ON TARGET: Do We Really Need An Iranian Sock Puppet To Tell Us Trump Is Dangerous?

By Scott Taylor

For years now we have been told by various western intelligence agencies that Russia is using social media platforms to interfere in foreign elections and referendums. We are to believe that it was the Russians who manipulated the Brits into voting for Brexit, infused the American populace with bigotry which led to Trump’s election win, confused Ontario voters into making Doug Ford premier, and now they somehow seduced the British card-carrying members of the Conservative Party into making Boris Johnson the U.K.’s prime Minister.

Since the internet, and in particular social media platforms are chock-o-block full of fake news and conspiracy theories I was always puzzled as to exactly how the Russians were able to navigate through a sea of misinformation in order to play the Pied Piper leading us all so far astray.

Thankfully, last week the Washington Post ran a story outlining how not only Russia, but now Iran as well is planting the seeds of social discord via the internet. According to the Post, it was an Iranian ‘sock-puppet’ – the term used for fictitious online persona – who sent a tweet at a Hawaiian Congressman. The alias used by the Iranians was that of ‘Alicia Hernan’ whose fake identity purported her to be a “wife, mother and lover of peace”.

The message sent to the Congressman was a reference to President Trump: “That stupid moron doesn’t get that by creating bad guys, spewing hate filled words and creating fear of ‘others’, his message is spreading to fanatics around the world. Or maybe he does.”

Wow, pretty harsh words and some name-calling to boot? It would seem that Iranian intelligence services are going to great lengths to portray the Donald as a danger to world peace in order to make Americans vote for the Democrats. According to the Post, Alicia Hernan was one of 7,000 phony Iranian accounts that were shut down by Twitter this year alone.

Meanwhile, in the non-fake news category, last Monday Trump blew up a storm of controversy during an Oval Office meeting with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan. In typical Trump fashion, the U.S. President told reporters that he could win the war in Afghanistan within a week by simply blowing it “off the face of the earth.”

Given that Trump actually has the codes to the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and the fact that in 2017 America dropped the world’s largest – Mother-of-All-Bombs aka MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast) non nuclear bomb on Afghanistan, officials in Kabul were quick to demand clarification.

According to Trump “If [the U.S.] wanted to fight a war in Afghanistan and win it, I could win that war in a week. I just don’t want to kill 10 million people… Afghanistan would be wiped off the face of the earth. It would be gone.”

While it is certainly true that the American military possess the combined firepower to blast Afghan cities into rubble and kill millions of innocent civilians, what is not clear is how that would in any way be considered a ‘win’. 

Afghanistan is an impoverished, underdeveloped nation with largely illiterate and unskilled workforce. The U.S. military and their Afghan allies toppled the Taliban and declared victory in 2001. That was eighteen years ago and despite the expenditure of nearly one trillion dollars, and countless lives, Afghanistan remains defiant to U.S. rule.

In response to Trump’s threat to wipe Afghanistan “off the face of the earth”, a Kabul regime spokesperson stated, “The Afghan nation has not and will never allow any foreign power to determine its fate.” History has proven this to be the case dating back to the Afghan defeat of Alexander the Great. It is not a baseless claim that Afghanistan has become the graveyard of empires.

What Trump did not explain was how his “victory” would be cemented over the 20 million Afghans who would – according to his numbers – survive his threatened apocalypse. One has to imagine they would be pretty peeved to find themselves in a smouldering crater. But I digress.

What I have to question is why foreign state actors – like Iran and Russia would expend such energy creating ‘sock-puppets’ to fabricate the impression that Trump is a dangerous moron.

Just roll the cameras and let Trump prove that point himself.

ON TARGET: Examining The Khadr Case

By Scott Taylor

There was a news story earlier this month detailing how the widow of a U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan could lay claim to the $10.5 million payout which was awarded to Omar Khadr. Naturally enough this set social media platforms abuzz with the usual hate frenzy aimed at Khadr.

The online arguments are heavy on emotion but often fall wide of the actual facts in the case. It is therefore probably a good idea to recap the main points of the entire Khadr saga.

Khadr was born in Canada to immigrant parents from Egypt and Palestine. His father Ahmed was undeniably an Islamic extremist with links to al Qaeda. Khadr would have been influenced by his father’s religious beliefs.

