MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – October 9, 2012

• Afghanistan (1)  Well done, Richard and the National Post, for sharing the story when other media outlets didn’t even want to send anyone to see – wonder how many reporters’ll want on the last ROTO?  “Leaving Afghanistan turned out to be almost as hard as getting in. I arrived three hours early for my flight out of Kabul back to Dubai, only to find that it had flown out two hours earlier than that. Sheesh. So I got an extra night at Kabul International – thanks to Major ‘Art’ Brown of the Canadian Air Force for taking me in on zero notice. I made another flight the next morning at 4.30 a.m. and ended up back in Kandahar, I was so sure I would never be here again. Last view out the window as I headed for Dubai was of the original 1960’s Kandahar Airport terminal building now surrounded by 4 km of ISAF base in all directions. Another hop got me to Dubai where I killed ten hours in the terminal. At some point during the transfer of luggage, Dubai customs held one of my bags because of explosives residue (I blame Special Forces Operator MCpl White for letting me wrap a cake of C4 explosive in detonating cord, while I was ‘helping’ with a late night ordnance disposal, and poor hand washing habits. One more flight to Zurich, one more flight to Newark in the U.S., one more flight into Toronto, and one taxi ride home – and I was standing at my front door with 50% of my luggage. Only 43 hours after I set out.  Inside I could hear my kids running around and laughing. It felt very good to be home ….”
  
• Afghanistan (2)  More on Canada’s last ROTO getting ready to go  “Canadian soldiers were among the first to set combat boots on the ground in Afghanistan in October of 2001.  Around 40 Canadian commandos from the highly secretive JTF-2 anti-terrorism unit were deployed after Sept. 11, 2001, with British, U.S. and Australian special forces troops around Kandahar.  By January 2002, the Canadian contingent was built around the Edmonton-based 3 Battalion of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (3PPCLI), but included troops from almost every unit at the Edmonton Garrison.  Now, over 10 years and 158 casualties later, troops from the Land Force Western Area and Joint Task Force West (LFWA-JTFW) are preparing to land in the desert of Afghanistan one final time ….”       
  
• Afghanistan (3)  “A special program to offer a new life in Canada to people who acted as interpreters for Canadian soldiers and diplomats in Afghanistan — sometimes at the risk of their lives — has brought in nearly double the numbers expected.  Officials had planned for only 450 Afghans to eventually make the move when they began a special immigration program for interpreters and their families in 2009.  With Canada’s combat mission ended and a year after the program stopped accepting applications, around 800 former interpreters and their families are now living across the country ….”      
• Columnist:  Shame on the feds for fighting vets’ compensation court case  “…. It was absolutely disheartening, therefore, to learn via documents recently tabled in Parliament that the Harper government — so pro-active at the outset with the multi-millions necessary to ensure our troops were properly kitted and armed for a long war in Afghanistan — had then spent $750,000 in legal fees to fight some of these very same veterans over the clawbacks to their military pensions.  While the Harper government has since abandoned its legal fight against these wounded and often maimed veterans, it is unconscionable to think it spent so much money before finding a conscience — if, indeed, it was a conscience that was found ….”
• “…. Working in the thick of danger and death for the last 10 years, the Canadian Forces have learned plenty about the effects the war in Afghanistan can have on a soldier, including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).  “We’re preparing our folks much better and have made great strides over the past four or five years,” said Brig.-Gen. Christian Juneau, commander of LFWA-JTFW.  In the early years of the war in Afghanistan, a soldier might have only received a 40-minute lecture about how to mentally prepare for the environment they were deploying to.  “Now the education piece is much more compressive,” said Juneau. “We have some people who have been to Afghanistan and they come back and talk to their peers, and this helps tremendously.” ….”
• Stuart Langridge, R.I.P.  “Dogged by increasingly negative media coverage over the handling of investigations into the suicide of Afghanistan war veteran Stuart Langridge the Department of National Defence edited an internal police force report before releasing it publicly and to the soldier’s family, a federal inquiry heard Friday.  The revelation at the Military Police Complaints Commission inquiry was one of several indications that the independence of the National Investigation Service (NIS), the military’s detective agency, was compromised after Langridge’s parents went public with their grievances.  The military interfered with the report “while preparing it for publication” in a pre-emptive effort to avoid a “sensational fact” getting to the media, said Commission lawyer Mark Freiman ….”
• Niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiice ….  “A T-shirt being sold at (in Edmonton) is insulting to military members across the country, says a former Edmonton soldier.  The men’s shirt, sold at HG2 Clothing in Southgate Mall, has sent ripples of frustration through the Edmonton’s large military community.  The shirt reads, “Join the army, learn a trade, butchering.”  In the middle it has a drawing of a baby and a knife with blood dripping down the blade.  Steve Greenough, 36, served in the Canadian Armed Forces for seven years, a stint which included work in Kosovo in 1999.  Greenough said he first caught wind of the shirt on social media when a former co-worker posted a picture of the tee.  He says the store should “be ashamed of themselves,” for selling a product that he feels is a direct insult to military members past and present ….”
  
