Lightguns said:
I am sorry, but having worked as an EA to a General, COS are very good at keeping their General out of the loop purposely to protect him from the nasty flying brown stuff. Indeed, it is one of the jobs of COS to fall on his sword for a commander over the admin storms. IF, the COS has not been proactive in steering around those storms that is. Wright did good as a COS, maybe not the right thing but the loyal thing.
Duffy and Wallin have long been in the Prima Dona class of Canadians, they are having a hard time grasping that they did anything wrong. That is really whats going on here. If caught, I would have immediately admitted, apologized and ask mercy. Had that been done this would have been over. Both are acting as spoiled children and should be hung to dry.
I see nothing on this issue that would cause me to not vote Conservative again (other issues are another story). Heck we are up to 3 Liberal senators in hot water now and they are getting an incredibly easy ride.
:goodpost:
I was,
de facto COS to a Flag Officer back in the late 1980s. (My title was Director of
This and
That Policy, but my duties were those of a Chief of Staff). I screened and sorted into an order of priority almost everything that came in (there were a couple of exceptions - "eyes only" stuff from on high - but they were very, very rare). The screening process allowed me to remove things from the "chain:" perhaps to send them back to divisions for more work because I was sure the admiral would be unhappy with what was presented, perhaps to deflect them to another branch because I didn't think they were our responsibility, sometimes to put them into
limbo for at least a while because I didn't want the boss to get involved in something of dubious judgement.
When I moved things out of the way because they didn't pas my "smell test" I was,
de facto, taking
personal responsibility for them and "covering up," too.
I will tell you that,
on principle, my boss wanted to see the embarrassing things so that he could put them right but he also understood that,
in practice, he accepted that I was doing the necessary thing (not the
right thing, just the necessary thing) to free him up to focus on his real work. We got through a couple of years of that. I can well recall that one problem I "punted" came back to haunt (and end the career of) the individual who started it but my boss was untouched and I was barely singed in the resulting firestorm. I remember telling the COS to an even more senior officer that I had decided to kick the problem back towards the originator rather than report it up the chain because we were too busy and it didn't seem like our business. He smiled slightly as he admonished me for being "expedient."
In the case of Stephen Harper, Nigel Wright and Mike Duffy, I repeat: Harper, Wright and Duffy are all telling
some of the truth. Harper and Wright are not telling and will not tell any lies, but Prime Minister Harper, at least, will skate around some embarrassing bits.
op:
