I’ve said for years that support for the Canadian Forces by the Canadian population at large is a mile wide and an inch deep. With Rick Hillier in retirement, and a governing party that wants desperately to change the channel on the Afghan mission, public opinion is vulnerable. Which is one of the reasons the media and opposition parties continue to harp on the detainee documents issue. And who cares if they smear thousands of dedicated, selfless Canadian soldiers, sailors, and airmen in the process?
Enter James Travers of the Toronto Star:
Among many warnings, Colvin waved red flags about Canadian detainees who disappeared. That raised concerns that insurgent leaders captured by Canadian special forces had been either killed or sent for interrogation to secret American “black site” jails.
The insidious implication is that Canadian special operators were in some vague way doing something sinister and out of bounds in Afghanistan. It’s not a ranting, over-the-top accusation. It’s not a spittle-flecked tirade with a finger poking into the chest of the reader. It’s just a subtle smear.
But remember, this is the same columnist who earlier this year erroneously asserted that JTF 2 “is controlled in Canada outside the normal rigidly hierarchical chain of command.” (What the Toronto Star knows about the chain of command is illustrated all too well in a breathless piece this weekend in which reporter Allan Woods confuses CANSOFCOM commander BGen Mike Day with the commander of JTF 2, and moves CANSOFCOM from its headquarters on Startop Road in Ottawa to CFB Petawawa. But I digress.)
In April 2007, Travers was even more blunt:
At the centre of the first crisis to threaten Stephen Harper’s government is a failure to impose adequate civilian oversight on a military at war. Generals who considered Afghanistan prisoners merely a nuisance had unusual freedom in crafting an agreement that sacrificed safeguards for convenience.
…
These are multifaceted issues, and the failures now inflaming parliamentary debate have more than one cause. Still, there is an identifiable pattern.
One repeating part is profound military resistance to civilian control. It’s understandable – if hardly acceptable in a democracy – that soldiers don’t welcome what they dismiss as amateur oversight of technical operations involving life and death.
Travers seems to want his readers to believe the CF is like a vicious dog that’s been let off its leash and is snarling at its civilian master’s hand.
Don’t let pundits like this one systemically paint those who serve our nation in uniform – serve it to the point of laying down life and limb where required – as unethical rogues and criminals. Those of you who know CF members know nothing could be further from the truth.
Travers has become a dab hand at writing filth for cash.
As long as his name appears on a page at the Red Star, there will always be a line of bile scored beneath any report on our Armed Forces; and another good reason to avoid that paper like the crusted fishwrap it is.
Travers shares McCallum’s good fortune(and disability) to inhabit a feather bed making finding gainful employment un-necessary or disability income necessary. At least McCallum hasn’t developed a “gin-blossom” yet.
Good post. I’d like to think that the majority of Canadians fully understand that the various players in the media, and a lot of the Lib/NDP MPs, drum up the “abuse” issue for strictly political reasons. When you strip away all the fake outrage, the argument being made by these traitors is essentially that Canadian soldiers are complicit in war crimes because they don’t provide bodyguards/babysitters to every single detainee who is handed over to the Afghan authorities. Most people – I’d like to think – understand how stupid that is; it’s like saying that a cop must be held responsible for anything that happens in prison to anyone they arrest, for as long as that person is in jail.
There are a lot of vermin in the media and the political arena who will gladly smear the honour of our soldiers for domestic political gain. It’s repulsive, but I truly believe that only a very small minority of Canadians believe that our soldiers are unethical or criminal.
It reminds me of that slimy weasel Greg Westons’s comment a while back where he described the department of Defense’s budget as “bloated”.
When the F$%K has the DND’s budget EVER been “bloated” in the last 50 gawd dammed years!!?
Why is it that the ownwers of newspapers think because some lazy, drunk fat ass who’s only contribution to the public good is to piss all over other people in print and has managed to stay employed at a newspaper for more than a couple of years that his (or her) opinion is somehow more valuable than anyone else’s?
Journalists — ALL JOURNALISTS are complete scum.
