Damian Brooks takes the Toronto Star columnist to the woodshed in a lengthy post. A sample;
The difference between how Hillier characterized the past decade and how Travers represented Hillier’s remarks is that the CDS can back up his assertions with fact. Just because it’s a four letter word doesn’t mean Travers should avoid it.
Next unsupportable claim?At Hillier’s urging, Ottawa shelved its Cold War weapons and thinking to begin creating armed forces capable of speedy domestic response and swift offshore intervention as well as the slow, problematic work of stabilizing failed and failing states.
I’d love to hear precisely which “Cold War weapons” the CF “shelved.” Because the only one I can think of is the Leopard C2 tank weapon system. And you can see just how solid a decision that was by Hillier’s obvious relief – and that of his troops – at being able to keep a tracked, heavily armoured, direct-fire platform in the Canadian inventory. Once the CF realized it could move tanks to missions around the world, our soldiers were no longer willing to part with them.
Unlike Travers, Brooks provides data, source links, and references.
Go read the whole, damning piece. Like me, you may find yourself wondering how one with so little factual discipline managed to get a job writing on military topics for a national newspaper…
He got the job because facts are irrelevant in today’s media if reporting on the military. What matters is ideology.
I’ve had lots of email run-ins with Travers. I point out ‘the facts’ – and he replies with his view that I misunderstand what he wrote.
He’s both ‘factually challenged’ and just plain stupid. But he’s a Liberal (he denies this) and part of the Old Boys Club.
A lot of columnists don’t seem to get the difference between fact and a drawn conclusion. They believe if they’ve come to a conclusion — that the conclusion must therefore be a fact.
I really resent that some of them are such dolts and yet get paid for writing. But then, so long as we’re complaining about them,their editors know they’re being read and I suppose that’s the point.
You give Traverse too much credit.
It’s not ignorance, it’s dishonesty/willful blindness.
He’s a good ideological foot soldier abusing his position as a member of the media. His role has nothing to do with facts but putting forth a particular view. If that means making statements that are blatantly untrue, so be it.
The ends justify the means.
Kate said: “Like me, you may find yourself wondering how one with so little factual discipline managed to get a job writing on military topics for a national newspaper…”
Qualifications for Star editorial or contributor staff:
1) Liberal party card carrying member
2) Active imagination, creative writing skills, amoral temperment in subject research
3) Dislike for inconvenient facts that do not fit in a good partisan-left story
4) Reflexive pathalogical hatred of anything percieved to be right of Trotsky.
The only lie Travers might be telling is that he’s not a Liberal (which is probably true in the technical sense).
But when the columnists of the Red Star write, what you read are the internal debates of the Liberal party and/or Ottawa’s mandarins, which usually amount to the same thing anyway.
The thinking behind Travers’ column is the same mindset that has governed the forces since the early 1960s. They want a crippled department fit only for political posturing. Hillier’s get-the-job-done focus scares the sh** out of the nameless (mostly) Francophone bureaucrats feeding Travers’ his “conext.”
On the bright side, I bet these people want to puke every time they pass a billboard that says “FIGHT with the Canadan Armed Forces.” Heh.
Qualifications for Star editorial or contributor staff:
1) Liberal party card carrying member
I would add
1a) or Liberal plant posing as a Conservative a la Dalton Camp.
…Yes good one and one more addition to the Qualifications:
6) Deeply indoctrinated in Liberal revisionist mythology to the point of being functionally delusional
Extra points from the boss if you show up in the work place wearing the red condom you got at the Liberal party convention and your moonbat beany from the Gore rally.
Owl…your mention of “Francophone bureaucrats” is interesting.
Does nobody remember/know about the “Quebecois” throwing their weapons/packs off the Halifax docks before joining convoys taking soldiers over the pond to defend the Frenchie’s homeland? Google it.
You cannot run a good socialist country with a free military who might interfere with you,so you have to of course cripple them first,meanwhile convincing the lemmings of said country you are doing them a favor.
Make absolutely no mistake. The only reason the “frogs” tolerate ANY Canadian military bases in La Belle Province is strictly because their Liberal/Socialist overseers have reasoned they are necessary to convince the ROC that they are really, really concerned about this country.
Do not forget that on a per capita basis, Quebec is more socialist than France.
As good as Leo2 purchase is, it’s a pity we didn’t get MORE of them. should have replaced the Leo1’s 1 to 1.
*******************
Cold War gear “shelved”?
