancel the contract” to characterize the opposition position.

There was no contract, as Harper and his cabinet — especially beleaguered junior defence minister Julian Fantino, who is taking all the heat off MacKay on this issue — are now eager to emphasize.

The big lie. And, the big tell.

Both MacKay and Harper knew, when they were attempting to smear the opposition as attempting to "deny the troops" necessary equipment, that there was something wrong with their numbers. They had long been alerted to it by both the parliamentary budget officer and by their own technical advisers. Their refusal to provide a comprehensive cost estimate to parliament was unprecedented and telling. The Harper government was held in contempt of parliament because of Harper's propensity to childish temper tantrums whenever the high court of the people held him to account.
 
And the whole time they knew that there was something wrong with their numbers. Had they been in any way confident in the numbers they were spouting publicly, they would have tossed the details on the bar and gloated while the opposition choked on them.

But they didn't do that. They kept hiding behind "contracts" which did not exist, peppered with "we are the only ones who support the troops".

Anybody who has been anywhere near the military procurement game saw this whole process as a little odd. For one thing, this was an unknown platform. Most of us thought this whole thing required a closer look and a huge amount of "requirements" work, and we said so.

That got some hackles up.

The Harper spin machine was hard at work, (because we had questioned His decision), and before we knew it, self-styled "military analysts", (most of whom don't know whether they are punched, bored or blown out with a twin 3 inch 70 naval gun mount), were telling us that this air weapons platform was the neatest thing since the invention of sex.

And, it's what the air force wanted.

Bully for them. Even the adults in the RCAF know that they have to fly and fight what the government provides, whether they want it or not.

Most Canadians can be excused for their erroneous belief that the uniformed Canadian Armed Forces and the civilian Department of National Defence are the same thing. Despite the obvious close relationship, they are separate, as required by law. So take this breakout of responsibilities seriously:

[T]he Department is headed by a Deputy Minister of National Defence, the Department’s senior civil servant, while the Canadian Forces are headed by the Chief of the Defence Staff, Canada’s senior serving officer.  Both are responsible to the Minister.

• The Deputy Minister has responsibility for policy, resources, interdepartmental coordination and international defence relations; and
• The Chief of the Defence Staff has responsibility for command, control and administration of the Canadian Forces and military strategy, plans and requirements.

Once, a long time ago, a Chief of the Defence Staff went to the Minister of National Defence and told him that the armed services were in desperate need of more people to meet the requirements of the government's stated defence policy. The MND went to the DM who told him that the budget would not allow any increase in pay, training and support of anything higher than the cabinet approved established strength. The CDS then told the minister that he could no longer generate the forces needed to meet a contingency operation, but thanks for hearing me. The CDS, one of the most highly decorated Canadian combat veterans to have held the position, responded to media, (hoping to be able to report on a pig-fight), "I am a soldier. I salute, turn about and do my best."

I, personally, was young, pissed-off and demoralized by that statement. But I also learned something that day. We in uniform do not decide such things. We use what we are provided. We don't make the final decisions on ships, tanks, aircraft, rifles, ammunition, uniforms, underwear or the quality of issue nylon stockings. All of that is decided by The Department. And The Department is subject to the will of those higher in the food chain.

There has been a generally loud response to the Auditor General's report, much of which aims at unnamed people in the RCAF and the uniformed Canadian Forces. It is suggested that they lied, covered up, fudged numbers and misled an otherwise hapless, albeit incompetent minister.

That would be a great story. Except that they couldn't do it. The lines, as described above, are very clear. The air force can get on their knees and beg for F-35s until the cows come home. They can tell The Department, right up to the minister, that no other airplane will meet their needs. It is not, as I have pointed out, their decision. That rests with the civilian policy and resources shop of The Department.

I was present, way back in time, when the lords of the navy were briefing the Minister of National Defence on the requirement to replace the Oberon-class submarines. The admirals had several options, all of which involved conventionally-powered boats: two off-the-shelf types and one cooperative build-in-Canada model. The minister asked why there was not a nuclear-propelled option. The admirals were shocked but answered that current defence policy did not include the demand for that type of boat, and the uniformed navy felt that nuclear-powered submarines would be politically unacceptable.

The minister answered with, "The politics are not your problem. Come back with a nuclear option."

The admirals were uncomfortable since nuclear propulsion involved a massive shift in focus and, as they pointed out, was outside the limits of the stated defence policy.

I'll let you look up the history but it was a Conservative minister and it sheds a light on the F-35 issue.

The type of equipment the armed services employ is decided by the politicians. The Canadian taxpayer is buying it all. The armed services makes the best use of it, preserves it, become experts with it and hopes for a new model - soon. They don't pick it. They only get to say what they would really, really like.

Remember the Harper line after he formed his first minority government? He was going to streamline military procurement. After his 2nd minority he decided to make it a part of his agenda. The 2008 Speech from the Throne contained this:

Fixing procurement will be a top priority. Simpler and streamlined processes will make it easier for businesses to provide products and services to the government and will deliver better results for Canadians. Military procurement in particular is critical: Canada cannot afford to have cumbersome processes delay the purchase and delivery of equipment needed by our men and women in uniform.

That seems to be a Conservative goddamned mantra.

What Harper pumped out of the mouth of the Governor General can easily be summarized as this: We don't need to put every purchase under a microscope when the answer is obvious. We spend too much time analysing expensive capital military equipment. We already know what we want. We're just going to go out and buy the stuff we want. A competition is a waste of time.

And that is exactly what they did. Harper and MacKay. Who needs a cumbersome competition and assessment process when we have THEM. They are all wise.

The Auditor General did point a finger. He pointed it at the civilian-led policy shop. The policy shop led by Harper and MacKay.

Both should depart without their heads. That, however, is unlikely to happen.

I reckon some poor unsuspecting corporal will have her or his life ruined to preserve the image of Harper infallibility.

Things that grow in the darkness

Being any part of National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa (or over there in Hull) can be frustrating. It's like living in a mushroom farm much of the time. Things grow out of cracks and turn into things you don't expect.

However, if you are the Commander of Canadian Expeditionary Force Command (CEFCOM) you would expect that you are close enough to the oracle to at least be given a "heads up" that an expeditionary mission is coming your way. It kind of goes with the territory, the security clearance and the film-star wages. There is, after all, that planning thing, then the staffing thing and, most difficult of all, that logistics thing to organize.