When you’ve never done anything that even remotely sacrifices your own comfort, convenience, time (much less your safety) it’s easy to smear others.
Piss off journalists. You’re low life’s.
Actually I would love to hear some coomenter come on here and identify themselves as a journalist – no names no places of employment just a simple admission “Yes, I am a journalist”. Then defend this garbage.
…….Still waiting …. still wating…..
yeah, didn’t think so. Brave bunch you low lifes.
Maybe more of them should volunteer to be embedded on the IUD-mined roads. That might shift their cosy Toronto perspective.
Travers is a piece of excrement that should be flushed back to where he belongs. It’ s hard to believe that Travesty thinks this particular smear will help get the Librano/Separaturd/NDP’er alliance “back to power”. It’s also slightly ironic that the party he wants to help ‘get back to power”, Librano$, are the same party that set up the transfer agreement in the first place. Travers is a drunken, desperate fool slandering our men and women in uniform in the hopes that it will somehow look bad for the PM and the elected Government. The T.O. Red Star should stick to manufacturing fairy tales about “busty hookers”@ cocaine…What a piece of shit.
I know more than a few guys in the Canadian Forces. Some are really nice, others are testosterone charged douchebags that I’d expect to see breaking beer bottles over their heads after UFC fights.
No doubt you walked right up to them and said that you big tough guy.
All of the comments above, except one, Logan’s, are bang on. Very few would fit Logan’s description.
Anything Travers writes should be listed under “Comment”, as it does not qualify as news.
sasquatch suggests “At least McCallum hasn’t developed a “gin-blossom” yet.” Are you sure. Take a closer look.
There is HOPE & CHANGE in the air. We will soon have a right of center station that can Pinhead people like Travers and McCallum and show them for the slime that they are. M’thinks this station is going to do very well in Canada.
Libtards say no more. But I will. Canada has become a country educated beyond is intelligence. The preachers of relativism have distorted the role of both the Police and Military in this country. It is a wonder anyone wants to do these necessary jobs. Libtards and the completely screwed up beyond all repair dippers think the troupes are coming home. Well maybe for a while. But when NATO pulls out the taliban will come back they will join with Iran who will both over through Pakistan which will bring India into this and then the Middle East will implode.
How this escapes the Libtards and dippers is beyond logic. The winds of war are here and they will require much more blood before they calm. The other option is Israel just nukes the hell out of everyone and civilization can advance beyond the 14Th Century in this part of the world. How is that for relative.
In the past I have worked with members of JTF2. They are true professionals, and I would trust them at any time with my life. Great guys. The notion that these guys are taking orders from outside of Canada is just absurd.
For those interested, the reason the unit is named JTF2 is that JTF1 was the unit that was popularized in the movie “Devils Brigade”. True story.
Posted by: L at June 14, 2010 12:20 AM
L, I believe you meant IEDs not IUDs.
There’s one hell of a difference, believe me.
I don’t believe the smears about Canadian Forces being spread around by the Oppos…however, I do believe the CF leadership chaffe at the civilian leadership….some of which is normal and to be expected, some of it is above and beyond.
Hillier eviciserated O’Connor, perhaps deservedly so. However, I beleieve Hillier, for all the good he did, left behind a bit of a culture issue, the disdain of the civilian leadership. You will notice that as the detainee “issue” bubbled along the government was point on it. It made strident comments and said there was nothing there. Eventually a couple of small things popped out, and you notice that the CDS was the one who had to make the corrections in public. Why? because the whole story didnt come forward. Now was any of it serious, no…but it undercut the governments position.
Let me repeat, I dont think there is a problem here. I think this is a fight between Foreign Affairs and Defence. I think Colvin’s motives havent been sufficiently questioned, hard to do in the heat of the deabte, but the press would be better to explain or question why this has come up now and why Colvin came forward at this moment.
I gave some acquantences in anf around Foreign Affairs and not one of them will comment on Colvin. They change the topic, they will discuss anything other than him.
So yes the military is being characterized unfairly with some serious charges, but some of the criticsim had something to it (the deference issue).
