Damian Brooks has a close encounter of the serendipity kind. A story that bears watching.

IN the Ottawa Sun Douglas Fisher minces few words.

New thinking on defence? Ask yourself: What other nation doesn’t provide a separate chapter in its budget for defence? In our 400-page document this bold, new era for our forces got five, buried in a 25-page chapter entitled Meeting our Global Responsibilities. Our military was lumped in with — and symbolically followed — tsunami relief and other foreign aid.
And then there is the language used. The budget speaks of “conflict situations” not wars. Our allies may be “fighting a war on terrorism” in Afghanistan but we are there to re-establish “peace and security.” If anything, this budget strengthens the notion that our military’s true role is to be an alternate delivery mechanism for foreign aid.
The notion the military is receiving an immediate and desperately-needed infusion of cash is a joke. Fully $10.2 billion of the $12.8 billion “promised” won’t arrive until 2008-10, which is budgetary never-never land. The minority Liberal government is preening over a promise to deliver cash relief to the forces after its own re-election, and this with the proviso that only if the country is still posting enormous surpluses at that time. This is an empty, despicable boast, given the military’s plight.
[…]
Perhaps most stunning of all in this budget is its lack of any new money over the next two years for new equipment.

Laurie Hawn fleshes this out.

We should also be aware of what is happening to our fighter force. For fifty years, we have had Canadian fighters patrolling our airspace, or sitting on alert to react to Soviet incursions or other air traffic situations. The focus changed on 9/11 from looking outward to also looking inward. Our ability to look anywhere has steadily eroded.
We will soon be down to 80 operational CF-18s, the number that we can afford to upgrade. We are also critically short of fighter pilots, many having left in disillusionment. Flying time has been cut back to the point where we no longer train at low level and intensity of training has been reduced to preserve safety. Preserving safety under these circumstances also makes us ineffective. No matter how fast we can spin the earth, the new simulators we’re buying will never fly and nothing in the new budget addresses the erosion of our aerospace sovereignty.
Most people probably don’t know that 433 Squadron in Bagotville will shut down this summer to make one larger 425 Squadron. It won’t be long before some bean counter or other non-warrior sees a source of further personnel cuts. Heck, if you’ve got 400 people, surely you can make it work with 375, or 350, or………… The same thing will happen in Cold Lake next summer, with the shutdown of 416 Squadron. That will leave Canada with two, count ’em, two operational fighter squadrons. Billy Bishop weeps!
These shutdowns will free up a handful of positions to help start a new air warfare college. What’s the point of having a college about air warfare if you have no Air FORCE to apply it? I’m sure that the office equipment, pens and paper in Winnipeg will strike fear in the hearts of our enemies and respect in the hearts of our allies.

Laurie – you need a blogroll. Your viewpoint deserves more readership, and that won’t happen if you move into the blogosphere proper. Outgoing linkage = incoming traffic.

Bob Tarantino skewers Linda McCuaig’s defense of the Dither slither away from BMD that
“standing up to the American empire … will only improve our standing in a world increasingly alarmed by U.S. unilateralism”.

This is one of those fascinating rationalizations that requires a complete suspension of any connection with reality in order for it to make sense. “Improve our standing in the world”? Who is she kidding? Does anyone honestly believe that anyone outside the US military establishment and the incestuous world of the Canadian media and political culture gives a flying hump about this issue? Who is getting fired up about this? Jack Layton. Newspaper editorialists. Some Canadian bloggers. That’s pretty much it. The issue was splashed across front pages for a day, and now it’ll likely fade away, never to be heard about again. Check Google News, and see if you can even find any non-Canadian, non-US media outlets reporting about the issue. I saw one mention in Australia, one in Borneo and one in India. That’s it. If the primary rationale for dodging participation in BMD is to get brownie points with “the world”, we’re gonna need to do a much better job of selling it.

Joel Fleming weighs in on a similar remark later in the “opinion” column, (we can use scare quotes, too, Linda), that “Canada’s gutsy refusal to go along was the right move – and one that, incidentally, will win us higher standing in the world.

Except “incidentally” isn’t really accurate, is it Linda? Why else would the title trumpet Canada’s newfound “respect”? International popularity was the primary factor in the decision, wasn’t it? This is what happens when you extend the Liberals trademark, poll-driven decision-making to foreign policy. Congratulations Canada – North Korea, Iran and Syria like us a lot more today.
Though I’m not sure you could call it “respect.”