So, when politicians start to rumble about that there will be an extended role for the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan as trainers you'd expect that such discussions would include certain key figures in uniform, like the Chief of Defence Staff and the Commander CEFCOM.

But not when Harper is in charge.

For the past two weeks the only thing I have been hearing is, "We didn't see that one coming." And that is now verified by the Commander responsible for organizing the mission.(Emphasis mine)

"Right now we are just at the fact-finding stage, determining what is available at what rank, what skill set, what timeline," Lessard said in an interview with Postmedia News after arriving in Kandahar. "We are not looking at one option in particular. There are individual positions, left and right."

As well as meeting for 45 minutes in the Afghan capital with Gen. David Petraeus, the American who runs NATO's war here, Lessard spoke with Maj.-Gen. Stu Beare, a Canadian who is one of two deputy commanders for training.

"It is mind-boggling, all the positions. What we are looking at are things that make sense. We do not want to just scatter people all over the place," said Lessard, who also conceded he was surprised by the government decision to deploy trainers.

"Quite frankly, I did not know what was going to happen," he said, "but in the military, we are ready for anything."

Lessard's comments and description of the task he has been handed go further by confirming that the Harperites, despite all their confident claims, had and have no idea what the training role would be. You will recall that I made this point:

Canada cannot meet the demand to start filling Caldwell's requirements by this winter and next spring. We still have a combat role and will not be able to deploy personnel to a bolstered NTM-A until well after that. We can safely assume that other NATO allies will fill that demand long before we have personnel available. This is the kind of commitment many NATO nations view as a healthy and safe way to deploy without wearing the political splatter of combat casualties. We aren't going to be there for any of it.

Sure enough, Lessard expanded on that too.

The Harper government's announcement two weeks ago that Canada will undertake a mission to train the Afghan National Army _ in the relatively safer confines of Kabul once the combat mission ends _ clearly caught the military by surprise.

Up until late October there had been no planning undertaken for a follow-on mission, said defence sources in Ottawa.

Lessard said they have yet to sketch out what the training scheme will look like because a seven-member fact-finding team has just heard from NATO about what positions need to be filled.

He confirmed that not all Canadians will be based in the Afghan capital, despite what the Conservative government has said.

"It is to be Kabul-centric. What that means is: the emphasis is to be on Kabul, but not solely Kabul."

Many of the positions at the recently established NATO Training Mission Command in Kabul are already taken, but there are positions at the various military schools scattered around the country.

So .... while Harper and MacKay have known for some time now that they were going to commit to a role in Afghanistan beyond July, 2011, they never bothered to have that conversation with the organization responsible for planning and executing such a concept.
The assertion by Harper that the mission would be in Kabul was actually an uninformed assumption on his part and now turns out to be far from reality.What is clearly apparent is that Harper and MacKay had no idea what the mission would look like, the proof being offered that, after actually asking NTM-A what positions need to be filled, the Commander CEFCOM is still trying to give it form. And it isn't going to look like what Harper said it would.

The mushrooms grow strong at 101 Colonel By Drive.

Canadian government policy based on the First Crusade

Dawg, Pogge and Balbulican have covered this nicely.

Suffice to let me add that Stephen Harper, Peter MacKay and Charles McVety are a  national disgrace beyond sufficient description.

I expect MacKay is now feeling powerful enough to direct Canadian Forces Expeditionary Command to make plans for the retaking of Antioch. 

And to the inane little bigot (no, I'm not linking to it) who asked if the Department of National Defence would allow a "Christian Heritage Month" let me point out that as young ordinary seamen under training at HMCS Cornwallis we were compelled to attend Christian church parades every Sunday or be summarily charged under the National Defence Act for being absent from a place of duty. If a new entry service person did not declare a religion the government automatically made that person a Protestant Christian.

Ships! We will have ships! Many ships...

Maybe.

Petey "Life Is Like A Box Of Chocolates" MacKay was making bold with his announcement of 50, that's right count 'em, fifty ships to be built in Canada by the Canadian shipbuilding industry.

Canada's shipbuilders have agreed to a radical change in the way contracts will be doled out by the federal government.

Good. Because the current system, the one streamlined by the Harper government, quite frankly, sucks. The Harper government has cancelled or shelved every single ship procurement contract on the books and have seriously jeopardized the frigate mid-life modernization.

The government plans to spend $40 billion over the next 30 years to build as many as 50 large ships, in addition to 70 ships under 1,000 tonnes that have been earmarked for revamps.

Let's start with the "50 large" number. On the shelf are naval requirements for three Joint Support Ships and six to eight Arctic Offshore Patrol Vessels. That's it. The former project was cancelled and the latter is on hold after being seriously watered down. (Let's not play the eight number. If these things ever materialize, six will be the maximum number.)

There are no other actual new construction projects in play - not even on hold.

The Coast Guard Mid-Shore Patrol Vessel project and Off-Shore Fisheries Research Vessel project were both dropped at the same time as the Navy's JSS project. You might not have heard it because it was mumbled out of the side of some boffin's mouth. Whether these are included in the "50" raises a question. The proposed size of the MSPV (37 - 42) meters sounds very much like an under-1000 tonner to me. It doesn't qualify under MacKay's announcement. And nobody really knows if the OFRV was larger or just another version of the MSPV. Let's pretend that it was intended to be over 1000 tonnes.

That makes 11 total possible ships with project status, even though the Harper government dropped all of them. (After big, loud promises to build them and, yes, even more!)

Now let's look at another number. The "30" years.

That presumes that the same government will be in power for the next 30 years because, as anyone in the ship procurement business can tell you, when governments change, so do plans.

The Harper Conservatives have a best-before-date that won't give them 30 more weeks without having to go to the voters and the shipbuilders know that.

"There is going to be enough work with 50 ships on order for every shipyard in the country to be going full steam, and that's good news in terms of the economy," said Defence Minister Peter MacKay.

I'm calling bullshit on MacKay. There will never be 50 ships on order. MacKay is playing with words and numbers that would make a dishonest accountant blush. Notice, the absence of "over 30 years" in his pronouncement.

... a new process that theoretically will allow the government to pick and choose in a more direct way which Canadian shipyards will build which ships. The agreement is meant to end the often intense bickering that has killed some government contracts.