Ahmed Khadr brought his son to Afghanistan to fight against the Americans, but at the time that Omar was wounded and captured he was only fifteen years old. For him to have been a boy in a war zone is the sole responsibility of his father. Even in civilian courts any crime committed would have him tried as a minor and Khadr could best be described as an exploited boy soldier.

In order to secure his release from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay after eight years of captivity, Khadr plead guilty to “murder in violation of the law of war.”

After being returned to Canada, Khadr claimed this confession to murder was a coerced statement made under the duress of alternately facing continued custody.

I have always been perplexed at the fact that the U.S. authorities could consider a soldier killed in battle to have been murdered.

The details of the July 22, 2002 firefight in the Afghan village of Ayub Kheyl show that it was a set piece battle, planned and executed by U.S. Special Forces. They were aware that this hamlet contained foreign fighters and Taliban. They called in several airstrikes from Apache helicopter gunships and an A-10 Warthog attack aircraft, which dropped a 225 kilogram bomb.

As the U.S. Special Forces teams began mopping up, a grenade was thrown, killing Christopher Speer and wounding his comrade Layne Morris. No eyewitness has ever claimed to see Khadr throw the grenade, but he was the sole survivor – and barely a survivor at that.

Khadr was so badly wounded in the clash that he would have died without the skilled treatment by a U.S. medic on the scene.

Deemed an illegal combatant, Khadr was taken to Guantanamo Bay despite the fact he was an underage Canadian citizen. There he would endure eight years of brutal captivity before pleading guilty in exchange for his release to Canada.

It was Canada’s failure to protect Khadr’s rights, which the Supreme Court of Canada determined in 2010, “offended the most basic Canadian standards of treatment of detained youth suspects.”

It was that ruling which in turn led to the 2017 decision to pay Khadr a $10.5 million settlement for the government’s failure to prevent his detention and torture by American authorities. For the record, Khadr was not awarded the settlement because he was a terrorist.

For their part, Christopher Speer’s widow Tabitha and Layne Morris who lost an eye in the 2002 skirmish, took Khadr’s murder confession before a Utah court. That court ruled that Khadr is to pay the pair a total of $134 million USD in compensation.

It is this State Court judgment with which Speer’s widow and Morris intend to use to lay claim to any of the compensation cash paid out to Khadr.

Again, I cannot understand the rationale behind the Utah court’s judgment in this case. Speer and Morris were soldiers in combat at the time of their respective death and injury. Why would they, in this instance be compensated such a massive amount of money when the lump sum death benefit paid to the family of a Canadian soldier killed in battle is only $400,000?

Whether he confessed to the murder or not, it is difficult to label it a homicide when at the time the ‘victim’ was himself shooting at and attempting to kill the ‘murderer.’

That is called combat.

ON TARGET: Getting the Kandahar Cenotaph Dedication Ceremony Right

These plaques, with images of Canadians – and Americans under Canadian command – killed in Afghanistan, are part of the Kandahar Cenotaph now on display at National Defence Headquarters (Carling) in Ottawa. Photo: Master Corporal Levarre McDonald, Canadian Forces Support Unit (Ottawa). ©2019 DND/MDN Canada.

By Scott Taylor

Back in mid-May, the Department of National Defence blew up a media storm of controversy when they held a private dedication ceremony for what had become known as the Kandahar cenotaph. Three days after the May 13 dedication, DND simply posted up some photos on social media, alerting people to the fact that there had been no media advisory, no media present and most importantly, no inclusion of the families of the fallen.

Naturally enough this sparked outrage, and in the face of the public backlash Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to get to the bottom of this blunder. Ironically, Defence Minister Harjitt Sajjan – who had attended the private ceremony inside DND’s Nortel Campus – was standing behind Trudeau as he made his statement to the media.

While responsibility for this error in judgment would not be much of a mystery, the decision has now been made to hold a dedication ceremony only this time they will invite the families. The plan is now for DND to pay the travel expenses for up to six family members of each of the 161 Canadian soldiers and civilians commemorated on the cenotaph.

The original structure at the NATO airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan had begun as a sort of impromptu tribute to fallen comrades. Regretfully, it continued to grow in size and scope as Canadian casualties steadily mounted. Following the cessation of Canada’s combat role in 2011, the cenotaph was crated up and repatriated to Canada.

Plans were tossed around for a suitable public location in Ottawa, including one proposal to place it at the Navy Reserve facility at Dow’s Lake. Personally, I still think it would be best suited for permanent placement at Beechwood, Canada’s National Military Cemetery.

