"When you make those kinds of decisions as a prime minister, you have to be able to take responsibility for them and stick with them," Harper said in Bucharest.
"The fact that Mr. Martin is unable to do that, in this and so many other cases, illustrates why he is no longer prime minister of our country."
No, Mr. Harper, that isn't the point at all. You know it, and I know it - so why don't you address the issue instead of trying to blame all of your incompetence on your predecessor.
Here's what Martin really said:
In an interview with the Toronto Star, Martin said he doesn't back away "one iota" from his decision to send soldiers to Kandahar. But Martin said there should be more focus on reconstruction efforts.
"You can't win the military war if you can't win the hearts and minds of the people," Martin said.
He said that he approved what military planners refer to as the "3-D" approach to the mission: diplomacy, defence and development.
"We are doing the defence," Martin said. "In fact, we are doing the defence quite aggressively — and you can't do it passively.
"But are we doing the amount of reconstruction, the amount of aid that I believe was part of the original mission? The answer unequivocally is that we're not. And I believe that we should."
Of course, in the usual fashion, Harper is trying to blame Martin for Harper's own bad decisions, while he takes credit for a $13 billion government surplus that was engineered by the Liberal governments. (Remember, when the Liberals came into power in 1992/93, the Federal Government was running substantial deficits every year - it was under Chretien that those deficits were brought under control)
At the rate the CPoC is going, next year or the year after, we will start seeing deficit budgets again - mostly because like George Bush, Harper wants to be able to puff up his chest on the world stage and brag about how muscular he is. While the Canadian taxpayer foots the bill for his hubris.
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