Which is hardly the "conservative" way. What happened to the good old conservative maxim of "let the market reign"? This sounds like government controlled, government subsidized shipyards.

The agreement itself still requires scores of questions to be answered and many details to be ironed out.

Bingo! And one of the details is, what happens Peter, old boy, when you get turfed out of office and the "50" number changes? What happens if over 30 years requirements change?

Enact legislation making it mandatory? Give it a try.

Alan Williams, former head of procurement for the Defence Department, called the deal historic.

"I think the notion for revisiting the government's shipbuilding policy makes good sense," he said.

However, he added that if the program is not managed properly it could become a disaster. He said the government needs to make the process transparent to ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely.

That seals the fate of any deal with Harper's hillbilly government. I shouldn't have to say this, but if I were a shipbuilding company or a head of procurement basing a decision on the need for good management, one look at the Harper government track record would send shivers down the spine of any rational individual.

It would be too limiting to call this announcement nothing but smoke and mirrors. It is, in actual fact, complete bullshit and MacKay is an empty shirt.

Behold a Pale hobbyhorse

Steve's mission statement for the Canada First Defence Strategy

Monday - $30 billion
Jay Paxton, Peter MacKay's press secretary : "As such, the speeches are the strategy."
Dan Dugas, MacKay's senior spokesman : "The strategy is what they unveiled."

Wednesday - upon further reconsideration - $50 billion
Peter MacKay's office : "There's a very detailed cabinet document that lays this down and more."
Defence Department senior military official who apparently cannot be named : "There is a very solid, detailed document in existence. It's not just stuff pulled out of the air."

Ok, so not just something Steve pulled out of his ass which he can stuff right back in again when it suits him (h/t Boris)
There is a plan - they're just not entirely sure what it is yet - but Pale at A Creative Revolution took particular note of this :

"One senior officer used an expletive to express his dissatisfaction with how, in his view, the most proactive spending plan the Forces have ever seen was being communicated to the public."
"Military planners said they took a comprehensive modern approach to predict what global security risks or "conflict drivers" such as terrorism, climate change or population migration would drive up demand for the services of the Forces.

"Food is one, oil is another one, water is one," said another military official."

and asks :
Is this finally Steve's military plan to "battle" the climate crisis?

Is this Steve's Green Plan? :

Note : I made a very small addition to Pale's drawing which I hope she will not mind.
Cross-posted at Creekside

Would you like a spare with that used Leopard?

Updated below.

The purchase of used Leopard 2 main battle tanks from the Netherlands and the 20 loaners from Germany just took on the look of the Upholder/Victoria class submarines. From the Vancouver Sun:

Just months after the Defence Department claimed it had enough spare parts for its Leopard tanks, military officials are buying surplus armored vehicles to strip down for components so Canadian tanks can keep operating in Afghanistan.

This is worth a look back. In April 2007, when this was suddenly sprung on the Canadian public, the total cost of purchase and refurbishment, including 20 operational loaners from the German Bundeswehr was announced as $650 million.

The total project cost of the loaned tanks, the acquisition of 100 surplus tanks from the Netherlands, the requisite upgrades and enhancements to this new Leopard 2 fleet, and an initial acquisition of spare parts is $650 million, which will be funded from existing departmental allocations.

Then in May things took something of a leap.

Canada's purchase and long-term support of 100 slightly used Leopard 2A6 battle tanks will be $1.3 billion — roughly double the Conservative government's initial public estimate last month.

As he detailed a laundry list of military hardware the Conservative government plans to buy over the next few years, Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor surprised the Commons by announcing there will be a 20-year, $650-million service contract attached to the tank deal.

“The capital acquisition is $650 million and the support for 20 years is about $650 million; about the same range,” he said in reply to an opposition question during debate over Defence Department estimates.

And now, we're buying 15 more surplus Leopard 2 MBTs to cannibalize for spare parts.

In regards to the new purchase of 15 surplus tanks for spare parts, MacKay's office issued an e-mail which reiterated that the Leopard 2s are an invaluable asset to Canadian commanders.

"The procurement of surplus German vehicles will provide the Canadian Forces with valuable platforms for training, testing and, where applicable, spare parts," the e-mail stated. "This acquisition fills the short-term needs of the military and demonstrates the judicious use of public resources by this government."

Privately, military officials said the 15 tanks won't be used for training or testing and that they are all destined to be stripped down for parts.

So, let's see now, former Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor started off by telling us the cost was $650 million, quietly tried to sneak the fact by everyone that the cost was actually double that amount and now, we have 15 more surplus tracks being delivered which were unannounced and nobody seems to be talking about cost. Current Defence Minister Peter MacKay hasn't been heard from on this.

Germany waived the lease fees on the 20 loaned tanks so the capital acquisition originally announced was worth about $6.5 million per tank for the Dutch tanks. The 15 surplus tanks appear to be coming from Germany. Even at 1/2 the price, that means an additional cost of $48 to $50 million has just been tacked on to the original purchase.

Then there is this promise which was intended to soften the blow:

This acquisition represents a significant opportunity for Canadian industry. Once negotiations are complete, the Dutch Leopard 2 tanks will be transported to Canada where they will receive the necessary upgrades to final Canadian Forces standards.

Apparently, that too has changed.

But some Canadian industry officials worry the project has now gone off the rails.

They say work to refurbish the used tanks, that was supposed to be awarded to Canadian firms, is now going to European companies and there are questions whether domestic industry will reap that many benefits from this major purchase.

That may be due to the logistics involved and the cost of moving them. To deliver the Dutch tanks to Canada for refurbish and upgrade and then transport some of them back to Afghanistan (if they are completed in time for use in that theatre) would be hugely expensive.

While we're on this subject, this statement needs a look.

The tanks being loaned from Germany are fully operational, and will be deployed to Afghanistan in conjunction with the next rotation of personnel this summer.

These tanks are able to operate in intense heat as their electric turret systems and more powerful engines generate significantly less heat when operating than the hydraulic systems of Canada’s 30-year-old Leopard 1 fleet. They will also be fitted with climate control systems once in theatre.

Anybody could be excused for believing that the loaned German tanks were going to be fitted with air-conditioning to make them more habitable for the crews in the intense heat of the summer. That, however, did not happen. Because the German tanks are on loan there were limits put on modifications. The fully electric turret is cooler than the older Leopards since it no longer needs a hot hydraulic pump to operate but "climate control" is not a good description of what is actually in place. Crews wear a cooling vest.