• Khadr Boy (1)  “Omar Khadr should be monitored with electronic bracelets when he’s released from prison, says a Scarborough group that him charged with treason.  Shobie Kapoor, of Canadian Patriotic Society — a grass roots citizens group — insisted Sunday that Khadr will be used by Islamic extremists as a “propaganda machine on the GTA mosque circuit.”  She said Khadr, 26, can also be used to raise funds and recruits at Toronto-area mosques when he’s freed.  “He will draw out all the jihadis,” Kapoor said. “They will all pay big money to see him.”  Her group gave Scarborough Centre MP Roxanne Jame a 100-name petition which calls for Khadr to be charged with treason. The Conservative MP is expected to pass it along this week to Public Safety Minister Vic Toews ….”  Note to petitioners:  1)  The feds will have to change their mind from their stated position in April where they said it’s “a provincial and police matter.”  2)  Anyone in Ontario can try a private prosecution themselves – more on that option here.
• Khadr Boy (2)  “Omar Khadr is eligible to take his first steps unshackled outside a maximum-security prison in Ontario on New Year’s Day, according to parole guidelines that allow the convicted terrorist and murderer to apply for day parole.  Khadr is serving the remainder of an eight-year sentence at Millhaven Institution near Kingston, Ont., after being whisked to Canada last weekend from his military cell in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as part of a plea deal.  …. “Any decisions related to his future will be determined by the independent Parole Board of Canada,” (spokesperson for Public Safety Minister Vic Toews) Julie Carmichael said in an e-mail ….”      
• Khadr Boy (3)  Columnist recommends one term of parole:  “…. One of those conditions — which should be front-and-centre in any NPB decision on Khadr’s parole before 2018 — would be that Khadr cut off all contact with members of his al-Qaida worshipping Toronto family, or be immediately returned to prison ….”
• Some Canadians headed to Belarus to inspect weapons, military  “On 9-12 October a Czech inspection group is to visit Belarus under the provisions of the CFE Treaty, BelTA learnt from the Defense Ministry of Belarus.  Apart from five military inspectors from the Czech Republic, the group will comprise inspectors from the UK, Denmark, Canada and the U.S. “The inspection team will choose and inspect a military unit in Belarus that is subject to control under CFE. The goal of the inspection is to prove that the actual amount of the materiel limited by the treaty corresponds to the declared data,” the ministry said.”
• Some Americans headed north to train with Canadians  “In the twilight as night turned to day, a line of humvees and maintenance vehicles pulled out of the Bonners Ferry National Guard armory Saturday.  Headed on a 600-mile trek to Canadian Forces Base Wainwright in Alberta, about 40 Guard members from North Idaho will take part in Canada’s annual “Maple Resolve” training exercise. Another 30 or so Army National Guard soldiers will leave from southern Idaho later in the week for the training, which is slated to run Oct. 8-30.  In North Idaho, troops are taking include those based in armories in Bonners Ferry, Boise, Lewiston and Post Falls but include communities throughout the region, said the Guard’s Col. Tim Marsano.  “They were kind enough to ask us to join the exercise and participate,” said 1st Lt. Jerome Sitko of Company A, 116th Cavalry Brigade support battalion out of Post Falls. “We were excited to say yes. It gives the soldiers a great opportunity to train in their specialty, whether it’s transportation, maintenance or medics.” ….”
• “Barack Obama on Sept. 28 became the first U.S. president in 22 years to block a Chinese takeover of an American asset, citing national security concerns.  It was a private deal, a Chinese buyout of wind farms in northern Oregon, too close, in the Democrat’s view, to a U.S. military installation …. In this country, its expanding reach is celebrated by Harper at a Beijing signing ceremony and Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty toured its new Markham headquarters.  Are we being naive or progressive? ….”
• Warpoet.ca from the U.K.  “Reading the Daily Telegraph obituaries I am both sad and grateful to see the tribute to Bruno Bobak. sad at his loss. grateful to see a tribute to him over here in the U.K., Canadians so often being somewhat of an afterthought in spite of what we gave to both wars. why just today I was looking at a map of the World War I front and there were British flags and French flags and Belgian flags, and American flags representing the fighting nations of that war, but no Canadian flags (nor Indian, nor Australian, nor New Zealand etc. etc.). so yes, how good to have Bruno Bobak remembered over here ….”
  