To repeat something I’ve said earlier – Canada’s role in the world has been reduced to serving as a warning to the US.

In the event that you were convinced that Ralph Goodale announced major increases to military spending in the budget, allow Damian Brooks to disabuse you of that notion.

Ralph Goodale’s big day has come and gone, and the final numbers for the military are out in the open: $500 million dollars more in the DND budget than last year.

Of the 12.8 billion in increases “promised” in the budget, $11.7 B is 2 years in the future (beyond the likely mandate of this government) and 8 billion had already been announced.
A reader writes;

They took out $20 billion from the military over 10 years and $2 billion from the RCMP, CSIS and Customs and Immigration. So they took out $22 billion and are putting back $13 billion and they call that an increase??
The RCMP, CSIS and Customs and Immigrations (CBSA today) need at least 5000 officers. How many have been hired with this $8 billion. When the government talks about border security, they are lumping in infrastructure such as bridges roads, warehouses which should be coming out of public works not security. When they talk about speeding traffic across the border, that’s what they are talking about, not increasing security manpower. Meanwhile the media sleep after being thrown a PR budget document to talk about for a couple of days.

The report is in on the highly publicized shooting of an unarmed wounded Iraqi during the battle for Fallujah last November.

Military investigators have decided there is not enough evidence to bring formal charges against Marine who killed an unarmed Iraqi while his unit searched a Fallujah mosque, CBS reported on Wednesday.
The Marines entered the mosque last fall during an offensive aimed at clearing insurgents from Fallujah. They were seeking the source of insurgent gunfire and found several men wrapped in blankets on the mosque floor.
After what he reported as movement, a Marine fired at one of the men on the floor, killing him.
“The insurgents, it turned out, were unarmed,” CBS reported. “But investigators say the Iraqi the Marine thought he saw moving could have been going for a weapon.”
“At the very least, Navy legal experts believe the situation is ambiguous enough that no prosecutor could get a conviction,” the network reported.
Any decision on punishment within the Uniform Code of Military Justice was to be made by Marine commanders, CBS said.

Good news.
hat tip – Wizbang

A decent Toronto Star piece on the training of Iraq police cadets by Canadians, in Jordan. Not without the required reminders of how Canadians are specially gifted with cultural sensitivity, but when you can get anyone at the Star to contemplate both the design efficency and the inadequacy of a Glock, you have to give them a few points for effort.

The Motor City Madman is back from a trip to Iraq.

Well, it was a glorious celebration, particularly as life is good, bad, and ugly. It was the greatest of good, and it was the most gut-wrenching of bad and ugly, but the irrefutable conclusion is that good must hammer relentlessly – and good is hammering relentlessly – to eliminate the bad and the ugly, and the spirit, the soul, the attitude, the piss and vinegar, the fire, the passion, the American Dream firestorm of every man and woman of the Armed Forces, everybody in the Army, the Air Force, the Marines, the Navy, the Coast Guard, the National Guard, the cavalry, everywhere we went, playing acoustic guitars in some hell zone of a tent outside of Fallujah, sharing C-130s and Chinook helicopters with flag-draped coffins, it was an intense – I believe – y’know, I’m a pretty intense guy anyhow, but I’ve never witnessed nor felt deep in my guts an intensity of confidence and certainty that was fortified there like never before in my life, that the whole world sucks but America sucks less, and the more America can get freedom and liberty and a hint of these God-given rights that are guaranteed in our Constitution and our Declaration and our Bill of Rights – the more that we can bring that to people, the better chance they have of having a quality of life – most of them for the first time in their lives, so my spirit is soaring on eagle wings right now, and it’ll never come down because of that experience.

(Hat Tip – Bill at INDC.)
updated Some Iraqis are getting in on the spirit.

The Iraqi police have investigated a case in the village of al-Mudhariya, which is just south of Baghdad. The villagers there say that before the election insurgents came and warned them that if they voted in last weekend’s election, they would pay.
Now the people of this mixed village of Sunni and Shia Muslims, they ignored the threat and they did turn out to vote.
We understand that last night the insurgents came back to punish the people of al- Mudhariya, but instead of metering out that punishment the villagers fought back and they killed five of the insurgents and wounded eight. They then burnt the insurgents’ car. So the people of that village have certainly had enough of the insurgents.

More photos from a friend serving in Afghanistan.