All in all, this has been a full court press of Conservative dishonesty and obfuscation.

Something has been bugging me about this: It strikes me that the "fee-free" German loan of 20 operational main battle tanks is more than a little generous. In fact it seems to be more than one could expect without some sort of deal having been stuck. What possible arrangement was made with the German government to get 20 combat-ready up-to-mod tanks?

1) We'll lend you 20 good tracks if you purchase 15 more of our surplus rigs;

2) We'll lend you what you need in theatre if we get the contract to refurbish the Dutch tanks you're buying;

3) Here's 20 tanks. We don't want to hear one word from you about moving German troops into southern Afghanistan;

4) Something else.

I know it's pure speculation so if anyone has anything which might make more sense or actually has anything concrete drop it into comments.

Got your reality right here, MacKay. The four French options.

The Harperites motion to extend the Afghanistan mission to 2011 may well be moot. Already Peter Van Loan has stated that the 2011 date is simply a point on the calendar and not a definitive withdrawal date for Canadian troops. There is every possibility that it could be extended beyond that. At least as far as the Conservatives are concerned.

They may soon have to tackle reality.

The Harperites are pinning their Afghanistan policy on the Manley Report and the recommendation that Canada's continued involvement in the Kanadahar region be contingent upon NATO providing 1000 additional troops to supplement the existing Canadian force of approximately 2500 troops.

No matter how you read that, Manley and the Conservatives are calling for a troop escalation. Given that we are being told by the Harper government how much progress is being made in Afghanistan, the demand for a 40 percent increase in the number of combat troops suggests something altogether different.

MacKay came out of Vilnius with cheery news that France was considering sending 700 troops to serve in the Canadian sector. Not that 1000 troops is likely to make much of a difference, but 700 is not 1000.

And then there is what is actually happening in France. It seems Nicolas Sarkozy has not only not made up his mind, but his military commanders are surveying four different possible deployments for those troops. From Le Figaro:

Quatre options sont actuellement en préparation sous la houlette des hauts responsables militaires et diplomatiques. La première resterait centrée sur la région de Kaboul où est actuellement basé le gros des troupes (quelque 2 000 hommes au total). À la grande satisfaction de ses alliés, Paris déploie désormais des équipes d'instructeurs (Operationnal Mentor and Liaison Team, OMLT), intégrées au sein d'unités afghanes. Quatre de ces «omelettes», comme on les surnomme, sont d'ores et déjà opérationnelles sur le terrain, y compris dans les zones de combat. Une cinquième sera déployée dans le courant de l'année. Mais Paris est appelé à faire davantage. Une deuxième option serait un déploiement dans la région «Sud», autour de Kandahar. Paris y maintient déjà six avions (3 Rafale et 3 Mirage 2000D) et 200 hommes.

Les Canadiens, qui ont déjà eu près de 80 tués, ont indiqué qu'ils retireraient de Kandahar leurs 2500 soldats si l'Otan ne déployait pas un millier d'hommes supplémentaires. La semaine dernière, la presse canadienne évoquait le chiffre de 700 Français transférés vers le Sud. Une troisième option consisterait à envoyer des renforts français à l'ouest, dans la province du Helmand et vers la frontière iranienne.

Des régions livrées aux chefs de guerre, aux bandes criminelles et aux cultivateurs de pavot. La Force internationale d'assistance à la sécurité (Isaf), avec ses 43 000 soldats de 40 pays, n'y est pas présente. Enfin, la dernière hypothèse viserait à dépêcher des troupes à l'Est, autre zone «chaude» de l'Afghanistan, proche des régions tribales du Waziristan où les djihadistes évoluent comme des poissons dans l'eau.

For those needing a translation, the gist of Le Figaro's report goes like this:

- There are four possible options for the deployment of the French battalion being studied by France's military headquarters and senior foreign affairs officials.

- The first option is to focus on the Kabul area and reinforce the 2000 strong French army force there. The French run four Operational Mentor and Liaison teams, (which they call an "omlette"), and feel they need to generate more.

- The second option is to deploy the 700 man force to the south to assist the Canadians in Kandahar. The report mentions that the Canadian press had made the first mention of 700 French troops going to Kandahar.

- The third option is to send French troops into the western area of Helmand province, in an area where ISAF has no presence, near the Iran border and with the mission to deal with war lords and criminal gangs in the border region.

- The fourth option would be to dispatch the French battalion to the east, another "hot" area of Afghanistan, on the border of Waziristan where jihadists "surface and move like fish in water".

Of those four missions being studied by the French, the Kandahar option doesn't look to have any greater imperative than any of the others.

Even if France does opt to send its troops to Kandahar to escalate the ground combat force in that area, the man who commands NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, feels the number of troops being offered, indeed the entire force on the ground is woefully inadequate.

In Afghanistan, the population is “estimated to be perhaps as much as 3 million more than Iraq, yet we have, in trying to operate in a counterinsurgency environment, only a fraction of the force that the coalition has in Iraq,” General McNeill added. “So there’s no question it’s an under-resourced force.”

General McNeill said that if the official American military counterinsurgency doctrine were applied to Afghanistan, then well over 400,000 allied and Afghan security troops would be required. He acknowledged the impossibility of fielding a force of that size.

That's not just counter-insurgency doctrine, that's just plain common sense. If you want to win any military action you employ overwhelming force. Either that or be prepared to chip away at the beast for a lifetime with little real chance of success.

And the impossibility of fielding that size of force has a lot to do with the fact that most countries just aren't into this operation. That, by the way, includes Canada. We get a lot of rhetoric and jingoistic crap out of the Harper and Bush governments but if they really meant it they would both take the kind of action Eric Margolis is suggesting.

If impassioned claims by U.S. and Canadian politicians that the little Afghanistan war must by won at all costs, then why don't they stop orating, impose conscription, and send 400,000 soldiers, including their own sons, to fight in Afghanistan?

Of course they won't. They prefer to waste their own soldiers, and grind up Afghanistan, rather than admit this war against 40 million Pashtun tribesmen was a terrible mistake that will only get worse.

On the other hand, if the commitment to Afghanistan extends past 2011 as a combat mission that will make it half again as long as Canada's involvement in the 2nd World War.