• Columnist on it maybe being time to drop the blue helmet in Canada  “…. Maybe it’s time we stopped trying to please everyone, and stood up for what we believe. If the UN is miffed, get used to it because we aren’t likely to change.  Perhaps it’s also time for the UN to change — to develop a little backbone when confronting tyrants, even though it’s short of muscle to impose its will on anyone.”
  
• “The Honourable Peter MacKay, Minister of National Defence, and Chief of Defence Staff, General Walt Natynczyk, are attending the tenth biennial Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas (CDMA), which is being hosted this year in Punta Del Este, Uruguay from October 8-11.  This Conference brings together defence ministers and senior officials from the Americas to discuss common regional defence and security issues ….”
• Canada’s Avro plane makers offered the U.S. a sorta-kinda flying saucer???  “These days, flying saucers are most commonly associated with sci-fi films and conspiracy theories, but in the 1950s, some saw them as the future of aviation.  Documents published by the US National Archives give new information about a craft commissioned by the US air force, which if successfully developed would have achieved speeds of 2,600mph and flown at around 100,000ft.  Details of the proposed craft have been around for years. But the declassified papers include new diagrams and documents that demonstrate the scale of the project’s ambition.  The US air force contracted the work to a now-defunct Canadian company, Avro. In one document, Avro envisaged a “top speed potential between Mach 3 and Mach 4, a ceiling of over 100,000ft and a maximum range with allowances of about 1,000 nautical miles”. That would have sent the flying saucer spinning into the Earth’s stratosphere.  Language in a report labelled “final development summary” was optimistic: “It is concluded that the stabilization and control of the aircraft in the manner proposed – the propulsive jets are used to control the aircraft – is feasible and the aircraft can be designed to have satisfactory handling through the whole flight range from ground cushion take-off to supersonic flight at very high altitude.” ….”
• “The head of the powerful U.S. Intelligence Committee is urging Canadian companies not to do business with the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei as a matter of national security.  In a scathing report released Monday in Washington, the congressional committee branded Huawei a threat to U.S. national security, and urged American telecommunications companies using the Chinese firm to “find other vendors.”  The committee concluded that allowing Huawei to help build American networks could potentially be used by Chinese cyber-spies to steal U.S. state and commercial secrets, or even to disrupt everything from electrical power grids to banking systems in a time of conflict.  But in an exclusive interview with CBC News, committee chairman Mike Rogers warns that Canada is equally at risk ….” - more in the U.S. House Committee on Intelligence’s report here (the news release) and here (the report itself).
  
• “They came from Canada and across America and trained at Fort Harrison before shipping off to Europe to face the Germans in battle. They came home to marry Montana women, build Montana homes and erect a Montana memorial in honor of their lost comrades.  This week, Montana’s senators passed a resolution in the U.S. Senate honoring members of the First Special Service Force, a joint U.S.-Canadian fighting unit known as the Devil’s Brigade, which set the path for today’s Green Berets and the Navy SEALs.  “What these men did was incredible,” said Sen. Max Baucus, who co-sponsored the resolution with Sen. Jon Tester honoring the brigade. “They paved the way for the Special Forces we revere today, including the Navy SEAL team that brought down Osama bin Laden.”  The Devil’s Brigade was placed under the command of West Point graduate Lt. Col. Robert Frederick. The unit was comprised of three, 600-man regiments, a service battalion and a small air detachment.  The brigade organized and trained at Fort Harrison in Helena in 1942 and saw combat in Italy in 1943. The unit achieved fame at Anzio in 1944, where German soldiers dubbed the men “The Black Devils” for their ability to fight under the cover of darkness ….”

About these ads