No doubt all those brave Canadian men and women facing real bombs and real bullets in Afghanistan take great comfort in knowing that the biggest concern expressed by the Liberal- NDP-Bloc Quebecois parliamentary herd has nothing to do with gratitude over their real sacrifices or prayers for their safe return.

Heck no. All the opposition parties can worry about is scoring cheap political points against the Tory government by continuing to portray themselves as the champions of terrorist thugs who know nothing of the Geneva Convention or any other rules of war of common humanity. And could care less.

The Taliban must be laughing every time they see yet another headline - and make no mistake, they follow the western media - about how Michael Ignatieff, Jack Layton and/or Gilles Duceppe are crying the blues over the chance - and it’s just a chance - that some of their captured compatriots may have been slapped around a bit.

Must be really great for the morale of our brave men and women to know that, on the basis of one recorded incident - when our troops handed a prisoner over to the Afghans, only to take him back when they discovered he was being kicked around - that the Opposition parties and their legions of fellow travelers in the media only have eyes for how they can twist the issue to their own advantage.

The opposition - and the media - keep insisting that this so-called “scandal” involves “torture” of the prisoners that our troops have handed over, despite the fact that there is no evidence - to support such spurious charges. There is, as we said above, this one incident. And while the prisoner - who wouldn’t hesitate for a second to slash your throat, or the throats of your children - was beaten a bit, it’s hardly a case of institutionalized torture. And, to the extent our troops were involved, they should be congratulated for acting humanely, not castigated and accused of war crimes.

Never mind that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, hoping in vain to placate the Taliban apologists in our midst, has appointed highly respected retired Supreme Court justice Frank Iacobucci to vet the files and determine what should - or shouldn’t - be released to the general public.

The opposition parties - apparently unaware that there is an actual war in progress - want the Tories to release all the files, unedited, an action which undoubtedly would offer great comfort to the enemy and seriously undermine our efforts in Afghanistan.

Don’t they know - or, worse, don’t they care? - that such files contain not only in-house on-the-ground strategic information, but also names of informants, the sort of thing the Taliban would love to get their hands on?

Does in not bother them at all that when they accuse Canada of being complicit in war crimes - which is exactly what they are saying - that they are blaming our troops on the ground for such things?

Oh yes, I forgot, the three opposition amigos continue to claim that they’re not accusing our troops of anything. No sir. They’re accusing the Tory government.

Really? The problem with this line of argument is that Stephen Harper or Defense Minister Peter MacKay or Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon aren’t over there on the ground dealing with prisoners or prisoner transfers.

It’s our troops, stupid. Not the politicians.

The obvious truth is that the opposition politicians, in their unholy zeal to score political points, don’t give a damn about that.

That’s why they passed a Dec. 10 Commons resolution demanding that the government release all the files, unedited.

Harper, quite properly, has refused, although he has asked Iacobucci to look at the files.

The Toronto Star - which has never seen a Tory government anywhere that it didn’t despise - editorialized this week that the Tory contempt of the parliamentary resolution “leaves Canadians no closer to understanding why Harper is so adamant in refusing to shed light on why Ottawa turned a deaf ear to reports of abuse of Aghan prisoners ... Harper should do now what he ought to have done late last year and accept Parliament’s demand for the uncensored files, subject to obvious safeguards on which reasonable people could agree.” Which “reasonable people” is the Star talking about? Surely not the opposition, whose resolution unequivocally demands the public release of all files, an unprecedented - and suicidal - action in the midst of a war.

They don’t want reasonable access. They want Tory blood. And if that leads to more Canadian blood being shed on the battlefields, gee, ain’t that a shame?

My own belief is that the Canadian public recognizes this for what it is. Which is why, despite the best efforts of the opposition and their media apologists, the Tories have lately pulled slightly further ahead of the Liberals, et al, in the polls. Canadians, whatever their partisan interests, recognizes tacky when they see it.