Had an email from a friend that mentioned they did not see any women in my pictures. Yes there are women there. The men are the ones that run the market and do most of the ‘shopping/bartering’, but not all of it. Most women were a blue berka there. I was told the color is for the region in which they live. Blue was Kabul, green Kandahar, and there was also an orange.

A group of young girls. There are more photos at at this directory.

This lesson is about IED or UXO. As you know the military has a million acronyms and abbreviations for things. Unfortunately I do not remember the exact wording for these, but it has to do with explosive devices.

When we first arrived at camp, we had a AAG briefing. Another abbreviation that escapes me at the moment, but it was basically a briefing on what to do and not to do while there. One part of the briefing was devoted to mines. I know there are a lot in the area, but I honestly did not know how many until I left the camp. There are mines and unexploded shells/casings everywhere. Yes and lots of ‘accidents’. Lots of locals with only one leg or missing fingers/hand. We were told, that the locals scavage everything. So if we saw say an old tank or vehicle in one piece, not to go near it, as it was likely booby trapped.
There is a picture of mine clearers. They have been hired to move across areas of fields and remove or detonate the ammo.
Another of the pictures shows you white/red rocks. At first when clearing areas, they put up wooden signs to explain the state of the area. Of course the locals being the scavangers they are, the wood signs disappeared. So another way had to be found. Since rocks are in abundance they used painted rocks. The rocks are white and red. You can walk between white rocks, but the red side means the area has not been cleared or there are mines there.

(links fixed now).

You have been busy. I caught the postcards from Afghanistan on your blog as well as the comments. Here are a few more pictures of the progress that is going on. The one guy was right. There are a lot of smiling faces. They love to have their pictures taken. I was riding air sentry in the rear of the bison, while taking some pictures. We never travel alone. We have the bison, plus at least one other vehicle, in this case a SUV. No one is allowed to come between the bison and SUV. It was my job to make sure of that and monitor any one moving close to the bison. A big concern was the possiblilty of magnet bombs being attached to the bison. Most of the people we encountered were happy to see us and gave us the thumbs up sign, but I later found out the thumbs up has ‘another’ meaning there. lol
Anyway, while taking pictures one day. A taxi driver saw me and wanted his picture taken. He followed us half way through the city gesturing for me to take his picture. Finally he moved on.
These people are working hard to restore what they once had. In the short time I was there, I could see the progress being made. You see them making bricks and hauling bricks. There is a photo attached of a building, half destroyed, yet half has been reframed and bricked in. There are people living in it. Unfortunately as in any culture of people, there are those who try to improve and those who could care less. In the middle of the market areas the stench is unbelievable. There is a trench that runs parallel to the road everywhere. It is filled most times with raw sewage, right next to the vendors carts. There was also a huge pile of garbage between some carts. I am talking, taller pile than a man. Yet down aways there are people with shovels, shovelling out the garbage and hauling it away in wheelbarrels, so that water can drain properly.
Another of the attached photos shows a picture of the stone houses built up the side of the mountain. If they build on the mountainside, they do not have to pay tax. Some of those houses are a long ways up. You can see the graves in the forground. I meant to ask our linguist about it, for they stick tree branches/poles into the ground and attach green pieces of cloth to it. Not sure why green. I will ask once I am back at work.

There are full sized versions of these, plus other photos, at this directory.

“Award Winning” journalist Seymour Hersh;

“The secret Pentagon missions have been going on in Iran at least since last summer with the goal of identifying target information for three dozen or more suspected ow – OWW! yeeeOOOWWW !! YEEEEOOOOWWW!!!..”.

Yes there are some beautiful beautiful sights. I was looking across at the King’s palace with Kabul in the background. The houses could be seen part way up the mountain. The mountains with their snow cover. I was going to go get my camera…………….again, but I did not think I could quite capture that scene. It was awesome. In a city of destruction, there is that beauty. I have pictures of the other side too. The mess, the garbage in huge piles along city streets. Buildings partially in ruin and people living in the other side. The mass confusiion that is the everyday life.
The first time I went to Kabul, I was amazed. The driving is out of this world. There is a road, but no ‘your side or my side’. You will have three or more rows of cars in one direction. Not even even rows, with no room for anyone to come in the opposite side. Signal lights are unhead of, but the horns are blaring everywhere. There figure that is how to change lanes or let someone know they are moving into your lane. Most of the cars are painted yelllow. When the new regiment took over, they said no one but taxis were allowed to be on the road, so everyone painted their cars yellow and called themselves taxis. One of these taxis will slow down or stop, anywhere. They don’t even think of pulling over, and people jump in or out.
The cars/buses/vans are packed at times. I have seen people sitting in the trunk, sitting on the roofs, or laying across people in a vehicle. On buses/vans it is nothing to see people hanging out the door. It is funny to see. I might also mention that some vehicles have the steering on the right
and others on the left, there is no rhyme or reason to anything here. I think I managed to capture a few pictures of the things I mentioned. They are in my bag at the moment. And I have gotten another email saying I am leaving tomorrow to another camp, before I go home.

