MILNEWS.ca News Highlights – 22 Dec 10

• Corporal Steve Martin, R22eR, R.I.P. Bad weather in Europe = arriving home this afternoon.
• At least some families think this’ll be the last Christmas with their loved ones gone for a while. “…. “It’s nice knowing that this is it for us, and with the majority of our guys coming home next Christmas, hopefully not as many families will have to go through the separation,” Atkinson said from Hamilton. “Knowing next year it will be back to normal is always a nice thought -knowing that by summer he’ll be home and we can get back to camping and fishing and all the other things we do as a family.” ….” I guess this’ll also depend on what the next mission will look like, too.
• Year end interview season:  PM says (again) it was hard to change his mind and keep troops in Afghanistan. “Prime Minister Stephen Harper admitted the decision to extend Canada’s mission in Afghanistan was a tough one. “It’s always easy to leave a country and say, ‘We’re done,’ he said in a year-end interview with QMI Agency. “But these countries don’t disappear and the problems will remain. It’s important for Afghanistan to ensure the country doesn’t return to being a haven for international terrorists.” But the prime minister side-stepped a question on whether Ottawa had been pressured by allies into keeping troops in the country after the 2011 combat mission ended. “It was hard for me to prolong the mission, even in a non-combat capacity,” he said. “But I’ve said before that it is essential the Afghans control their own country.” ….”
• Canada’s Veterans Affairs Minister, and others, are set to announce changes today to compensation to vets who may have been affected by Agent Orange from when it was used on some CF bases years ago.
• Canadian defence research:  A step closer to protocols for managing jet lag/shift lag better (PDF)
• Interested in reading about Canadian civil-military co-operation operations? Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) has this annotated bibliography of literature published between 1990 and 2010 (33pg PDF).
• Wanted: Someone to build an almost $16 million training and accommodation (almost 100 bedrooms) building at CFB Edmonton. Bids close 10 Feb 11.
• Wanted: Airplane passenger seats to attach to pallets, which can be loaded into planes for temporarily carrying passengers.  Bids close 18 Jan 11.
• More on the coming apology by the CF to Mohawks for including Oka as a bit of a case study in a draft version of a counterinsurgency manual (PDF). “The Canadian army will apologize to the Mohawk Warrior Society for listing it as an insurgent group in a draft document almost five years ago.  The apology is expected in early 2011.  The military mentioned the group in a 2006 draft publication called “Counter-insurgency Operations.” Other groups mentioned several pages later in the counter-insurgency document were Hezbollah and the Taliban.  At least one media outlet discovered the reference in 2007, drawing protest from First Nations groups.  Then-defence minister Gordon O’Connor quickly announced it was just a draft and wouldn’t be in the final version …..” More from CBC.ca here, and APTN’s story from 7 Dec 10 here.
• Taliban Propaganda Watch: Taliban critiques Obama’s review of the fight.