Inside Politics

UPDATED: Liberal Ads: The Conservative Party PMO fires back!

by Kady O'Malley Posted: January 10, 2010 1:24 PM Last Updated: January 10, 2010 7:18 PM
Speaking of disingenuousness, here's the Conservative response to the new Liberal campaign, straight from the tireless counterspinsters at Alerte-Info-Alert: 

From: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca> 
To: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca> 
Sent: Sun Jan 10 13:19:26 2010
Subject: Ignatieff Liberals Renew Attack on Canadian Soldiers / Les libéraux d'Ignatieff renouvellent leurs attaques envers les militaires canadiens 

Ignatieff Liberals Renew Attack on Canadian Soldiers

 

Michael Ignatieff, unseen in Canada until Thursday night, when he arrived on a flight from Europe after an extended vacation, has launched a small-budget ad campaign intended to distract attention from his lengthy absence.

The ad campaign renews the Ignatieff Liberals' claim about a "coverup" of "torture" of Taliban prisoners. Mr. Ignatieff persists in this attack even though the allegation that torture was covered up represents a direct attack on the men and women of Canada's Armed Forces.

The Ignatieff Liberals like to pretend that their wild allegation bypasses the soldiers who captured and handed over Taliban prisoners -- but that's just not logical.

The rest of Mr. Ignatieff's ad campaign is more of the same -- idle chatter that is out of touch with the real priorities of Canadians -- including Canadians' number one priority, the economy.

Our Government is hard at work and remains hard at work on the things that matter to Canadians, in particular the economy. This includes completing implementation of our Economic Action Plan, returning to balanced budgets once the economy has recovered, and building a strong economy for the future.

 

Seriously, Langevin Sunday skeleton crew, at these point, I suspect that even you guys would probably grudgingly admit that it may be time to retire this particular talking point lest you be accused of using it like a Swiss Army knife against any and all criticism of the government, no matter how dubious the logic. That is, unless you'd like to go into a little more detail on why, in your view, it's "just not logical" to believe the Liberals' contention that their "allegation bypasses the soldiers who captured and handed over Taliban prisoners," since that seems to be missing from this missive. 

The shot about it being a "small-budget ad campaign" was cute, however. See, Liberals? I told you so. 

UPDATE: PMO obligingly sent along this quote from Ignatieff's Friday morning press conference to back up the contention that his party is "attacking Canadian soldiers." I'm not sure it's quite as damning as he seems to think --- which would seem to be bolstered by the fact that he said it in public, at a press conference carried live by both news networks, but seemingly failed to trigger offence until this afternoon, but I leave it up to readers to make up their own minds: 

"This is a document about the conduct of our troops in the field and documents about the conduct, above all, of a government who for 18 months heard well-founded allegations of torture and appears to have done nothing about it."
 

Tags: alerte-info-alert watch, blackberry jungle