If not now, when?

Harper, speaking in Halifax on the occasion of putting billions more dollars into Navy war machines, said "today is not the day" to have a debate on the future of the Afghanistan debacle. I believe he said something similar after the shootings in Dawson College in Montreal last fall when people were calling for stricter gun controls.

Not now, my children. Later. When you've forgotten what it was all about.

But if this kind of things keep happening, there won't be very many clear days in between to debate the mission (whatever it is). He also said that "Parliament has approved that to February 2009". Yeah. I remember that debate. Rushed through with very little discussion, with the vote taking place during an NHL Stanley Cup hockey game. The english network CBC did not even carry the debate. Hockey, rather than extension of war, was much more important. I had to go to the French-language Radio-Canada to see the vote and results.

And before the last goal was scored, the war was approved.

Another big porky (pork pie - lie - cockney rhyming slang) is that Harper "...think[s] this government’s been very clear about the duration of this mission." They have never been clear about it. Before we knew it, we were backing the U.S. army and its imperial ambitions. All in the plan, of course. After all, Harper hearts Bush and his Australian buddy Howard, and he just handed the Canadian soldiers and money to them on a plate. Not his son or brother, not his money, so why should he care?

From today's Harper Index :

"I don't know all the facts on Iraq, but I think we should work closely with the Americans," [Harper] told Report Newsmagazine, March 25th 2002. He voted against a motion urging the Canadian government not to participate in the US military intervention in Iraq on March 20, 2003...

On April 4, 2003, he told a Friends of America Rally, "Thank you for saying to our friends in the United States of America, you are our ally, our neighbour and our best friend in the whole wide world...

Only best friend? Not the bestest friend? (Quick - someone get me a bucket. I'm feeling nauseous.)

But we all know what Iraq was about. An Australian government minister spilled the beans, so to speak, although Howard was quick to leap in and say it wasn't the original reason they went there.

Uh-huh. I believe you.