Accordingly, they used their majority to shutter the committee's inquiry into the the Minister of Defence's recent cognitive lapses: why he did not tell anyone that Canadian forces had taken prisoners in Afghanistan and handed them over to the United States, and why he gave false information to the House of Commons as to when he himself had been told.

The Liberal majority plainly accepted Mr. Eggleton's "defence" of his actions, given in two hours of testimony before the committee: I'm an idiot. I didn't fully understand what I had been told, or when I had been told it. I didn't mean to mislead Parliament. I just made a mistake. As Carolyn Parrish, MP, put it: "Mr. Eggleton goofed. His intent was not malicious, nor was it intentional." You see? Even his intent was not intentional. Good old addle-headed Art. Not much for brains, but his heart's in the right place.

Not so fast. As reassuring as it is to be told that the Minister of Defence, in time of war, is incapable of following the simplest briefings, it won't wash. For Mr. Eggleton did not merely mislead Parliament, but also, it appears, the committee. He was not just mistaken about when he first knew about the prisoner transfer; his explanation of how he came to be mistaken is implausible in itself. He has not just contradicted himself, but his top military brass.

To recap: On Jan. 29, Mr. Eggleton told the Commons that he had first been briefed on the transfer the previous Friday, Jan. 25, after seeing a newspaper photo of Canadian special forces with three prisoners in tow. At the time, this was the subject of major national and international controversy, not least within his own party. Yet he spent the next three days at a meeting of the Liberal caucus, without telling anyone -- not the caucus, not the Cabinet, not even the Prime Minister. During a special Commons debate on the night of the 28th, Mr. Eggleton went so far as to declare that Canada would hand over any prisoners we took, somehow neglecting to mention that we already had. This was misleading enough, even without his later misstatements.

Mr. Eggleton's explanation for this puzzling silence is one of gradually dawning awareness of the significance of what he had been told, owing to some uncertainty about the facts, only finally resolved by repeated inquiries with his advisors. He had known that Canadians were involved in a general way, he said on the 29th, but "I didn't know that we were specifically involved in the arrest and transfer." He had spent the intervening four days trying to get more information, before briefing Cabinet.

When, a day later, the Minister revealed that in fact he had been told on the 21st, while on an official visit to Mexico, the story remained the same. "I waited until my return," he told Parliament, "so I could further explore the full extent of the mission that was involved." In that first briefing, he later told the committee: "I did not have all the understanding of the details of the mission. I knew that they had been involved in the mission. I knew that prisoners had been taken. The details I got more clearly when I returned to Canada." How? "I began a series of meetings and conversations by telephone that involved everybody from the chief of the defence staff to the deputy chief of the defence staff [to] the deputy minister." So he hadn't fully understood the first briefing. And the second briefing, the one with the photograph, still did not give him sufficient clarity of understanding to go to Cabinet.

Only after a further round of briefings did he feel he had all of the facts. And only after a final briefing, after his statement in the House on the 29th, did he recall that first session, or twig that it concerned the same incident as the second. That's when he'd realized his mistake. Silly old bear.

The problem is that on each of these points, the people on the other end of the briefings have directly contradicted the Minister. That Vice-Admiral Greg Maddison, the deputy chief of defence staff, believed the Minister was fully apprised of the relevant facts, including the transfer of prisoners, on both the 21st and 25th, might be put down to a difference of opinion: after all, how was he to know what was going on inside the Minister's head? But it is harder to explain why all three officials -- chief, deputy chief and deputy minister -- deny having talked to the Minister between the 25th and the 29th.

It is one thing to forget briefings that have occurred, but to remember briefings that never happened is quite remarkable.

What to make of these contradictions, or how the Minister and his officials are now supposed to carry on working together, ought surely to be the subject of further inquiry.

Yet the committee's Liberal members seem untroubled by what they have heard. As for me, all I can say is that I do not think the Minister is an idiot.