How long does MacKay think he can keep feeding a volunteer force into a war without end?

You played it for Steve, now play it for Petey.

This looks like another piece of kabuki theatre.

France is considering sending a new contingent of soldiers to the volatile southern regions of Afghanistan in a bid to appease Canada.

The country already had planned to send more troops to Afghanistan, and on Thursday, French Defence Minister Herve Morin said he would be willing to have those troops stationed in the south, where Canadians are currently working alongside British, American and Dutch soldiers.

"I said we would help the Canadians," Morin told reporters in Vilnius, Lithuania, where NATO defence ministers are meeting to discuss the mission.

This is after weepy Petey MacKay had come out saying that he didn't have a single commitment from one country and might have to "cobble together" several smaller commitments from several different countries.

Repeating words he learned from US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, he warned of NATO becoming a two-tier organization.

Before all the conservative drum-thumpers start cheering and spitting half-chewed cheese puffs all over the basement furniture, they need to examine this a little more carefully.

Morin implored Canadians to wait on making a decision. He noted final details about France's troop increase would be presented at a later date by French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

"Be patient," he said.

A Canadian delegation is travelling to Paris Friday to talk to French officials about the troops, CBC News has learned. It is not clear how many soldiers France will be sending, although some reports have suggested 700.

In fact, based on French army information, it had already planned to send a 700 man paratroop battalion which is presently a part of the NATO strategic reserve force. Sarkozy announced that possibility back in December, so this is not new information. Given that the majority of the current French contingent in Afghanistan of 1900 troops is located in Kabul, there was always a plan to send them into a different area and the south was the obvious destination.

The problem is, of course, 700 troops is 300 shy of the Manley Report requirement which the Harperites are waving around as some form of final strategy document to save the world. That means Harper needs to bleed out 300 more troops from somewhere. You can bet that is what Harper's early week phone call to Nicolas Sarkozy was all about and you can put good solid money down that the announcement heard today was already decided before MacKay ever arrived in Vilnius.

What we're getting out of MacKay, as he wipes the sweat from his brow, is a performance which makes him look like a hard-nosed negotiator beating down allies and getting his way.

Don't step in that.

Now, I suppose you're wondering where the extra 300 are coming from. Say hello to the US Marine Corps. If France follows through and sends the battalion they are suggesting they might, the US is planning on a "short rotation" of US Marines to bolster the entire mission. I would bet a big bunch of clam shells that if the French contingent is short, Gates will promise a Marine detachment to Kandahar to make up the difference.

All of this is being slapped together in enough of a hurry to allow Harper to avoid the messy detail in any confidence motion which would see it die before a vote. Without those 1000 extra troops, committed for the same length of time as the extension of the mission he is seeking, he cannot accuse the opposition of killing the Afghanistan expedition.

Did I say, for the same length of time as the extension of the mission?

Yes. Because unless that is the commitment from other countries, Canada ends up right back in the same situation six months after the additional troops arrive.

Further, the Manley Report provided a fairly useless identification of air requirements. While it was watered-down the commanders of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan are actually insisting that the infantry force become a fully air-mobile organization. The reason for that is fairly obvious. It is the infantry footprint which is killing Canadian troops. Most are being killed and wounded by land mines and roadside bombs. They need to get off the roads.

As an additional note, Cheryl picked up on a statement made by Conservative MP Betty Hinton. Hinton stated that if Canada pulled out of Kandahar there would be a genocide. Given that Hinton in her entire term as an MP has never had an independent thought, you can count on hearing that again. It's a Conservative talking point.

H/T Holly Stick in comments.

Ignoring the realities

Michael Evans and Philip Webster are reporting that the meeting of NATO defence ministers is likely to produce exactly nothing in terms of troops being demanded to boost the combat force in Afghanistan.

Nato defence ministers meeting today are not expected to offer any more troops for Afghanistan, despite a plea from military commanders for another 7,500 soldiers, alliance sources said yesterday.

The gloomy prediction on the eve of an informal session of the defence ministers in Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, pre-empted appeals yesterday from Gordon Brown and Condoleezza Rice, the American Secretary of State, for other Nato countries to share more of the burden in Afghanistan.

Dr Rice, who met the Prime Minister and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, said: “I do think the alliance is facing a real test here. Our populations need to understand this is not a peacekeeping mission.”

What an obdurate fool.

What is astounding is that Rice actually still speaks as though she possesses influence anywhere in the world.

"Our populations" clearly aren't the semi-informed dullards Rice holds them out to be. In fact, most of Europe and a majority of Canadians have quite accurately pegged the NATO Afghanistan mission as an attempt by the Bush administration to extricate itself from an incredible mess of its own making.

Germany's offer of 200 more troops is accompanied with a caveat that they not be redeployed to the south.

Here's the reality: 85 percent of Germans are opposed to any redeployment of German troops to southern Afghanistan. If German political leaders made any other offer they would be committing political suicide. It is ludicrous to presume that any one of them would be willing to sacrifice their political fortunes on the altar of the Canadian-contrived Manley Report.

The sense of crisis was made worse by news from Ottawa where the Canadian parliament is split over whether Canada's 2,500 troops in Kandahar in southern Afghanistan should be recalled next year. Stephen Harper, the Prime Minister, was reported to be threatening to go to the polls if parliament voted against extending Canada's troop commitment.

And the German response to that is: Shall we send bratwurst? The Europeans don't give two shits whether Harper goes to the polls.

Angela Merkel is facing an election in Germany next year and a full 85 percent of Germans are flatly against the redeployment of German troops to the south of Afghanistan. Any move on her part, or that of her defence minister, to redefine the German contribution would result in her being labelled "pro-war" amongst German voters. That would find her out of a job by next year and she knows it.

>"Merkel is very afraid of a rerun of the 2002 election," said Jan Techau, Europe director at the German Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin. In 2002, Chancellor Gerhard Schroder, a Social Democrat, was reelected after mounting an antiwar and anti-US campaign as Washington prepared to invade Iraq.
"Merkel is scared that that kind of campaign could be pulled off again," Techau said. "This is why the Christian Democrats do not want to hand the Social Democrats the peace issue. As each party tries to prove which is the most pacifist, foreign policy is becoming paralyzed," he added.