However, in the end, possibly owing to the inability to get all involved governmental agencies to agree to a single plan – it was decided to place it inside the DND Nortel campus.

This remote site is not central to Ottawa and as a functioning military headquarters, only accessible by military personnel and DND civilians.

Following the clamour raised back in May, arrangements were made to allow the public to set up pre-arranged, escorted visits – which I’m sure is not without its own administrative hurdles.

Commemorating the fallen is a noble and necessary exercise as these were Canada’s brave sons and daughters who went into harm’s way on the orders of the Canadian government.

Beyond simply honouring their sacrifice it is also incumbent upon us as citizens to question whether the price paid was worth the cost. In World War One Canadian soldiers helped defeat the German Kaiser and preserved the British Empire. In the Second World War, Canada and the Allies defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Those who fought in Korea successfully kept the south free from communism.

The war in Afghanistan was not a victory. It was Canada’s longest war to date. We ended the combat mission in 2011 and concluded our military training mission in the spring of 2014. However, the war continues to rage in that country and there is no longer even any talk of a possible victory. The Taliban now control more territory than at any point since the U.S. declared them ‘toppled’ back in 2001.

More importantly, the U.S. is now seemingly giving up on the corrupt regime which they installed in Kabul to replace the Taliban. That would be the same corrupt regime that those 161 Canadian names on the Kandahar cenotaph died while attempting to prop up.

In recent peace talks held in Qatar it was announced that the U.S. are close to a deal with the Taliban. The basis for this deal would be the withdrawal of U.S. forces in exchange for a Taliban pledge not to allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for foreign terrorists.

Not included in these talks are either President Ashraf Ghani or his ridiculously titled sidekick, Chief Operating Officer Abdullah Abdullah, the dubious duo that ostensibly rule Afghanistan.

This signals the U.S. is giving up on them and realizes that without U.S. troops in theatre, the Taliban will eventually prevail.

Since this will bring us full circle to the situation back in 2001, how can anyone justify the expenditure of so much blood and gold over the past eighteen years?

If Canada really wanted to honour the fallen, we would conduct a full parliamentary inquiry into how and why we were drawn into a war we could not, and did not win.

ON TARGET: Rank Has It's Privilege: 7 Years Imposed Restriction For VCDS

Lieutenant-General Wynnyk, Commander of the Canadian Army

By Scott Taylor

Last week Postmedia broke the story that Canada’s Vice Chief of the Defence Staff has been collecting benefits known as Imposed Restriction (IR) allowance for the past seven years.

Lieutenant-General Paul Wynnyk was first posted to Ottawa as the deputy commander of the army back in 2012. At that juncture in his long military career Wynnyk chose not to move his wife to Ottawa from Edmonton, and instead he made the choice to live and work on his own in the nation’s capital.

By keeping Edmonton as his primary residence, Wynnyk was entitled to collect $1600 in rent allowance per month and an additional $100 for parking in IR benefits. More importantly under this arrangement his wife could retain her job as associate clinical professor in the Department of Dentistry at the University of Alberta.

So far, so good. The policy of IR benefits is designed for exactly that purpose of avoiding the trauma and cost of uprooting entire families in the short term. However as Wynnyk’s career progressed, he was promoted and appointed to a series of positions, which were all based in Ottawa.

Thus the short term evolved into a full seven years and the tab for Wynnyk’s ongoing IR allowance is now over $140,000 in total.

For the record, the average timeframe for a service member to collect IR would be about six months, and the military admitted that it is extremely unusual for that allowance to be paid in excess of five years.

That was the gist of the news story. At no point was it ever even insinuated that Wynnyk had done anything illegal. It was simply noted that the general’s choice comes at a substantial cost to taxpayers.

What was bizarre was the statement issued by the Department of Natural Defence to justify Wynnyk’s extended IR benefits. “The bottom line is that LGen Wynnyk has graciously agreed, time after time, to support the Canadian Armed Forces in its Ottawa HQ so that we can all take benefit from his experience, guidance and leadership while serving well past his eligibility for a full pension at 35 years in the CAF. He has sacrificed his own needs to benefit the institution, for which we are grateful.”

