Harpers War Body Count Reaches 100

3 Canadian soldiers killed in Afghanistan, death toll now at 100 and he insists on staying till 2011 three more years of wasted human lives and taxpayers money. To date since Stephen Harper decided to aggresively pursue the use of CanadianArmed Forces as counter insurgency forces in Kandahar 90 Canadian Armed Forces personnel have died.

Canada's role in the invasion of Afghanistan, as an active combatant in operations against the Taliban and other insurgents in southern Afghanistan, has produced the largest number of fatal casualties for any single Canadian military mission since the 25th Canadian Brigade served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953.

This does not include non-combatant Canadian civilians who have died in Afghanistan because of Harpers War.

2 Canadian aid workers killed in roadside ambush in Afghanistan

And while lists of Canadians killed in Afghanistan usually include all of the miliatry personnel killed the two aid workers are not always listed as causulties and the first non-government non-military civiilan killed in Afghanistan in July 2006, is always forgotten as a victim of Harpers War....

Afghanistan's ambassador to Canada says millions will remember Mike Frastacky, a Vancouver carpenter who returned to their country year after year to build a school for young children, only to be shot.

Remember we are fighting for schools and children especially girls in Afghanistan, but the guy who built them and got killed for it gets forgotten.

Oh the Harpocrsy of it all.

SEE:
Mayor Of Kabul Says Get Out

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NHL The New Taliban?

Well one could be forgiven for thinking so considering this headline.....

Ex-NHLers square off with troops in Kandahar

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Dog Fighting In Afghanistan.

Our troops are fighting in Afghanistan to defend abuse of women, children and now animals.

Assignment Kandahar: Dog Fights, then a Bloodbath
A suicide bomber killed scores of Afghans attending a dog fighting "festival" being held just outside the city.

There is no official word if the suicide bomber was a member of PETA.

No report on the number of dogs killed.

And apparently the bodyguards were responsible for as many deaths as the suicide bomber.

Men and boys were enjoying picnics or watching dog and cock fights when the blast happened. Six children and thirteen auxiliary policemen were among the dead. Many of the wounded were critically injured and the death toll was expected to rise. Witnesses claimed panicking bodyguards fired wildly after the explosion, hitting dazed survivors.

Faizullah Qar Gar, a resident of Kandahar who was at the dog fight, said the militant commanders' bodyguards opened fire on the crowd after the bombing.

"In my mind there were no Taliban to attack after the blast but the bodyguards were shooting anyway," he said.

And let's remember that in North America dog fighting is illegal and will get you kicked out of the NFL and put in jail. But in Kandahar, well it's a 'tradition', gee just like Burka's and boy brides.. Still haven't got rid of those either in liberated Afghanistan.

Ironically , like opium production, dog fighting was banned by the nasty Taleban.

Dog-fighting competitions, which were banned under the Taleban regime, are a popular pastime in Afghanistan.

Can you say medieval patriarchal society? The enemies of my enemy may not be any better....





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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

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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

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Fight Or Else

Under the Liberals the Canadian Armed Forces were a peacekeeping force. They attracted young unemployed Maritimer's with the promise of careers and job skills. Their recruitment drives emphasized the Canadian Armed Forces non combat role in solving crisis's. Recruitment focused on jobs training, career and used humanistic slogan; No Life Like It . These have been replaced by Harpers war mongering slogan; We Fight.

But unfortunately some folks who joined do not want to fight in Harpers war. They wanted a job.

The Canadian military has released several soldiers after they claimed conscientious objection to serving in wartorn Afghanistan, according to internal records from the National Defence department.

Steve Staples, director of the Rideau Institute, said some are enticed by flashy ads, the prospect of steady employment or the chance to help out fellow Canadians in emergencies. He believes the Canadian Forces should find other roles for those who don't want to fight in Afghanistan.

"They thought they were signing up to help Canada, not fight someone else's war in the Middle East," he said.

Scott Taylor, a former soldier who now publishes Esprit de Corps magazine, said some resist deployment because they aren't psychologically or physically ready for combat or because they get cold feet.

Many signed up to learn a trade or because they thought it would be an adventurous career path -- not to fight a war.

"There was a long time when unless you were in the infantry, you wouldn't be doing any front-line stuff where there might be some danger," he said. "So it was kind of like a lifetime of training for a war you never thought was going to happen."