Scared indeed. And then there is the fact that most Germans view the US Bush administration as a danger to the world. When Rice and Gates come rolling in demanding more German boots on the ground, a shift into the free-fire zone and a guarantee of combat casualties, the resistance only stiffens.

Rice, Gates, Harper, Mackay and various others making demands on other countries aren't factoring in the political reality that the war in Afghanistan, an open-ended US manufactured fiasco with no strategic goal, is not being swallowed easily by most populations contributing forces to NATO. Political leaders defy the general feeling of their voters at their own peril - hardly something an ambitious politician is likely to do.

There is another poll starting to emerge. Britain and Canada provide troops to Afghanistan from a completely volunteer armed forces. When the British deploy 16 Air Assault Brigade to Afghanistan in April, the two parachute battalions which form the bulk of that brigade will be understrength by about 100 men each. It is being made up by pulling about 60 troops from 4 Para battalion - a part of the Territorial Army - part-time reservists.

In short, the British are now having difficulty recruiting and retaining troops for the regular army after years of corrosive deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Canada has been employing army reservists (militia) from the beginning of its Afghanistan expedition to fill out the ranks of regular force battalions. What Canadians generally don't see is that, despite an intense recruiting effort, those regular force battalions are no better manned now than they were three years ago. In fact some are worse off. There are major support units which, on returning to Canada from an Afghanistan rotation, simply disintegrated as the bulk of members opted to be released from the Canadian Forces.

Today's meeting in Lithuania will result in Rice and Gates uttering more demands. The reality neither of them seem to want to face is that when they issue such demands, the universal response is a desire to do the opposite.

It's appointment season in Ottawa. (And Hillier is shilling for Harper again)

For the senior levels of the Canadian Forces, that is. Some of the top jobs in the Canadian Forces are up for grabs, including the position of Chief of Defence Staff. That position will either be handed to someone new or the incumbent might, in a rare move, be given an extension.

That might explain the sudden burst of public presence of Chief of Defence Staff, General Rick Hillier. It might also explain why his mouth is, once again, outrunning his brain.

Canada's top soldier says the governor of Kandahar province is doing "phenomenal work," and that allegations of torture against him are up to Afghans to investigate. [...] "Governor Asadullah has been doing some phenomenal work in Kandahar province. Obviously, we have worked with him because he is the governor there. And we have seen some incredible changes in the province, and if there's an issue of any kind of impropriety whatsoever, that's an issue for the Afghanistan government."

He was backed up by Defence Minister Petey MacKay with this.

"The allegation with respect to the governor is not a Canadian-transferred prisoner," Mr. MacKay said.

"Second, with respect to the governor of Kandahar, let us not forget that this is an individual appointed by the sovereign elected government of Afghanistan."

So, let's get this straight, shall we.

According to Hillier, if the Governor of Kandahar is a torturer, it's none of our business. That should draw some fire.

According to MacKay, the Governor of Kandahar is out of our reach because he is appointed by a democratically elected sovereign government over which we have no authority.

Well, to begin with, General Hillier might want to produce something more substantial. A detailed list would be a good start. Let's have the details on Asadullah Khalid's "phenomenal work".

This has been the touchstone of the whole Afghanistan mission since Canada moved its troops to Kandahar. We're making great progress. Except that nobody provides details. We're just expected to believe it. And, given the casualty rate of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, we are fully entitled to know precisely why we're giving the lives of Canadian sons and daughters in Afghanistan.

This nonsense of of Daddy sitting at the head of the table telling us everything is just fine, now just be quiet and eat your broccoli is pure bullshit. The Canadian public are not subordinate to Rick Hillier. In case he doesn't get it, he serves at the pleasure of the Canadian population. The prime minister will dump him in a minute if public opinion turns against him.

As for the activities of Asadullah Khalid being none of our business, Hillier is so off the mark he might well be on the wrong rifle-range. If the governor of the province for which we are providing military defence is engaging in torture, we have every right to exercise any method we choose to stop it. Given that it's our people doing the heavy lifting we have considerable leverage and it would be wrong not to use it. Hillier's assertion is little more than offering a blatantly incorrect defence for the position of the Harper government. Further, Hillier knows he's wrong.

MacKay, typically, tried to run away from the issue. In doing so he attempted to deflect by suggesting that the prisoner claiming to have been imprisoned and tortured by Asadullah Khalid was not a transfer from Canadian custody.

Who cares?

Since when does the origin of a prisoner determine this country's position on torture and human rights? Before Harper, MacKay and Bernier, we had one standard. Now it appears we have several, all based on who is doing the deed and how close we are to them.

Both, however, have something desperately wrong in their thinking and that is the contention that the government of Afghanistan has the power or even the moral right to behave in any way it so chooses because it is sovereign.

That is a "peacekeeping" mindset and it flies in the face of Hillier's (and Harper/MacKay) declaration that any mission in Afghanistan is a combat mission.

Flailing purple fingers do not absolve Afghanistan of the responsibility to live within the bounds of civilized human decency. Far from that however, they are anything but sovereign. They are highly dependent on the presence of others on their own soil as a means of survival.

Afghanistan was released to its own autonomy far too early, primarily because the incompetent Bush administration wanted to be done with it and move on to Iraq. Without a proper military consolidation of the ousting of the Taliban regime, without a planned and progressive construction of civil establishment, without a building of infrastructure, without the proper foundation of the rule of law and the elimination of the elements of corruption, Afghanistan's leaders could be expected to abuse the autonomy they were granted.

But it is even more basic than that. Hillier knows it; MacKay knows it; and, Harper knows it. MacKay and Harper are the worst form of political animals so their positions, while absolutely inexcusable, should come as no surprize.

Hillier, on the other hand, should know better. He didn't learn the words he spoke on any leadership or staff course in this country. He needs to take a good look at his position and decide whether he has just prostituted himself, because there is a simple fact about a nation's sovereignty he seems to be ignoring.

Any country with somebody else's army on the ground is not sovereign.

Good morning Steve. Today in Parliament you will be asked to explain...

Why you kept secret a report by Canadian officials that the Governor of Kandahar not only permitted torture but actually engaged in it himself - in his own private prisons.

The opposition will demand to know how long you have been sitting on this knowledge and why you consistently denied being in possession of any evidence of torture by Afghan authorities.

The Harper government knew, but tried to keep secret since last spring, allegations that the governor of Kandahar was personally involved in torture and abuse of detainees.

