On setups

Pogge deals with one of the bizarre parts of the Cons' spin on the Afghan torture cover-up committee. But there's another piece of Bob Dechert's talking points that looks even more damaging:

"I haven't heard anything about that at all, I'm surprised, to be frank," Mr. Dechert told The Hill Times. "I think they came to the conclusion that Canadians weren't interested, and they dropped it and just moved on, but I don't know anything specific about the review. There's obviously no smoking gun or they would have said something about it by now."

Of course, it's precisely because the Cons' inevitable talking point was so easily foreseeable that some of us have warned against any structure which provided for limited opposition access to information while prohibiting any public disclosure. But apparently the Libs and Bloc are just realizing the obvious.

And so here they are now: sworn to secrecy as to the contents of the documents being reviewed, having no say as to which (if any) will ever be disclosed - and facing the talking point that the sworn silence that they so foolishly agreed to serves as proof that the Cons were right all along. And we can still rest assured that if there are indeed smoking guns in the documents, the Cons will claim that the Libs and Bloc now share equally in the responsibility for their remaining hidden.

All of which means that instead of enforcing the ruling requiring the Cons to produce the demanded documentation without costly strings attached, the Libs and Bloc have ultimately ensured that the public pays millions of dollars to grant the Cons political cover. And nobody can say they weren't warned.