Manley Whines

On Don Newman's Politics show yesterday Newman interviewed John Manley about his recommendations to the Harprocrites about Afghanistan.Manley complained, predictably, about media coverage of the war. His example was interesting he said a press conference had been set up to show the success of a CIDA program in Kabul, but it happened the same day another Canadian soldier had been killed. He complained that this good news story then got lost while the media covered the soldiers death, his ramp ceremony and his return to Canada.

Now I won't comment on the callousness of this example. Rather I found it interesting that the good news story was Kabul, not Kandahar. We are doing little PRT work in Kandahar, mostly it is support for infrastructure needed for the troops.

Our real aid work is still occurring in the North in Kabul. So why are we in the south. Manley undermines his argument for Harpers War in the South. Instead the NDP is proven right again, we need to withdraw our troops from counter insurgency operations and move them back to the North, to defend the PRT projects that are really what we should be doing. And of course backing the malleable Karzai government in its attempts to come to a peace agreement with the Taliban and Pashtun war lords.

Mullah Naqib shakes hands with Prime Minister Stephen Harper in March, less than two months after the Kandahar elder helped free the main suspect in Glyn Berry’s death.


SEE:

Surprise

Don't Bother Writing Us

Rogues Gallery

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Canada, government, Conservatives, Harper, Mulroney, Prime Minister
Jake Epp, Pamela Wallin, John Manley, Paul Tellier, Derek Burney, Afghanistan
DND, Canada, Afghanistan, recruitment, Armed, Forces, CF,

Harpers War Costs More Lives

Harpers War; the body count has increased to 65

And it's a land mine by any other name that killed them. And the reason was that they were traveling in a 'light armoured vehicle' an ATV by any other name.

And as per usual the Afghani killed remains unnamed. As if he was just a bystander in the war.

Nov 19, 2007 05:32 PM

THE CANADIAN PRESS

MONTREAL – The family of a Quebec soldier who died in battle in Afghanistan says he was committed to making a difference in this world.

Cpl. Nicolas Raymond Beauchamp, 28, of the 5th Field Ambulance of CFB Valcartier, was killed on Saturday when his light armoured vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

Pte. Michel Levesque, 25, of the Royal 22nd Regiment – also known as the Van Doos – was also killed in the blast, as was an Afghan interpreter.

SEE

Clarification

Harpers Body Count

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,

Hidden Costs of Harpers War

The Harper government does not release the numbers of Canadians wounded in Kandahar.

Now most injuries not reported

A new policy has clearly emerged. Deaths are still reported but injuries are not, unless one of two scenarios exists. The first is if the injury is so severe, it may very well result in death. The second is if journalists already know about it. If a journalist happens to be in a convoy that is hit and sees the injury, they’ll obviously know about it.

Injuries are increasingly frequent these days. As many as four roadside bomb strikes happen each week. Soldiers are being injured in the process, some of them seriously. Some of them will lose limbs. Others will have their lives irreparably damaged. We won’t know. Whether we should know is another question.

So what’s changed? There is the argument that politicians — fearing a further loss of public support for this mission — don’t want to reveal the true number of injuries. Another school of thought is that the injuries have become so routine, the military doesn’t view them as a “new development” and thus not newsworthy (or publicly releasable). A final argument is that there is now so much violence, the deployed soldiers’ would prefer to reduce the publication of bad news that will further worry their families back in Canada.

As the medevac crew was launched on one medical mission after another, we repeatedly saw Canadian soldiers being loaded and unloaded.

The point is this: soldiers have died in this place, but many more have been injured. The United States, which is engaged in its own largely unpopular war in Iraq, still releases injury statistics. Canada does not.

The long term impact of this war is veterans returning with post combat syndrome. Once upon a time it was called battle fatigue, and those who suffered from it were often summarily executed in the field during WWI. We have come a long way since then. Hardly it remains a hidden injury of war and like other injuries occurring to our troops it is to be covered up from the public according to the Harpocrites.

Nearly 400 of 2,700 Canadian soldiers who have served in Kandahar province might have come home with mental health problems, according to a report by the office responsible for the health of deployed troops.

The heavy toll that the war in Afghanistan has taken on the minds and bodies of Canadian troops has been revealed in data, documents and interviews provided by the Canadian Expeditionary Force Command.

In addition to the 63 Canadian soldiers who have been killed in Afghanistan since February 2006, 243 have been wounded, according to the data.

Waiting lists are stretching from a few weeks to months for Manitoba soldiers seeking psychological help, say officials at a Winnipeg clinic.

Referrals from the Canadian Forces are up 78 per cent over last year, officials at the Operational Stress Injury Clinic in Winnipeg said Friday.

Operational Stress, sometimes known as combat stress, is the term used to describe any persistent psychological problem resulting from military service, including post-traumatic stress disorder.