This official statement makes it sound like Wynnyk was volunteering his time to serve Canada out of the goodness of his heart. For the record, a LGen makes in the neighborhood of $250,000 a year. Hardly chump change, and by not moving his wife to Ottawa she retained her job at the University. That was their personal choice.

As for noting that Wynnyk had served his maximum pension eligibility of 35 years, that is a bit of an attempt to mislead.

Service members accumulate their pension at a rate of 2% per year served to a maximum of 35, which equals 70%. That percentage is then based on the average annual salary for the service member’s five highest paid years. So while Wynnyk cannot increase his percentage, he can, and has, added to his actual pension payout by increasing that five best year average total.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have known Wynnyk for many years and consider him to be a highly capable and well-respected senior officer. That being said, the insinuation in DND’s statement is that the Canadian Armed Forces is depending upon Wynnyk’s expertise, guidance and leadership. The problem with that comment is that it does a disservice to the equally professional and equally talented 130 General Officers and Flag Officers currently serving. That’s correct folks, Canada has a total of 130 Generals and Admirals.

It should also be remembered that for the past year Wynnyk was serving as VCDS in place of the suspended Vice Admiral Mark Norman, another individual who embodied expertise, guidance and leadership, but I digress.

The simple truth of the Wynnyk story is that he followed an existing policy and stretched the rules without breaking them. If he had to make any sacrifice to his lifestyle this was purely due to his own personal choice. It was not like he was deployed on a seven year posting to Afghanistan and deprived of being with his family.

The military lifestyle is considered to be a nomadic one. It is also understood that extended separations from family are a hardship, and that is why benefits like IR exist.

Wynnyk played both sides of that coin at the taxpayers expensive and to his own benefit.

ON TARGET: Canada's Mission In Iraq Has No Hope For Success

By Scott Taylor

On June 26, the government of Canada announced an extension to the current mission in Iraq by 12 months, to November 2020. Most Canadians are probably blissfully unaware that we even have troops in Iraq, or that back in November 2018 our military took command of the NATO effort to train Iraqi security forces.

This training cadre consists of 250 Canadians of a total NATO strength of 580 personnel. Based largely in Baghdad, this training mission is separate from the Canadian special forces deployment in northern Iraq, which continues to assist Iraqi forces as they mop up the remnants of the Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) fanatics who have remained defiant in defeat.

In announcing the extension, a lot of emphasis was its commander: Maj.-Gen. Jennie Carignan. A veteran combat soldier with tours in the Balkans and Afghanistan, Carignan will become the first woman to command Canadian troops at that rank level operationally.

By all accounts Carignan is a superb officer and I’m sure she and her fellow Canadians will acquit themselves in a most professional manner. What they will not be is successful in their endeavour, for the simple reason that no one has yet to define what success will be in the end for Iraq.

When the NATO mission was first proposed, and Canada agreed to command it, there was no actual objective stated. It was simply a 12-month commitment of resources and money. Now that has become a 24-month commitment and still no final goal has been stated.

No one has defined the size of the security force Iraq needs or how proficient it should be before NATO’s work is considered complete. During Saddam Hussein’s three-decade rule, Iraq had mandatory-conscripted military service for all adult males. From 1980 to 1988 Iraq battled Iran in a bloody war of attrition. In 1991 the U.S. coalition destroyed a fully mobilized Iraqi army in the mother of all one-sided conflicts, and then repeated that widespread destruction of Iraq’s military when America invaded in 2003.

No one ever formally surrendered the Iraqi armed forces in May 2003, the military and police force simply dissolved, and what units remained were disbanded by the new U.S. masters.

However, by August 2003, as the Iraqi insurgency began to coalesce, the Americans began to recruit and train a new Iraqi security force. Over the past 16 years, the U.S. has spent hundreds of billions of dollars, training hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to kill, while outfitting them with the necessary weaponry and vehicles to achieve that objective.

Now the NATO brain trust has determined that yet more young Iraqi males need to learn to be soldiers, and Canada has agreed to command that effort.

Since I cannot wish Maj.-Gen. Carignan success, I do wish her and all the elite Canadian soldiers tasked with this fool’s errand, godspeed and a safe return.

Closer to home on the same topic, there is a new exhibit at the Canadian War Museum. It is entitled ‘Portraits of Courage: President George W. Bush’s Tribute to American Veterans.’ The exhibit features 51 paintings by the former U.S. president depicting former soldiers with visible and invisible wounds, suffered during the wars fighting when Bush was America’s commander-in-chief.