Employee turnover and loyalty pose serious problems for employers of all stripes. Stress, age or other factors including opportunities for more appealing, better paid work elsewhere have valued and highly skilled people changing jobs at an unprecedented rate.

Imagine the problem the Canadian military faces in keeping its well-trained force together. More soldiers are leaving than in the past.

The reason is evident: the work is hard and the pay doesn't always compare well to what can be earned in the private sector. Despite the fact that recruitment is up, the current attrition rate is hard to accommodate, especially in the Afghan mission.

This is particularly true of our Reservists who have regular lives and joined to be part of an armed forces more interested in peacekeeping and solving humanitarian crises. Now as we run out of regular forces for combat they are being relied upon more and more to fill the gaps in Harpers War. Unfortunately when they return from active duty still do not have their jobs assured them. They have to fight to get their jobs back.

Which is why the petition below is so important to support ,as is support for NDP MP Dawn Black's private members bill.

Black wants to make sure soldiers have jobs at home

While the government talks about helping the reservists the NDP is doing something.

The Conservatives’ Throne Speech promised to look at the issue by consulting with the provinces. However, such consultation is simply unnecessary and is a delaying tactic.

“In January this year, I visited Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan and met reservists from across Canada. Many of them told me that they were unsure whether their jobs would still be waiting for them when their service was completed,” said Black. “Nobody should have to worry about being unemployed because they’ve chosen to represent Canada overseas.”

Job Protection for

Canadian Reservists

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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

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Mr. Dithers Accidental War

In a damning indictment of why the Liberals are still dithering over Canada's combat mission in Kandahar, ex-PM Jean Chretien in his new autobiography lays the blame at the feet of Mr. Dithers.

As for Afghanistan, Chretien suggests that Martin is partly to blame for casualties because he "took too long to make up his mind" about Canada's role, and troops ended up being sent "to the killing fields around Kandahar."

Which I have pointed out here and here and here and here.

Martin's Liberal government got us into combat in Kandahar because they were so busy with maintaining their minority government which was about to fall. As Chretien points out our peacekeeping mission in Kabul was over and all that was left for us was IASF support in the 'killing fields of Kandahar" as he called it.

Martin was so focused on his Kelowna legacy, and Dion on his Environmental meeting in Montreal that gosh shucks the troops in Afghanistan were an after thought. Too late we were in an election, and so by dint of dithering our troops were stationed in Kandahar.

However Harper made much of Dithers error and made the war his own. Which is why this accidental combat mission became his cause celebre to create his image as a strong right wing leader.


SEE:

Afghanistan




Job Protection for

Canadian Reservists

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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





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Reservists Speak Out On Job Protection

Comments from the Job Protection for Canadian Reservists Petition.

Andrew Siwy
Lost my job after a tour in Kandahar, Afghanistan

sarah cram
as a serving member i think it's about time. i've lost two jobs because of operations i've attended.

Jadzia Karas
I came back from tour to unemplyment although I didn't have a hard time finding a job it was yet another struggle to go through

Shawn Sheehan (PTE Sheehan)
I am affraid to do what I want to do - serve oversea's, for fear of losing my career that I've work so hard to obtain

Andreea Savan
definately agree, i lost my job after just needing 2 weeks off, for my QL5

Mary Musson
I am a Reservist with over 13 years of service and I also work fulltime in the social services. The major barrier I have to serving overseas is the lack of job protection and guarantee that after my workup training and overseas tour, I will have a job to return to. I joined the Reserves because I love my country (not for the paycheque). My mortgage is paid by my civilian job. I need to have a job to return to or I cannot commit to serving overseas.

Alex Vorobej
This is something that is long overdue! I have been willing to deploy in the past, but my employer would not allow a leave of absence. This has to stop! I have knowledge of some employers who terminate staff who ask to be deployed, or even participate in summer training programs.

Pte. Climie KR
Regimental Motto: "Non Nobis Sed Patriae" -(Not for ourselves but for our Country) - That explains why job protection should be a must

Terri-Leigh Saunders
As a Reservist myself, I am fortunate enough to have an employer who supports my efforts every time I leave on a Class B contract (3 so far) I can only wish the same for others!

Howard Torney Murray, C.D,
As a retired reservist... and business owner... I support this fully.

278 signatures in three weeks.

Have you signed?

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