(From a friend in the Canadian Armed Forces)

Canadians are doing our nation proud on the field of battle.

Maj. Gen. Walter Natynczyk, once Commanding Officer of the Royal Canadian Dragoons, is now deputy commander of the U.S. Army’s III Corps …. at 138,000 troops, is roughly seven times as large as the whole Canadian army. No Canadian general since WWII has commanded so many troops in a combat zone.

In Iraq.
Via Bill Strong

This is disappointing, but I suspect his readers will understand.

Many have asked what I’ll be doing and where I’ll be living and all that- the truth is I just don’t know. I’m sure I’ll find something great out there, but it’s really not something that anybody needs to be concerned about. As I’ve said before, this blog was never meant to be about me (today is just an anomoly)- it’s supposed to be about the troops who are deployed, who have been deployed, and those who will be deployed. If I can use my combat experience and things I’ve learned on Active Duty to help debunk fascist mythos or help people understand what’s going on over here, then I’m honored to do so. Mostly because I know that it will ultimately help those who chose to answer the call- as well as those who care enough to support them.
Thanks to all of you for making this last “mini-deployment” so much more enjoyable (and rewarding) than it otherwise would have been…

Don’t stay away too long, Citizen 2Slick.

From a recent arrival to Camp Julien, Afghanistan.

It is a well organized camp. We work, eat, sleep, shower, all in tents. The sleeping quarters area is down a flight of stairs into a lower area. The tents are all in rows…………tent city. Each large tent is set apart by a concrete bunker around it. When you go in the door it appears almost like a hall with canvass walls. There are 8 people per tent unit. Each has their own ‘cubicle’. The cubicles are made of canvass with a zippered door. Nobody uses the zipper though, because it is very iratating to hear a zipper open and close each time someone has to go to the bathroom. We have hung up blankets or rugs instead, gotten at a bargan from the market. The cubicles are large enough to comfortable contain your cot with a mattress and a couple of barrack boxes. Some of the people who have been here for the whole ROTO have given there area a personal touch. The woman I replaced has shelves. There is an availability of wood here, and no shortage of talent. The guys built here a couple of ‘book shelf’ units to hold clothes and such. Each of us has a light and power supply. There are lots of TVs and DVDs here.
A word about DVDs and CDs. That is a hot item here. There is a large business in bootleg discs. You can by up to 5 movies burnt on a disc for as little as 2.50 US. Even all the movies still in the theatres are out there. They record them from the movie theatres or find stolen copies of to bootleg.
The bathroom is another story. From the outside it almost appears like a sea cargo container with tented sides opened out. Inside on the right is 5 stainless steel toilets up on pedestals. You step up into the toilet area and close the canvas curtain behind you. There is very little room. Your knees touch the canvas. There are 5 showers on the otherside. The bathrooms are cleaned once a day by a cleaning staff. They do an excellent job of it.
One other thing I am greatly impressed by, is the laundry facilities. If you take your laundry in before 1100 to the laundry tent, it will be ready for you the next day by 1300. It is returned bagged and folded. Laundry is sent out to be done. It is so nice and clean. Gone are the days of sitting for 6 to 8 hours on the ship to do laundry and fighting for a washer or dryer. Then getting your clothes out smelling like jet fuel.
Right now I am not impressed with the weather. The other night it rained all night and turned to slush by morning. It snowed/rained all the next day. We now have rivers and lakes in the camp. This is reeking havoc with the power. Our sleeping area/bathrooms had power problems for the last few days. Power is on and off. It gets bloody cold in those tents with no heat.
There you go. A little taste of life in the fast lane.

