Warren — Musings —

Sometimes political war rooms get way, way too cute. Sometimes, even, they do something that ends up hurting them a lot more than it hurts their opponent. Sometimes, they’re idiots.

Case in point: Justin Trudeau’s 2011 visit to one of the mosques in his riding. The Tory war room saw it, seized on it, attacked it.

Big mistake.

You can almost picture it happening. The neatly-barbered youngsters who comprise the Tory election brain trust are deep within the bowels of some non-descript Ottawa government building, peering at their glowing computer screens. Looking for something, anything, with which to hurt the one adversary they fear the most – Justin Trudeau.

One of the kids is suddenly excited. He has found a clip in which Trudeau says that he has visited every mosque in his Montreal Papineau riding, including the Al-Sunnah Al-Nabawiah mosque. Trudeau was there in March 2011.

The Conservative kids in their dark suits are all ecstatic. After Trudeau visited the mosque – note that word, AFTER – a U.S. intelligence report came out, and said that some men had passed through the mosque a decade earlier. The mosque was a place “known al-Qaeda members were recruited, facilitated or trained,” said the report.

The Tory war room swung into action. They leaked their find to the media, including Sun News. They then instructed Steven Blaney, who is apparently the minister of something called “Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness,” to issue a public statement excoriating Trudeau.

“It is completely unacceptable that Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau would associate with a group that allegedly radicalizes Canadians to join al-Qaeda and engage in acts of unspeakable violent extremism,” said Blaney, who nobody has ever heard of before, and likely never will again.

“Now he is pandering for votes amongst religious extremists in our own communities. It is clear that Justin Trudeau cannot be trusted to keep Canadians safe.”

Get all that? Radicals! Extremists! Unsafe! “Unspeakable violent extremism,” even!

Except…there’s a problem, Conservative war roomers. Three of them, in fact. We’ll lay them out in point form, and use small words, so you’ll perhaps understand.

1. In March 2011, as now, Justin Trudeau was a garden-variety MP. He was not the Minister of “Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness,” or the “Prime Minister,” either.

2. As such, he did not have, and does not have, the power to pick up the phone and call CSIS or the RCMP, and demand that they turn over their Top Secret file on the Al-Sunnah Al-Nabawiah mosque. If they have such a file, they sure as Hell wouldn’t be sharing it with Justin Trudeau, Private Citizen.

3. If, however, such a file existed at CSIS or the RCMP, or anywhere else, only two MPs would have access to it. Their names are “Stephen Harper” and “Steven Blaney.”

See the problem you have created for yourselves and your bosses, Con war roomers? Are you getting the point? If “unspeakable violent extremism” is associated with that mosque, why have Messrs. Harper and Blaney DONE NOTHING ABOUT IT?

One is the Prime Minister of all that is Canada, the other is ostensibly the Minister of “Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness,” whatever that is. They knew what was happening at that mosque, they were in discussion with American intelligence folks about it, and THEY DID NOTHING ABOUT IT.

And, as I told my flummoxed Sun News colleague Brian Lilley on-air, THEY COULD HAVE DONE PLENTY – including taking away its charitable status. (God knows they are doing that with plenty of environmental and church charities the Conservative war room distrusts.)

Anyway, apologies for the all-caps, there, Conservative war room kiddies.

I think you’re all IDIOTS, this week, and I figured that was the only way to penetrate your TINY SKULLS.