SEE:

Harpers War Costs Another Canadian Life

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War



Job Protection for

Canadian Reservists

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,

Harpers War Costs Another Canadian Life

Harpers War

Body Count: 63

71 Canadian soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan since 2002. True but the vast majority have been killed since March 2006 when it became Harpers War.

And we still don't have an accurate total count of troops who are injured. That has not been released by the Department of Defense.


SEE:

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War





Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,

Narco Politics

The British alternative is what? More civilian deaths from air strikes?

British diplomat opposes legalized Afghan poppy crop

Britain’s top diplomat in Canada has dismissed a poll, commissioned by the international think-tank that is championing the legalization of Afghanistan’s contentious opium poppy crop, which shows that Canadians overwhelmingly support for the use of Afghan opium for medicinal purposes.

Cary was responding to the release of an Ipsos Reid survey of 1,000 Canadians, conducted on behalf of the Senlis Council, which found that nearly eight in 10 Canadians (79 per cent) want Prime Minister Stephen Harper to get behind an international pilot project that would help transform Afghanistan’s illicit opium cultivation into a legal source for codeine, morphine and other legitimate pain medications for the international market.

Oh so you could do it just that after six years you don't have the infrastructure.....right-o that's why Harper sent our troops into the Opium Fields. The effectiveness of the Provincial Reconstruction Teams can be measured in opium production.

Cary noted that while opium production has been licensed in such places as Thailand and Turkey, it took 15 years to achieve such a system. Afghanistan simply lacks the infrastructure and regulatory framework to cultivate opium legally and to keep it out of the hands of drug dealers, he said.

And for the British who created this problem in the 19th Century in order to expand their Empire to be telling us they oppose legalization, well that is a bit rich isn't it. They have a history of creating infrastructure and regulations for opium production.

It was not until the British Empire started organizing and commercializing opium production in the 19th century that the opium poppy became entrenched in the world economy. The opium produced in British India was the first drug to become integrated into the then emerging globalization.

Tea, which was then only grown in China, was bought by British merchants with silver extracted from South American mines.

This triangular trade went on at least until the British Empire, together with the East India Company it had set up, created a thriving opium market in China, first through illegal smuggling and then through forced imports.

The two so-called “opium wars” (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) waged by the British to impose their opium trade onto China resulted in “unfair treaties” that not only made Hong Kong a British colony but also provoked, in China, the biggest addiction ever to happen in world history.

Chickens, home, roost.

And after all this is a British problem, which they created back then and again today in Afghanistan.

Britain is stoned at home and sold out in Helmand

The vast increase in opium poppy farming in Afghanistan is indicative of an inability to grasp a basic law of economics

The British government for sure knows how to do one thing. It knows how to help farmers in need. Since it arrived in Afghanistan in 2001 and was put in charge of the staple poppy crop, ministers have spent hundreds of millions of pounds on promoting it. On Monday the United Nations announced the result. Poppy production in Afghanistan has soared since the invasion, this year alone by 34%. The harvest in the British-occupied protectorate of Helmand rose by 50% in 12 months. This is a dazzling triumph for agricultural intervention.

Ministers may deny this was their policy, but they cannot be that inept. They faced a heroin epidemic at home. Suddenly finding themselves charged with controlling almost all the world's opium production, they must have known what they were doing. By alienating farmers and forcing them into the arms of the Taliban, they would drive up illicit production and encourage oversupply. While that would increase heroin consumption in Britain in the short term, as it has done, oversupply would eventually cause prices to collapse. At that point, the British policy of "poppy substitution" with wheat and other crops would start to bite and supply would be stifled. What happened when that stifling drove prices back up again was someone else's concern.

I cannot think of any less daft explanation for a policy that otherwise defies every law of economics. Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister responsible for flooding British streets with cheap heroin, may squabble with his American colleagues over whether poppy eradication is better than substitution, but one thing is certain. Since Nato arrived in Afghanistan, opium has become to the local economy what oil is to a Gulf state. It is roughly 60% of the domestic product and 90% of exports, with productivity per hectare rising by the year.

Those into conspiracy theories might be forgiven for thinking this might also be a policy of the CIA to destabilize Iran by increasing the number of heroin addicts in that country.

Despite US suspicions, Iran - which has one of the world's highest drug addiction rates - argues that it has legitimate interests in combating the influx of heroin and opiates from the poppy fields of Afghanistan. More than 3,000 Iranian police and security personnel have been killed in clashes with drug smugglers along the Afghan border since 1979.

Legalization would of course cure this problem by recognizing drug addiction as a medical problem, a curse of capitalism, rather than a crime.