More like “wore out” and replaced with fewer units of other things because of sustained lack of capital spending for 50 years.
Now, can we please either fix the Navy subs properly or ask the Brit’s for a refund because they knowingly sold us used crap? (And why wasn’t this discovered at the time by our clever Navy purchasing lads?)
Maybe we can get the Australians to sell us some new Collin’s class? (If the americans will agree to let us operate that class of US supplied sensor? )
I am sure if you asked Gen. Leslie or any of his troops who will be using the Leopard 2 A6/M configurations they will be delighted with the air-conditioning, fire control, speed, and accuracy/penetration characteristics of the gun platform.
Main Battle Tank (MBTs) are textbook standard stuff in any military despite efforts to make them obsolete, like the TOW missile systems courtesy of Raytheon.
http://www.raytheon.com/products/stellent/groups/public/documents/content/cms04_014915.pdf
The Leopard 2 also ranks as top of the class when compared to its current competitors.
http://www.sfu.ca/casr/bg-leopard2-netherlands.htm
http://fprado.com/armorsite/leo2.htm
Why would anyone bother to listen to Travers on this subject when you can do all the elementary research online yourself?
What the hell hit that Office? Whoever works from that disaster can’t be thinking clearly.
Not having facts or not knowing diddly about any subject would never deter Travers and his cohorts.
A large part of what they write is spin and the same buzz words applied to all their poop.
Anyway, we have right now the best CDS in memory.
Hillier is a Soldiers Soldier. He is the genuine article and a prolific speaker who gets the message out, telling it like it is.
FREAKING TRAVERSE ISN’T QUALIFIED TO POLISH HILLIER’S BOOTS.
OOPS, that should read “TRAVERS”, oh well, whatever.
What the hell hit that Office?
The first thing I noticed was Anthony Kiedis’ (Red Hot Chili Peppers) biography “Scar Tissue” in the foreground.
Cold war weapons shelved: That would be 1 radar screen at the rock in North Bay, 1 on the Dew Line & a few old tanks that were being used for target practice at LFTC Meaford.
Damian calls in a ‘fire for effect’ to Travers desk from the new Leopard 2 A6M.
The result is Travers desk pictured above.
…Sgt Schultz would be proud of him…
Fire hazard anyone? ROFL!
I feel much better about my desk now.
My God, what’s with this Hiller? Imagine trying to convince the government the troops need the kit to do the jobs assigned to them? What is he thinking? Doesn’t he know military procurement is strictly a political tool of government? What’s this nonsense about buying the “right” equipment, where are the votes in that? I guess he’s not Liberal enough. Doesn’t Hillier know the Cold War hasn’t ended, apparently.
Imagine a reporter who knows nothing about the military. Who’d a thunk ‘it?
Caption should be:
“Don’t worry i know where everything is, Including my Buckeye Award for Hog reporting”
I think Damian was being far too kind. The writers at the Star are so twisted in their sense of reality, its affected the whole paper.
As a result, the star is declining in every way, as it should.
The cells of this malignant disease are the writers.
Haroon Siddique is a shill for Islamism. Always blaming the west, but never finding fault with Islam and the spread of Islamic fascism.
Linda McQuaig is just as diseased, if not worse. In her most recent article, ‘Building a nation with body bags’, she accuses Harper of promoting war as “the stuff of nation-building.”
And the equally diseased are responding – as a recent letter to the editor notes, “why does a nation of 30 million people from around the world need to have a standing military that travels across the planet to fight in other countries? Realistically, why do we need a military at all?” The writer goes on to explain the usual justification for such an assinine POV with, “if any other country invaded or attacked Canada, the United States would respond because we are in its “sphere of influence.”
Might the reason for maintaining a standing military be sovereignty, commitment, responsibility, security, pride, history and culture? Could it be that there is a dire and immediate threat to Canadians and the world from Islam?
I wouldn’t expect such an idiot to understand reality though. As one PoMo writer recently put it – common sense, facts and rational thought are over rated.
Obviously the desk of an artist
A spin-master artist.
Who in the Librano$ GTA Red Star readership wants to be burdened by logic or fact anyway? = TG
Besides the obvious fact that Travers wouldn’t know a fact if it bit him on the butt, I found that he is wearing his true colours when he describes Martin as” the most internationally concerned and savvy prime minister since Brian Mulroney”. Now, a quick quiz: How many PMs has Canada had between Mulrooney and Martin? Hell, Kate’s pooches have more international savy than they did.