The allegations against Governor Asadullah Khalid, appointed directly by President Hamid Karzai and a key political partner to Canada's nation-building efforts in southern Afghanistan, were regarded as sufficiently credible that senior officials in Ottawa were immediately informed and Canadian diplomats secretly reported them to the International Red Cross and Afghanistan's main human-rights group.

Government documents detailing the accusations were heavily censored by the government which, claiming national security, blacked out the references to “the governor.” But multiple sources, both inside and outside the government, confirm that the words “the governor” have been censored as have whole passages referring to secret cells allegedly run by Mr. Khalid outside the official prison system.

Rumours have long linked Mr. Khalid to secret prisons. That he had close ties with U.S. intelligence agents and special forces had been known since Canadian troops arrived in southern Afghanistan in early 2006. But Ottawa didn't confront an accusation of the governor's direct involvement in the interrogation and torture of prisoners until it sent diplomats to inspect the main secret police prison in Kandahar on April 25, 2007.

Since April, 2007.

Allow me to speculate. Despite the ridiculous assertion that the conduct of the Governor of Kandahar has anything to do with national security, if this had been fully revealed when the Harper government first learned of it, the support in Canada for "the mission" would have plummeted.

Further, there is the issue of knowingly handing over prisoners of war to an authority we knew or strongly suspected of engaging in abuse or torture. It is a war crime.

The report by Canadian authorities to the International Committee of the Red Cross is here. The visit reports are here. Part1 and Part 2.

Impolitical compares the exposure of this information with your performance in Parliament yesterday, Steve. We're all wondering who Sandra Buckler is going to lie about today. Who is she going to blame?

So, Steve, we'll expect an explanation. A full explanation. Along with it you might want to reveal what strategic vision you hold for the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, whether that vision can realistically be accomplished and what kind of timeline the strategic plan has produced.

Alison has yesterday's bob & weave session. What's becoming completely clear is that when the Harperites actually have an answer to a question, one which might result in a shift in Canadian opinion, they immediately become "oh so proud" of the boots on the ground. And they shift the focus onto those people.

What you and your dilettantes don't seem to get, Steve, is that in order for Canadians to decide whether there is any chance of success in a place like Afghanistan we need as much information as we can get. And you guys are guilty of trying to withhold it.

Busted!!

Peter MacKay knew the day after Canadian Forces in Afghanistan stopped transferring prisoners to Afghan custody.

Defence Minister Peter MacKay expressed Canada's outrage and dismay directly to Kandahar's governor within hours of diplomats discovering a clear case of prisoner abuse last fall.

[...]

Mr. MacKay was in Kandahar on Nov. 6 visiting troops when the Canadian army decided to halt the handover of captured Taliban fighters to Afghan authorities.

The fact that the government kept the decision secret has infuriated opposition MPs.

"He was there, he knew something," said Liberal defence critic Denis Coderre.

"Why didn't he tell us? Is it because he was told not to say anything by a Prime Minister's Office that is controlling everything?"

The news that a prisoner had been allegedly beaten unconscious using an electrical cable and a hose in the custody of Afghanistan's notorious intelligence service angered Mr. MacKay, said a senior Conservative, who spoke on background.

Mr. MacKay immediately demanded to speak to Governor Assadullah Khalid, whose responsibility includes all provincial detention facilities.

The Defence Minister told the governor, a former Northern Alliance commander whose hatred of the Taliban is legend on the streets of Kandahar, that the abuse was "absolutely unacceptable."

Well now, that would be a good thing. It's the proper way to deal with the issue. He might have even scored a few brownie-points if he'd come back to Canada and given Parliament the details.

But he didn't do that, did he?

Instead, MacKay lied to Parliament.

That's all three of them: Harper, MacKay and Buckler.

Liars.

Shouldn't somebody ask Pete?

Impolitical has a comprehensive summary of the aftermath of the Mulroney/Schreiber hearing. So, go there and then pop on back. We'll wait.

Done? I know. It's a lot to absorb. There was so much happened around this whole affair yesterday that it's difficult to keep track of who's who. But several things occurred in rapid fire succession which might otherwise seem unrelated.

First is Justice Minister Rob Nicholson exercising power he previously said he didn't possess. While the Liberals have been pounding on him to explain, this would appear to be a poll-driven decision. This despite the fact that Harper has made a point of telling us he would not be driven to govern by polls.

On the eve of Schreiber's much-anticipated Thursday appearance before the parliamentary ethics committee, the Justice Department seemed to change its tune, according to the Liberals.

The department consented on Wednesday night to a judicial stay of surrender to give Schreiber time to appeal his case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

An agreement not to challenge the judicial stay of extradition suggested the Justice Department has "offered to use a power it claimed it doesn't have," Dion said Thursday.

"Obviously the department wouldn't even make such an offer if the minister didn't have the power to do so," he said.

Yes, well, if the Harperites were true to their word they would simply extradite Schreiber and let the German government have at him. To the peril of the Conservatives however. Public opinion is bent the other way. Canadians would like to hear what Schreiber knows and if there is indeed any link between Mulroney's dealings and the present crop of Conservatives. Booting Schreiber out would, in the eyes of those polled, present the appearance of a quasi-cover-up. So, despite Harper's words to the contrary, it would appear polls are the major influence in CPoC decision-making. Governance by knee-jerk.

One of the big surprizes though, was Norman Spector, former Mulroney chief of staff. From the sidelines of yesterday's circus Spector made a point of tossing Mulroney directly under a moving bus, tying the former prime minister into an even shadier deal involving Karlheinz Schreiber and linking them with then Nova Scotia MP Elmer MacKay. (Pete's dad).

I wouldn't begin to speculate as to Spector's motivation, however much of what he offered in yesterday's interview supports Schreiber's sparse testimony before the committee.

In 1990, Norman Spector says, the prime minister handed him a tiny white paper and told him to move ahead with a plan to build military vehicles in Nova Scotia.

The directive flew in the face of opposition from bureaucrats in the Department of National Defence, from military brass and from the most senior bureaucrat in the country, Spector told The Canadian Press in an interview.

They each had their own concerns about a proposal from German arms maker Thyssen Industries to open a plant in exchange for a federal grant and a contract to build light-armoured vehicles.

"There was tremendous opposition in the system," Spector said.

