One question answered

While the Cons' show of false outrage prevented any meaningful questions from being answered in last night's take-note debate, the afternoon's Question Period revealed the answer to at least one of Gordon O'Connor's questions from last year:

While Harper has previously vowed that Canada is in for the long haul, yesterday's comments mark a more definitive time frame from the new Conservative government.

"Our troops are already deployed in Afghanistan, have been deployed for some time and as we know, will be there in some form in the next few years," Harper told the Commons during the afternoon question period.

Canada now has 2,200 troops in Kandahar, a commitment that ends in February. Harper said a decision on the next deployment would be made in the "very near" future but left little doubt that more troops would be deployed.

In other words, there is no exit strategy to speak of. Instead, Harper's plan is for a continuation strategy: the Cons will feel free to make additional commitments of troops without further consultation, regardless of whether any answer exists for the rest of the questions surrounding the mission. And that can't be a positive answer for those troops who can now foresee being put in harm's way for the "long term" even as two governments have now refused to so much as define the scope of their mission.