More on:
1) Jim Travesty: “The Toronto Star’s Jim Travers is shocked, shocked…”
toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2007/04/toronto-stars-jim-travers-is-shocked.html
2) Haroon the Magnificent: “What really bugs Haroon Siddiqui”
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/009237.html
Mark
Ottawa
And the unbearable lightness of Denis “The Thug” Coderre: “Notice Paper”:
toyoufromfailinghands.blogspot.com/2007/04/notice-paper.html
When you’re in the UK as I presently am, you have the opportunity to compare the quality of military affairs journalism in the media here with that in our dear Dominion.
From left to right of the political spectrum in the UK, there tends to be at least a credible, informed view on the military establishment.
The tosh and sludge that pass for journalistic opinions in Canada are well, just plain cringeworthy.
“What really bugs Haroon Siddiqui”?
Who cares?
I can tell you which “cold war systems were shelved because I was in the army at the time. Of course this is not only equipment that was shelved, but equipment that was allowed to rust out and not be replaced.
Tanks – the leos were being phased out and were to be replaced on a less than one to one basis with something called the armoured gun system, which was a lot like the LAV except it had a tank calibre gun. I think the leos got a life extention because there was no money for the AGS
Tracked armoured personnel carriers – The M113 family of vehicles was phased out (granted they were getting pretty old), but instead of replacing them with a modern version of the same such as the Bradley, we opted for an all wheeled fleet, which gave an improved strategic mobility et the expense of armour and tactical mobility.
The M109 self propelled howitzer – has been or is being phased out in favour of light artillery light the new 105mm light gun we bought of France and the new towed 155mm guns that we bought off the Americans.
The ADATS anti aircraft/anti armour missile system. We got this system in the first place because we got the F18’s and based them in Germany. There used to be NATO funding for infrastructure. We wanted NATO funding for hardened aircraft shelters and they weren’t prepared to provide it unless we upgraded our recycled navy WW2 vintage anti aircraft guns.
4 AD Regt, which was created for this role was down graded to a reserve unit and as far as i know doesn’t exist any more.
In other words, all the equipment that we had for a armoured mechanized brigade group to fight the Central European battle against the soviets is now gone. It was either phased out of service due to age and not replaced with the modern equivalent, or it was phased out because the powers that be wanted a “lighter, more mobile force.
I hate the Toronto Star as much as anyone else here, and I don’t know whether or not it was at Hilliers urging, but the “unsupportable claim is basically accurate.
I have been out of the army for almost ten years now, but the last project I was involved in was to plan the organization of this new army.
MBaron, I probably should have been more clear in the focus of my criticism. Travers was asserting that Hillier, with Martin’s leadership, had shelved a bunch of Cold War equipment subsequent to each of them reaching the pinnacle of their respective professions. This is demonstrably false. The equipment cuts came before Martin was PM and before Hillier was CDS. Since then, we’ve been gradually rebuilding our inventory, not cutting it.
I wasn’t saying that we hadn’t cut equipment, just refuting Travers’ implications about the timing and responsibility for those decisions.
Oh good grief, the media – and not only the MSM – always get things wrong.
I too have criticized Travers in emails to him. He attempts to deflect criticism by denigrating the sender personally. I believe his first response to me was that I had missed my school bus. Next one by stating he was turning on his spam guard to turn me off, next one calling me Ricky rather than Rick. Never ever did he respond to my critiques.
He is a Tool, a Liberal Tool and a moron. What more need be said.
“He attempts to deflect criticism by denigrating the sender personally. I believe his first response to me was that I had missed my school bus. Next one by stating he was turning on his spam guard to turn me off, next one calling me Ricky rather than Rick. Never ever did he respond to my critiques.”
Rick: yes a “tool” but a monogenic programmed one displaying the requisite genetic personality flaws needed to identify with the Liberal dystopian roll model.
In his response we see genetic Liberal hubris and elitism…if you do not see the blinding light of the sacred truths Travers spews, you are obviously a lesser being…a mere mortal mired in the muck of the unenlightened soiled masses….common human clay to be molded by your liberal masters/betters into the new utopia…and that utopia cannot have doubters, questioners or those who are insubordinate to the liberal illuminated elite….so you and your opinion got dismissed as some subhuman thing.
regale in the fact that megalomaniacs like travers all have a fall coming which deflates their arrogance and when it comes it devistates them.
Travers and his colleagues at the Toronto Star a doing a good job pumping out all that Liberal Goebbelian propaganda into the Toronto market .. and we all know that Toronto is no longer Canada.