He says arms lobbyist Karlheinz Schreiber was embroiled in a bitter dispute with senior military officers, who were pleased with similar vehicles already being built by GM in southern Ontario.

Perhaps Spector isn't throwing Mulroney under the bus so much as he's tossing him into the wheels of a Thyssen-built LAV. Back in the day there was more than a little talk about the Thyssen attempt to build a plant in Nova Scotia and the fact that DND was, shall we say, violently opposed to the entire plan. Anywhere one went in the wardrooms and messes of the Canadian Forces there was a conversation about how the whole deal had the stench of someone in the Mulroney government getting rich.

There was also the question of use. Who would they be built for? The Canadian army was already in a deal with GM and the Thyssen LAV was hardly a necessary addition to the Canadian inventory. In fact, there was a strong rumour moving through the bazaars that any Thyssen Henschel LAVs would be delivered as a "Use once, mothball, sell" vehicle, the eventual end user being somewhere "over there". (Across the Atlantic, south of the Equator).

As I said, I don't know Spector's motivation for granting an interview like this on the same day as Schreiber's testimony, but it may have been an attempt to put all the dirt on Mulroney while dry-cleaning Steve Harper.

That won't work in any case because there is some linkage that needs to be brought into the light.

In the whorehouse that is the Conservative Cabinet it would do well to approach the bartender and the piano player. While they claim never to know what's going on upstairs, they have much more knowledge of this than they are willing to let on.

One was very close to the coal-face of the Thyssen attempt and while he may well have been bitterly opposed to the manipulations of Schreiber, he would have information pertinent to the events. I'll leave it to you to work out who that was because, for the time being, we're going to ignore him. The other one, however, needs to be put under a spotlight.

Given the machinations made public by Spector yesterday, Defence Minister Peter MacKay should be wondering when he is going to be hauled before a committee to testify.

The timeline offered by Spector (and Schreiber) suggests that things got hot around the Thyssen deal around 1990 and that it fizzled around 1991. Elmer MacKay had been very much involved and had organized meetings with Karlheinz Schreiber and Spector. Spector claims that his successor, Hugh Segal, still had an active file on the Thyssen Henschel proposal as late as 1992 or 1993, an attempt still being facilitated by Karlheinz Schreiber.

Let's see.... what was young Petey MacKay doing at that time?

You don't say! He was working for Thyssen Henschel company in Kassell, Germany. Right about the time Karlheinz Schreiber is working furiously for the same company trying to get an armoured vehicle plant built in Cape Breton, a deal that Mulroney has removed from the hands of the bureaucracy and handed over to his political staff. Schreiber, also at about that time is alleged to have payed-off Walther Leisler Kiep, the treasurer of the German Christian Democratic Party with 1 million Deutch Marks after a Thyssen deal to sell tanks to Saudi Arabia - an arms sale that was approved by then Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

So, maybe somebody should walk into the whorehouse and grab Petey. Ask him how it is that a brand new lawyer from Dalhousie Law School steps into an overseas job with the same firm trying to wangle a deal from a government in which his father (Elmer MacKay) is a cabinet minister, who, by the way, gave up his safe parliamentary seat temporarily in 1983 to make sure Brian Mulroney could enter parliament.

Harper wanted to capitalize on the Progressive Conservative legacy. There it is, and it's looking a little dirty.

Shorter Peter MacKay: SHUT UP! Just SHUT UP!

So then, Petey MacKay, addressing a friendly audience, (well, perhaps), turns to page 38 of the Donald Rumsfeld playbook and pulls out the If you don't support the troops (which actually means support my questionable mission) you are aiding and abetting the enemy. Treason!

Waning support for the mission in Afghanistan is a weapon in the hands of the Taliban, said Defence Minister Peter MacKay during a stop in Edmonton yesterday.

"The Taliban are very intelligent - they read newspapers, they go on the Internet.

"When they see Canadian resolve weaken, that's when they up their effort," MacKay said.

That's right. You've heard this all before from the now disgraced Donald Rumsfeld. And then there was this.

The younger generation of Canadians aren't used to seeing flag-draped coffins, he said, and perhaps don't understand sacrifice the way older Canadians do.

Ohhh! I see! It's simply a matter of getting used to it.

Actually Petey, younger Canadians understand sacrifice just as well as older Canadians, and apparently, judging by the statistics, there are a lot of older ones who don't share your Bushian view of war.

So, what MacKay wants you to do is just... shut up! To MacKay, "support the troops" is "support the mission". Anything else is too difficult for him.

I was going to explain it, but this came from comments over at Buckdog and deals with it perfectly.

Having been one in the past, I do support the troops. I don't always support what the government wants them to do, however. A lot of people can't tell the difference between the two, and that's what McKay and Harper are counting on.

Exactly.

And if you want to compare supporting the troops, lets take a little walk back to a nasty rumour that's been floating around the military and naval bazaars in places like Victoria, Edmonton, Ottawa and Halifax, just to name a few.

The federal government is about to stop its practice of giving extra money to Canadian soldiers posted to some of the country's most expensive cities.

Since June 2000, almost half of Canada's soldiers have been receiving a bump in their monthly salary -- the posting's living differential -- for living and working in cities with a high cost of living.

You can excuse the term "soldiers" since sailors and air force personnel are also involved. But, to make a point, that allowance isn't new. It's been around for decades in various forms, Post Differential Allowance being the last mutation. And now, there is more than a strong understanding among "the troops" that PDA or Accommodation Assistance Allowance or whatever you want to call it, is going to be ripped away by a Conservative government which out of the other side its mouth talks about supporting troops and their families.

Now that's support, isn't it? I wonder, MacKay, does the Taliban check out the effects of the Conservative government's morale busting efforts or do they just read me when I bitch that you haven't properly defined what victory is in Afghanistan?

You know what the "older" Canadians who used to wear the uniform (and thus, understand "sacrifice") are telling the "younger" Canadians who now wear the uniform (and therefore don't understand "sacrifice")?

Conservatives will always hack away at the pay and benefits of the armed forces. Diefenbaker did it, Mulroney did it and now you can count on Harper doing it. It's in their blood.*

So, let's see what colour MacKay wears on Fridays after he cuts the pay of some service personnel by up to $450 per month.

* From a conversation across a table full of beer near one of Canada's naval bases. The retired were speaking to the serving. The serving were not happy.