However, there has been an open question that has gone unasked since this began. Colvin is currently head of intelligence sharing at the Candian enbassy in Washington. Just how effective has he been at his job since he took on this role of whistleblower?, how much have the Americans been working with him, or does he just hold title an someone else does the job, which is what I expect is the result.
Fordprefect: “But when NATO pulls out the taliban will come back they will join with Iran who will both over through [sic] Pakistan which will bring India into this and then the Middle East will implode. How this escapes the Libtards and dippers is beyond logic.”
We all know that the Libtard$ and Dippers are divorced from reality — beyond logic — and that they have a death wish. How else to explain their inane modus operandi and policies, such as they are?
Like Obama, their main goal has been to destabilize democracy as we know it, which is why they’ve been hard at work deconstructing and dismantling the institutions that have been the bulwarks of Western democracy: marriage between a man and a woman, the nuclear family, and the Christian Church, all of which our military have hotly defended over the centuries.
Their modus operandi is not to effectively govern but to create as much societal chaos as possible so that policies and practices which would normally be abhorrent to right-thinking (i.e., ethical and responsible) individuals — for instance, abortion on the scale we now have it: over 100,000 in Canada a year — can be slipped into the political agenda. Then, by stealth, aided and abetted by a militant, leftist media, these policies become “acceptable” to the populace to the point where very few even lift an eyebrow when their taxes are used to finance them. In fact, those who dare to question the new dispensation are ridiculed, shunned, and marginalized by the Left.
The leftards don’t look beyond their next Pyrrhic victory. They’re cold-blooded in their tactics and resemble reptiles: The fact that they’re in hot water, soon to reach the boiling point, doesn’t seem to phase them at all. They’re smug and happy simply because they’ve managed to seriously deconstruct Western democracy by ridding the peasants — that’s everyone who disagrees with them — of marriage, the family, and the Church.
O Canada! WAKE UP!
The quality and depth of Jim’s analysis has not deteriorated over his many years. He still has the same enthusiasm and dedication that he had when he first joined the Liberal party.
Stephen: No way that Gen. Hillier “eviscerated O’Connor”.
I wrote this elsewhere, about Gen. Hillier’s memoirs:
‘It is also stunningly clear that Gen. Hillier was much more impressed by former Prime Minister Paul Martin and Minister of National Defence Bill Graham than he was by their successors’ government:
-Martin, Graham and I got along superbly, right from the start…[p. 325]
-My relationship with Paul Martin was, I thought, exceptional. [p. 346]
-…A key part…was the incredible relationship that we had with Prime Minister Martin, first and foremost, his cabinet, and, most importantly, the Department of National Defence.
Bill Graham was confident, incredibly smart, and sage…[p. 352]
On the other hand nothing so, er glowing, about the next government, certainly not Prime Minister Harper:
-Despite all the rumours around Ottawa about how much we hated each other, Gord [O’Connor, MND] and I got along and worked well together, most of the time. [p. 395]
-The [Conservative] staffers wanted me to change the way I was doing the job of Chief of the Defence Staff and I was determined not to let that happen. [p. 404]’
Mark
Ottawa
Stephen: My mistake. Of course your’re right (as I just demonstrated), was confusing O’Connor with Graham.
Mark
Ottawa
“But when NATO pulls out the taliban will come back they will join with Iran”
So we should stay there forever then?. Even Russia pulled out without the world coming to an end.” We will pull out one day, probably sooner then you think”. Nato will have only wasted lives to show for it, no different then Russia did. So what are we defending here anyway, a puppet government that’s not much better. Did you know Christians are being killed, tortured and imprisoned apostasy (conversion from Islam) is punishable by death. Those schools we rebuild are religious, and follow the Koran, you know the book that teaches you to kill the infidels.
So why did Russia and Nato waste so many lives and money there; anyone…anyone… “OIL”,its funny that there are major oil pipelines that pass though the country.
Excellent comments all around, well except for one, and Atric, that is hilarious!
