Welcome to Macleans Magazine... Land of Irresponsible Lefty Fervour?

Every so often, a publication will produce an article that is far more interesting for its online comments than for the article itself.

A recent blogpost on the Macleans Magazine website by Aaron Wherry is an interesting case of this.

In the blogpost, Wherry notes that Defense Minister Peter MacKay has declared that the government is examining all the options in terms of a possible extension of Canada's mission in Afghanistan beyond 2011. Wherry asks a simple question "what options?"

Your not-so-humble scribe decided it would be best to explain the best rationale for extending Canada's presence in Afghanistan beyond 2011 -- especially if Canadian aid workers will remain in Afghanistan beyond that date. A Canadian military presence would be necessary to protect Canadian aid workers.

The response, in terms of comment voting, is rather puzzling:

As of the time of this writing, the idea that Canada would protect its own aid workers in Afghanistan had been voted down a minimum of three times.

By the time the denizens of the denizens of the Macleans comment forums are finished with it, one only knows where it will wind up.

Which brings one to a startling conclusion: either the far-left denizens of the Macleans comment forums are voting down comments from individuals they judge to be too conservative, or they actually oppose the idea of Canadian troops being used to protect Canadian aid workers in a combat zone.

Neither choice seems particularly flattering. Whether the response of Macleans commenters to this notion is born of knee-jerk anti-conservatism or irresponsible foreign policy views is nearly anyone's guess.

Afghan Detainee Torture: The Orphan Timeline

Writing in a blog post at Macleans.ca, Aaron Wherry does his bit to respond to the recent revelation that, while negotiating a prisoner transfer agreement with the government of Afghanistan, the Liberal Party knew about the torture that was prevalent in Afghan prisons.

Wherry seems to think that he has the answer to what seems to him to be a horrible dilemma: simply ignore the revelation at hand, and shift attention back to 2007.

After an ever-so-brief mention of the La Presse revelation, Wherry directs his attention to an April 25, 2007 Globe and Mail article in which it was stated that the government had received warnings about "extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial" of Afghan prisoners.

In skating over the La Presse story, Wherry demonstrates precisely where he thinks the readers' attention should be: after 2006, so long as they only pay attention to developments before April 28, 2007.

Under the stewardship of reporters like Wherry, the pre-2006 portion of the torture chronicles becomes an orphan timeline: disowned by those who are presenting this issue in the public eye. Along with that portion of the timeline, the truth is orphaned as well.

This helps Liberal MPs like John McCallum ignore their party's uncomfortable responsibility for torture and pretend that the Conservative Party didn't approach the issue properly: by investigating and fixing the problem.

But McCallum isn't the only Liberal MP enjoying this orphaning of the truth.

Speaking in a column written for Vancouver's Georgia Straight, Liberal MP Dr Hedy Fry -- who has a history of lying in the House of Commons -- has the temerity to invoke the memory of George W Bush to try to score some cheap points.

"What is it that George Bush used to say?" she asked. "'You can fool some of the people all the time, and those are the ones you want to concentrate on.' It seems to me that Stephen Harper is taking that advice. Or at least one has to wonder."

It seems that this is exactly the the strategy being used by Fry -- whose previous highlight was raising comical allegations of a Conservative Party/HBC conspiracy -- and Wherry. In Dr Fry's case, the hypocrisy of it remains as astounding as it was in McCallum's -- she served in the government that is directly responsible for the torture as Secretary of State for Women and Multiculturalism.

Wherry, Fry and McCallum seem to think they're working it to perfection.

But when truly pressed on the Liberal Party's direct complicity in the torture of detainees handed over by Canadian soldiers, they seem to recognize the key defect in their strategy -- that it will stop working when Canadians realize that the scandal is their fault in the first place.

And while Aaron Wherry, Hedy Fry and John McCallum seem to think they can distract Canadians from that fact by severing the entire pre-2006 period from the torture timeline, they'll find out in time that they can't.