This really ticked me off.

We are all entitled to our own opinion, but we are not entitled to our own facts. I’m not sure who said those words first, but Geoff Matthews would do well to print out, frame, and keep them in sight whenever he sits down to write a column for the Ottawa Sun.

In his April 26 column, Matthews was so obsessed with attacking the “smug” Liberal and NDP Leaders that he made facts up to suit his opinion. He writes:

“Layton, Dion and Ignatieff have been frothing for the cameras over the alleged mistreatment of a handful of Taliban prisoners who they say have been roughed up by Afghan jailers.

Who told our politicians the prisoners had suffered abuse? Why, the Taliban members themselves, once they had been turned loose. Were there any independent witnesses to corroborate their tales? Er, no.

Didn't matter to Layton et al, however. After all, why shouldn't they believe a few members of an armed resistance group whose members think nothing of blowing up innocent civilians to make their point? “

Sadly for Mr. Matthews, the facts not only don’t support his statement, they fly right in the face of it.

The truth is the reports of mistreatment of prisoners are not coming from “the Taliban members themselves”. It was the U.S. State Department that said Afghani security authorities “committed extrajudicial killings and torture”. It’s a Canadian UN Human Rights Commissioner who is sounding the alarm about the Afghani National Security Directorate. Finally, and devastatingly for Geoff Matthews, it is our Canadian Foreign Affairs Department who said, in a report our New Government of Canada has tried desperately to first hide, then whitewash:

“Executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial are all too common.”

Now where on Earth could I have read such things? Why in the Ottawa Sun! Right next to Mr. Matthews’ column, in fact. Greg Weston, on the same page, went to the trouble of explaining exactly what the Afghani prisoner abuse story is, and more importantly, what the facts are. It’s a shame Geoff Matthews couldn’t go to the trouble of reading Weston’s column before writing his own. It’s double the shame when you consider that at the end of Matthews’ column, we learn that he is the comment editor! I can only imagine the humiliation of being exposed as a factually challenged hack by another writer on the same page. When you’re supposed to be the editor of that page, well that’s just gotta hurt.

I would suggest that Geoff Matthews should work on basing his opinion on the facts, rather than basing the ‘facts’ on his opinion. God knows there’s enough real self-serving behaviour and posturing in Parliament that he shouldn’t have to make things up. Barring that, Matthews should perhaps read the material he’s supposed to edit before it hits the press. He could learn a thing or two from that Weston guy. God knows I have.