Laurie Hawn reveals how the gutting of the Canadian military has resulted in an inability to move the manpower and equipment most needed during natural disasters. “We can’t get there from here”;

What the devastated area really needs is our capability to deal with such emergencies with direct medical aid and other life saving requirements, such as potable water. We have that capability standing by in the Canadian Forces Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART), but we just can’t get there from here. The reason for that is that we have lost our capability to deploy such an asset by sea or air in a timely manner.
Our strategic sealift capability resides in three overtasked supply ships, in need of replacement, and smaller-sized and equally overtasked warships, not designed to haul equipment and supplies. With the Navy’s shortage of personnel and existing deployments of ships, timeliness would be a major handicap in addressing the short-term requirements.
The capability of the Air Force to reliably deploy in an emergency situation has gone the way of the serviceability of our C-130 Hercules fleet, that is straight downhill with age and overuse. We will use what Hercs and Airbuses are available to send equipment and supplies, but it will be on a catch-as-catch-can basis. To commit to sending DART would require a carefully planned operation and a large number of serviceable C- 130s to conduct it in a timely manner. The emergency operational planning is a no-brainer for the tremendously capable people we have in uniform. The expectation of a large number of C-130 missions without embarrassing breakdowns is another question. We’ve been there before and that just might be the real reason behind the slow/non-existent response with DART. We don’t want to risk looking like the international weaklings that we have become.

And we had better hope that a similar catastrophe doesn’t strike in Canada – the Armed Forces would be hard pressed to move large volumes of equipment and supplies by road, if the convoy of vintage transport vehicles I passed near Regina on Monday is any indication. They were parked on the shoulder, stalled by a breakdown of one of the trucks.

A friend who is serving in the Canadian Armed Forces is currently in Afghanistan and sends this photo of Camp Julien.

Lots of stories to tell. I have used two disposable camera. I did not want to bring my digital camera here, since I had heard so many stories. Next time. I am going to download a disk of pictures the guys took here. The sights are unbelievable. How the people live. We are situated between the King’s and Queen’s palaces. “

update – This panoramic view was sent by another reader. Very cool. (And very wide)

A little Iraqi girl with a teddy bear stops a US Marine convoy in its tracks.
Via 2Slick. More on Operation Give here .

Against the backdrop of Paul Martin squelching hope in the cattle industry, the MSM has been reporting a “failed” test of the missile defense shield. From Powerline this background information;

The Reuters report by Jim Wolf of a failed missile defense test last night is flawed by either intent or ignorance.

The first test in nearly two years of a multibillion-dollar U.S. anti-missile shield failed on Wednesday when the interceptor missile shut down as it prepared to launch in the central Pacific, the Pentagon said.

The interceptor missile did not shut down because of some malfunction, it was shut down intentionally because of inability to monitor performance of a boost stage rocket detected during pre-launch system checks. The boost stage might have been set to work properly or it might not have, but a test of this magnitude and expense demands ability to monitor all mission critical systems so that all necessary data is available for post-mission review. When it became clear that this would not be the case, the mission was scrubbed, not failed.
[…]
The MSM will continue to denounce missile defense as impossible–I think they’ve given up on the argument that it would be “destabilizing”–right up to the moment when it is successfully deployed.

That’s the usual pattern.

If there were any lingering doubt about the success of the battle of Fallujah,
this news item should dispel it.

“Rabies, and standing water, are our most immediate concerns,” said Captain Dennis Staggs, a surgeon with the 1st Marine Exepditionary Force (MEF), adding that among a host of measures suggested to head off a health crisis, medical officers said feral animals should be cleared from the city.
“If you consider the entire public health situation, with nobody in town, there’s no public health crisis, and if it is prepared correctly there won’t be a health crisis,” Staggs said Wednesday.
Standing by his humvee last week in northern Fallujah, marine Lance Corporal Will Lathrop of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit said, “The problem has gotten bad enough that there’s actually an order for this,” referring to a command issued recently to deal with Fallujah’s feral animals.
[…]
A gunnery sergeant stalked past the convoy, tersely ordering his executioners to put on surgical gloves before handling the dead animals, his mouth pulled into the tight grimace of a man trying to finish the job before him as quickly as possible.
“This is hard on these guys, especially killing the dogs. But these animals have been eating dead bodies. They can spread disease,” said Lieutenant Aaron Brown, grimly reciting the toll for the day — several cats and at least one dog.

PETA is going to be all over this…. though I suspect they’ll stop short of calling up human shields.
(I’ve corrected my oversight and provided the link – so the reference to PETA takes on more significance…)