The year 2009 will mark the centennial of the Shanghai Opium Conference, the first world-wide agreement on the reduction of opium use and production. China, then still an extremely poor feudal nation, was spending most of its foreign exchange on opium it imported through British traders. The British sold their cheap Indian Opium for pure silver to the Chinese, and had almost two centuries of opium fortune-making behind them. The fledgling United States of America tried to conquer a share of the profits in this lavish market, at a time when prohibitionist ideas about alcohol and opium control were expanding all over the globe. It was time for the American Disease to be born.

But don't expect support for that from Bush or Harper. They represent the traditional prohibitionist culture of social conservative Christians. The folks who oppose heroin legalization used to oppose the 'demon rum'.

In later analyses of the history of drug and alcohol controls other names for the American Disease have been coined. The most appropriate one, not tied to any nationality per se, is the 'Temperance Movement'. It was comprised of a collective of local movements prevalent in a group of nations. Later these nine nations would be identified as a special group, the nations where the temperance culture would endorse far reaching control policies in the attempt to regulate medical and recreational drugs. The global impact of these temperance cultures has varied from almost nothing to considerable.

Meanwhile it is telling that not only are Afhgani's the largest producers of opium they are also its victims.

Afghanistan is hooked on opium. The drugs trade has become the largest employer, its biggest export and the main source of income in a land devastated by decades of war. Opium is grown on 10 per cent of the farmland and employs 13 per cent of the population as labourers, guards and transport workers.

The ubiquity of the drug has now created the world's worst domestic drug problem, a crisis threatening to engulf any hope of economic revival. The first nationwide survey on drug use, by the Afghan Ministry of Counter-Narcotics and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, estimated that one million in this nation of 30 million were addicts, including 100,000 women and 60,000 children.

Defending the rights of Afghani women and children, the mantra of the Harpocrites used to justify their warmongering. And their war efforts have resulted in increased addictions amongst women and children. That surely is a measure of success of this mission.




SEE:

Two Canadians In Afghanistan

Say It Ain't So

Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
Afghanistan, War, Harper, Britain, UK, Canada, politics, military,
NATO, Helmand, drugs, heroin, opium, Iran, narcotics, addiction, opium war, Afghanistan, CIA, Narco Politics,

Le silence est d'or

Silence is Golden.

At his first Quebec appearance since two Quebec-based soldiers died in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper nearly completely refrained from commenting on the mission in the war-ravaged country. Harper, who didn't use the word "Afghanistan" in the speech, wouldn't answer reporters' questions afterwards.

The Right Honorable War Monger is embarrassed by pointed questions. And he should be. He can't answer this one.

The wife of slain Vandoo Mario Mercier has said she hopes
he's the last Canadian soldier to die in Afghanistan.

SEE:

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War





Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,


Tags
Canada
USA
War
Friendly Fire
Canadian Troops
Afghanistan
Kandahar
NATO

Clarification

 Christian was on afghan ground for a little over a month,
when his light armoured vehicle struck a land mine. 

The fact he is dead, and how he died, his vehicle hit a land mine (not and IED, not a Taliban roadside bomb, not a suicide bomber) is less important than getting his regimental colours right.

Final Van Doos soldiers head to Afghanistan
Funerals for Master Cpl. Christian Duchesne and Master Warrant Officer Mario Mercier will be held Friday, near Valcartier.

Department of National Defence

Aug 24, 2007 17:00 ET

DND: Not Only Vandoos

MONTREAL, QUEBEC--(Marketwire - Aug. 24, 2007) - To show respect to the majority of the military personnel currently deployed in Afghanistan, who work in collaboration, but are not part of the Royal 22e Regiment, we want to specify this fact and ask the media's cooperation regarding the diffusion of complete and fair information.

Master Corporal Christian Duchesne belonged to the 5th Field Ambulance, part of the 4th Health Service Group.

The Joint Task Force - Afghanistan (JTF-Afg) Rotation 4 deployed in the summer of 2007 is comprised of approximately 2300 soldiers representing many different professions in the Canadian Forces. The majority of those troops come from over fifty different units and regiments in Canada. A third of them actually belong to the Royal 22e Regiment. Even if the core of these men and women come from Valcartier, many also come from other regions of Quebec and the rest of Canada.

For the complete list of regiments and units comprised in the JTF-Afg, you may consult the following website: http://www.5gbmc.ca/spip.php?article557

SEE:

Kandahar

Afghanistan

War





Find blog posts, photos, events and more off-site about:
NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, NDP, liberals, Afghanistan, PB, BT, Canada, Progressivebloggers, bloggingtories, blogs, blogging, bringthetroopshome, Layton,NDP, Layton, TroopsOut, Afghanistan, War, Harper, Conservatives, Liberals, Canada, politics, military, NATO, peacekeeping, Karzai, Liberals, Canada, Soldiers, Death, Injury, Afghanistan, Government, Politics, values,


Tags
Canada
USA
War
Friendly Fire
Canadian Troops
Afghanistan
Kandahar
NATO