A link from Wretchard a few days ago alerted me to this very good site for background info from Iraq –

So to sum up, if I am Joe Insurgent in Fallujah, and have news access (probably via shortwave radio), I know that:

Bush has won a resounding victory

the British are united behind him and will participate in the attack against me

the Arab media will mainly be embedded with the Americans, and will give accurate stories of their prowess, not the dreck I feed them
All of these things have a psychological effect on the enemy combatants. If there is any chance at all for a peace settlement, the US’ blatant unity behind the president will further deepen existing discord between the sheiks and the foreign fighters.
I would put all of these events, together with the unrelenting airstrikes, under the battle phase of “shaping the battlefield,” wherein we have not yet committed ground troops, but it’s the next step, and we are doing all possible right down to the wire to make them successful.

Read the rest of the post at Adventures Of Chester if you have any intentions of watching/reading news about Fallujah in the coming days.

A few weeks ago I did artwork to assist fund-raising for the Fort Benning War Dog Memorial Help them out – go buy a t-shirt

added to the OTB Traffic Jam

Thanks to a tip from John MacLeod, a Shotgun reader, this detailed report on the rescue of HMCS Chicoutimi. He points out;

There were four surface vessels, plus twelve (12) Royal Navy and UK Helicopters assigned,for the most part EH101 “Merlin” aircraft. The Canadian Forces, through no fault could not launch 12 helicopters for an operation in one specific area The EH101 “Merlin” was the aircraft chosen by the Mulroney Government in 1993.

(And cancelled by Chretien.)
The Canadian forces website reports Petty Officer 2nd� class Denis Lafleur, 41, and and Master Seaman Archibald MacMaster, 41, are in stable condition and continue to improve. There’s also a small photo gallery.
update – Toronto Star has a hair-raising article on the ordeal.

In Canada, and in Afghanistan.

Carrolyn Parrish;

“We are no longer being towed by the coalition of the idiots.” the Liberal legislator told a small group of demonstrators. “Bastards…“

Left this morning around 7 for Calgary, and just got home an hour ago – 12 hours on the road, plus dicking around taking paperwork to customs, etc. Hence, a very quiet blogging day.
I used up most of my drive home raging at Paul Martin for the military penny pinching that has now cost a Canadian submariner his life. (*see note below)

“…He gave his life saving his country, and we pay him our profound respects and his family our deepest condolences.”

No, Mr. Martin, you insipid, unthinking, flaccid little man – he didn’t. He died trying to save his own life and that of his crewmates, because your government devoted more skill and effort to setting up secret funds to funnel money to Liberal ad agencies than it did ensuring that our military was provided with dependable, current equipment and supplies.
You converted our once proud armed forces into an international joke that was never funny. And once again, it’s turned tragic.
May you sleep as restlessly tonight as are the stranded men in the North Atlantic.
Update Oct. 7 – a second sailor is now in critical condiiton
[*Something strange has gone on at that link. The google cache displayed the quote above – yet it does not appear in the text of the report. Airbrushing by the National Post? CNN has it.]

As details begin to trickle in about the emergency in the North Atlantic, people all over the world are asking themselves the same question – Canada has a submarine?
backdate: It’s not a torpedo malfunction.

It was inevitable, I suppose. The Canadian Armed Forces has been infected by the loathing and envy of the country they represent.

Hailed as heroes in early 2002 by the U.S. military, the six Canadian marksmen were later given highly coveted Bronze Star medals – awards normally reserved for American soldiers who display extraordinary heroism during combat.
However, sources close to the investigation say the snipers were treated with much less than high regard when they returned to their Canadian bases, both in Afghanistan and back home.
“They were treated as outsiders and sort of turncoats,” said one source who didn’t want to be identified.
“At least three of these guys have since quit the army over their treatment.”

Hat Tip – Damian Penny
Background here.

If I am able to get out of the Reserves later this year, I am thinking about the idea of re-upping. However not in the Reserves, I am thinking of joining a Special Forces Group that is near me. However that entails joining the National Guard.
[…]
I know my resource can be used to help people.
My wife came to me after and asked me if I watched the video. I acknowledged her and she said: “You should just go, why don’t you go back and help those people. Make it so people don’t have to get killed anymore!” I just looked back at her and felt a sense of peace that I could go again and she would be ok. She would be ok because she knew I was helping people. She knows the consequences but yet she knows that no matter what, I would be helping, even if it was one person from not getting killed like that again.
So folks, with that said. I have placed a call with the person I would need to talk to.
Some people go through their entire life to try and find the reason for their existence. It was in that instance yesterday that I knew what mine was.

