The lie of the land

Memo to Defence Minister Peter MacKay RE: Afghan torture

Sirrah:
You're still a wanker. But it appears that you're evolving into a more morally reprehensible one.

It pains nobody more than us to admit that, when you assert that you know nothing, you are not actually telling the truth. Because we'd really like to believe it. And god knows, you and your colleagues in the current caucus pretty much demonstrate, often and with vigour, that you truly do know nothing most of the time.

Unfortunately, in the matter of what you, personally, knew about the army handing Afghan detainees over for torture, as with many other assertions of moral superiority that your government has made in the past year or two, the fat is in the fire. The cat is out of the bag. The jig is up.

For future reference, ya might want to take careful notes on what I'm about to say. This definitely will be on the exam. Soon, I hope:

For politicians such as yourself - that is, a guy who lied his face off to get himself elected head of the former Conservative party, so he could hand it over to his current NeoCon lord and master to co-opt - plausible denial only really ever works, and usually only a teensy bit even then, when it's, ummm, plausible.

Plausibility vanishes whenever you open your mouth. Is that clear enough? Even for you?

Because at the moment, you're only twistin' in the wind, feeding extra oxygen to the kinds of flames that, sooner or later, will fry even those banned Quebec asbestos underpants that you guys persist in trying to flog to the Third World...