I’m new to this blog, but I would like to say that I am thankfull that someone is there to point out just how low the Canadian public opinion is for the CF. I offer a resounding why is this? Is it that we need a bloody war and a sickly season to have the CF recognized as the protectors of Canadian sovereignty? However, I also wonder if our sovereignty is what is used to be with such low numbers in the CF, today. And why would anyone want to be a part of an organization of which the public thinks so little? Wake up Canada.
It’s the publishing of snide innuendo like this that reaffirms my opinion that the Star is only fit to house break puppies
Sorry Damian, but I feel the pressure building. The rant must be released before my fricking head explodes.
Pundits are like little fleas compared to the true elephant in the dining room.
The current leadership cadre of the Canadian Forces is the same ones that lived through (and went along with, even assisted and expedited) the largest, longest destruction of Forces capacity in Canadian history. They go along to get along. Furthermore, the Canadian Forces could likely field a full brigade of Majors or higher, whose sole skill set is paper and the pushing thereof.
My experience of Canadian Forces is the field personnel are second to none in the world for skill, discipline, and frightening competence in war. Their exemplary performance is CRIPPLED by REMF officers whose sole focus is maintaining their sinecures, and who very nearly outnumber field troops.
We could probably eliminate this problem by instituting a mandatory weekly 1 mile run for -all- uniformed CF personnel. Most of these fat b@st@rd perfumed princes can’t run from the bar to the dinner table. After they all quit we could build a carrier battle group with their pay. Or God forbid buy some F_ING helicopters finally, for F- sakes!!!
/Here endeth the rant./
peter
[…..So why did Russia and Nato waste so many lives and money there; anyone…anyone… “OIL”,its funny that there are major oil pipelines that pass though the country.]
Really? Where?
FOOL!
What do you expect from the coalition parties who don’t give a damn about our troops:
Layton supports the TALIBAN AND HAMAS
Duceppe support the Taliban, and hezbollah
Liberals support the: Taliban, hezbollah, tamil-ltte-tigers.
The national media support the liberals ndp and the(coalition parties) and, all the terrorist groups which the coalition suppot. That is why you will never anything good about your country because the media show their ‘true colours’ that they are ‘fake’
Don’t you find it odd that the media says nothing to the opposition parties regarding to the ‘groups’ they support yet are always on the PM’s case, the military and constant negative about our country?
There you have it.
IUD embedded roads,who knew Afghanistan would be the ideal setting for a maternal health care summit.Most scribes I wouldn’t cross the street to spit on,but I would make an exception for Tavers.
Wow. All I can say is, thanks for your support.
In my opinion bring back the divisions in the Military. This experiment created by Ed Whalen. Author also of the disaster that created the NEP. Him & his green cowboy hat. Now we know the rest of the story.
Have a REAL Navy, Real, Air Force. Marines etc Al. Not a centralized group of collectivist Political Brass.
Who owe all to political connections.
Frankly I’m sick of the left in this Nation hating the very people that allow them to spew. By there own lifeblood. This is a continious bilious acid against our soldiers from basically cowards. This Country has been damaged beyond belief by the communists, or if it makes you feel better Socialists.
Enough of the running down our Military. Time to expose the real rats. The collectivists who fear the Army. Who fear individual liberty.
JMO
What would one rather spend money on- battling the Taliban who throw acid in girls’ faces or decades of humanitarian aid to Afghanistan with no oversight? I’d rather bomb the monsters now than re-visit human rights abuses ad nauseum.
Just my thoughts.
Actually I’m in awe of Travers recently, as his W.C. Field schnozz underwent a complete metamorphosis from the florid gin-induced appendage he always sported on “Question Period” to the svelte Bratwurst thingy hanging there now.
Must have gone to a private clinic for this major surgery. Wonder who paid for it, The Red Star or CTV?
“Travers seems to want his readers to believe the CF is like a vicious dog that’s been let off its leash and is snarling at its civilian master’s hand.”….
Traver seems like a vicious dog … a fat useless… bad tempered …..hair shedding on the furniture… fart popping …. can’t keep his own @ss clean sort.