While Canadian MP’s serve up insults to feed their Amerihate voter base, serious adults are examining the emerging nuclear threat from Iran.

AFP: Sep 05, 2004 — A key component of national missile defense, whose development is receiving priority this year, is likely to strategically tie the United States to Iraq, Afghanistan and some of the authoritarian former Soviet republics, requiring permanent US military bases there, according to officials and scientists involved in the project. “It raises issues of basing it in places like Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Iraq or the Caspian Sea,” the Rhode Island senator (Jack Reed) told AFP. “And that introduces geopolitical considerations.”
While key variables remain unknown, experts agree that if Iran, as expected, produces an intercontinental ballistic missile sometime within the next decade, the United States will not be able to counter it just from ships patrolling the Gulf. “Discussions are underway with international partners on ways in which they may be able to cooperate,” replied a defense official when asked whether the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan had already been approached.

Wretchard:

Through much of the Cold War the expected missile trajectory would have followed the Polar Route, arcing over Canada into Continental United States. This is no different. What has changed is that Iranian missiles start out a little further south than their Cold War Soviet counterparts. A published analysis of BPI [boost phase interceptors] systems by the Congressional Budget Office concludes that an effective intercept would have to take place about 1,500 km (1,000 miles) from the launch point, in the first 320 seconds from firing. The physics requires that BPI engagements occur over Central Asia.

Via Command Post;

Experts might debate exactly how much water there is in the Iraqi glass, but there is little doubt that – yet again – while the cameras and microphones were pointing towards the carnage, violence and corruption, Iraq has continued its slow and steady march out of its three-decades long nightmare into a much more normal tomorrow. Below are some of the positive developments and good news stories of the past fortnight that for most part received very little media attention. It’s a pity because the story of “Iraq, the phoenix rising from the ashes” is in many ways a lot more interesting, not to say consequential, than the usual steady media diet of “Iraq, the Wild East.”

Read the rest of Arthur Chernkoff’s Opinionjournal.com piece for the “rest of the story” on Iraq.

Checking my entry pages a while ago (traffic is up with the swift boat vet contraversy) I noticed that this post on the blog “My War” was recieving a lot of hits.
So I checked over there. His blog has been wiped clean and only a cryptic quote remains as a clue as to what’s going on.

“Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?” -last words Johnny Rotten spit onstage at the Sex Pistols last gig in 1978.

I hope the condition is temporary. And beaurocratic.
I’ve saved a copy of the blog’s content from the Google cache, for my own use. Perhaps I’ll mirror it somewhere, but I think I’ll wait to see if there’s more to the story before I do.
update – An explanation.
I won’t mirror the content, in light of the reasons he pulled it. And hopefully, others will respect his privacy more than these idiots at NPR.

In followup to comments on this post on UN Flight 51, shot down by Syria in 1974, I recieved this link to a DHC-5 Buffalo restoration underway at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum. The current status;

Reconstruction of the nose is essentially complete thanks to the donation of a radome by Aero Support Canada Inc. A shipping container with unairworthy parts is on its way from DAC’s African operations and is expected on the project site within two months. When we acquite main gear, we will be able to begin assembly of major parts (wings, tail, etc.) to the fuselage.

Check out the photos and the Flightlines article.

Countries around the globe are assisting Russia in dismantling their leaky and dangerous Soviet-era submarines. Canada has signed up to decommission 12.

“Spent nuclear fuel in Russian submarine reactors presents an international security risk and an environmental threat to the Arctic and Barents Sea,” said Mr. Pettigrew. “Funding this initiative is a key element of our international security agenda and a high priority for Canada under the G8 Global Partnership announced at Kananaskis.” Russia currently has 56 retired nuclear submarines in the Barents Sea region awaiting disposal. Canada’s contribution will be to assist with the dismantlement of three Victor class nuclear submarines. Canada will be concluding at least three more similar annual agreements to support the dismantlement of 12 submarines at a total cost of approximately $116 million .

In response, Russian officials announced that in the spirit of co-operation, a reciprocal pledge;

“Canada’s Sea King helicopters have been a danger to their crews and an unacceptable drain on Canada’s attempts to restore their military capabilities.
Today, we announce funding for the retirement of 10 of these ancient helicopters at a total cost of $1256 (Cdn funds). This investment will purchase the fuel required to launch the sputtering death traps into the air long enough to crash safely into deep ocean waters off the coast of New Brunswick.

Soldiers of the Great War – still returning home;

ROME – The bodies of three Austrian soldiers killed in World War One have been found frozen and almost perfectly preserved in an Italian Alpine glacier.
Mountain rescue worker Maurizio Vicenzi discovered the mummified bodies on Friday, encased upside down in ice at 11,940 feet altitude on San Matteo mountain near the Swiss and Austrian borders.

Let’s hope they just identify them, take them home, and bury them honourably, without a detour to someone’s lab.

Canadian Military Exercises: not just an old oxymoron joke.
According to CBC television news this evening, the largest ever navy, air force and army exercise to “boost Canadian sovereignty” in the Canadian north has three tasks on the order paper:
a) Locate a fictional crashed satellite
b) Find and escort 4 unauthorized scientists (also looking for the satellite) from the area.
c) Rescue a stranded cruise ship
Well, and wait for parts to come in to repair the Sea King. (“Not an exercise. I repeat, this is not an exercise”)

On his recent visit to the northern territories, Prime Minister Paul Martin said exercises like Narwhal are important “to make sure that the rest of the world understands that this is Canadian territory.”

Unauthorized debris and unarmed civilians take note.

Damian Brooks reminds us that today is the anniversary of the ill-fated raid on Dieppe.

On August 19, 1942, 6,100 men landed on the beaches of Dieppe, France for a raid against German positions. 5,000 of these troops were Canadians, the remainder being British Commandos and 50 American Rangers. The raid was supported by eight Allied destroyers and 74 Allied air squadrons (eight belonging to the RCAF).
The raid was not an unqualified success.

The rest is here.

CBFTW:

I was on page 92, the part where Orwell was frantically chasing down a fascist with a bayonet fixed to the end of his rifle. Read for a bit, then when we got to the area where we thought was the point of orgin for those fired mortars, I stopped reading and bookmarked my place in the book, and we dismounted in this really third world area of Mosul that had this really bad stench of rotten milk lingering in the air. Tons of trash littered all over the place, and a bunch of cows and stray chickens roaming around freely. Lots of little kids also came out of nowhere to stare at us. We talked to some of the locals to see if they saw or seen anything. Then something happened, and well all raced back onto our vehicle and burned rubber outta there. And we were now in hot pursuit of these mad mortar men the same way a cop races to an armed robber call in his police car. I opened up my book and continued to read. That fascist, that Orwell was chasing down with a bayonet fixed rifle, got away from him, and I was now at the part where Orwell injured some guys with a grenade of sorts, and was ready to kick some serious ass, when all the sudden we stopped suddenly, and I had to close the book back up because the back ramp dropped and we were told to dismount.

The rest here.

Bill Hobbs has a listing of photo galleries from soldiers in Iraq.

A “Summer Pulse 04” update?

While it is certainly true that the Pentagon plans for a wide variety of scenarios on a routine basis, the confluence of so many of them based on a conflict with China — during a time when the nation is engaged in a global war against Islamic terrorists and spread very thin by major combat deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, is quite noteworthy.

Go read James Joyner’s Tech Central Station article “The Dragon Stirs
When and if the Taiwan – Chinese situation boils over into full fledged crisis, the critics in the media are going to accuse Bush-Rumsfeld of being asleep at the wheel. That, my friends, will be something called “projection”.
Update – speaking of under-reporting, Wretchard has been following the situation in the Phillipines.

The scene is now set for a possible resurgence of fighting. A glance at the map dramatically illustrates the bind that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and the Philippine Government have worked themselves into. For the first time in a century, Muslim rebels have established themselves in force on the Mindanao mainland, away from their traditional strongholds of Sulu, Basilan and Tawi-tawi, island groups in the southwest corner of the archipelago. They are positioned on the west side of Mindanao’s breadbasket, the Cotabato valley. The MILF camps guard the the approaches to mountain massifs to the west which then give on the sea, their line of supply. They isolate the predominantly Christian Zamboanga peninsula from Northern Mindanao and essentially cut the huge island in two. The Armed Forces of the Philippines, despite a nominal strength of ten divisions, has very little combat power. A lack of logistical support and ammunition stockpiles means that (Belmont Club estimate) it can sustain offensive operations with only two battalions for a period of 12 weeks after which it simply runs out of everything. Thus, Manila has long lacked an offensive option against the MILF and has tried to compensate by “peace talks”, which are another name for appeasement.

Meanwhile, on CTV national news last night; Canadians were alerted to this breaking news in a report by Ellen Pinchuk, in Moscow.