It must be remembered that Canada did not fall for the Bush administration’s lie about Saddam possessing weapons of mass destruction. As a result we opted out of supporting Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003.

The initiative of bringing the Bush portraits to Ottawa was funded by U.S. Ambassador to Canada Kelly Craft, and her billionaire husband Joe Craft.

What I do not understand is why this collection is being displayed in a museum dedicated to preserving Canadian military history. Paintings of wounded American veterans painted by a former U.S. president are not part of Canada’s military legacy.

If it is intended as a gesture of goodwill to cement Canada-U.S. relations then maybe it belongs in the lobby of Global Affairs Canada headquarters.

ON TARGET: A War Crime is a War Crime…No matter who commits it.

By Scott Taylor

In the summer of 2017, Canadian Special Forces Operatives were deployed to northern Iraq to act as advisors to Kurdish militia who were battling the evil Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) forces. At that juncture in the conflict, Daesh was heavily besieged in the city of Mosul, surrounded by the U.S. led allied ground forces.

Our Canadian soldiers played a very active role in that crucial battle despite the fact that they were officially deployed on a non-combat mission. However one choses to categorize their actions, Canadian snipers did engage and kill Daesh fighters, and on at least one occasion, Canadians successfully destroyed an enemy vehicle with an anti-armour missile.

While the exact nature of Canada’s role in the battle may be disputed, there is no denying that our elite operatives were part of the allied forces that eventually liberated the pile of rubble, which had once been the bustling city of Mosul.

That allied ground force included large contingents of Iraq Shiite militia. As many Middle East analysts had feared, those ill disciplined Shiite militia were motivated more by revenge than anything else, and they committed numerous brutal atrocities against not only Daesh fighters but also many Sunni Arab civilians.

For the record, there were never any allegations of such improprieties leveled against Canadian soldiers. However, the same cannot be said of the U.S. military.

There is presently a court martial in progress at the San Diego Naval Base wherein a highly decorated U.S. Navy SEAL is being tried for numerous charges amounting to a litany of battlefield atrocities.

The individuals who reported Chief Edward Gallagher’s alleged crimes to the military authorities were not a bunch of peace loving hippies who don’t understand the nature of warfare, they were fellow elite U.S. Navy SEALS who were serving alongside the accused in Mosul.

Despite this fact, it still took the U.S. Navy more than a year to bring charges against Gallagher, and his arrest led to a political backlash right up to the White House.

According to his accusers, Gallagher was a bloodthirsty killer who did not discriminate between enemy fighters or unarmed civilians. On one occasion he is alleged to have deliberately shot and killed a teenage girl and on another an elderly unarmed man. Gallagher, despite being a sniper was accused by his comrades of simply taking random shots and indiscriminately spraying rockets and machine gun fire into populated areas with no visible enemy presence.

Evidence tabled at the court martial indicates that Gallagher freely boasted about his propensity to kill – claiming to have averaged three daily kills over 80 days with at least four of these victims being women.

Probably the most horrific allegation against Gallagher was that he stabbed to death an unarmed, wounded, teenage Iraqi prisoner.

Two fellow SEALs testified that upon learning of the Iraqi’s capture, Gallagher had declared “he’s mine” over the radio. When Gallagher arrived on the scene the badly wounded Daesh prisoner was being treated by a medic. Gallagher is said to have stabbed the boy repeatedly with his hunting knife and then posed over the murdered victim for trophy photos.

Despite the fact that witnesses had complained about Gallagher’s actions at the time, a formal investigation was not initiated by the Navy Chain of Command until after the unit returned to the States.

Upon hearing of the allegations against him, Gallagher allegedly threatened to kill his fellow SEALS accusers. This led to additional charges of attempted obstruction of justice and with Gallagher being locked up in the Brig.

That was the case until 30 March when U.S. President Donald Trump personally intervened and ordered that Gallagher be transferred to a “less restrictive confinement.”

On the murder charge of the Daesh prisoner last week, the medic testified that he had in fact sealed off the young Iraqi’s breathing tube. It was he, the medic who killed the prisoner – not Gallagher. No one has refuted the fact that Gallagher stabbed the unarmed victim. The medic freely admitted to being Gallagher’s friend and he testified under an immunity agreement from the prosecutor.

From the perspective of the original Navy prosecutor in this case “Chief Gallagher decided to act like the monster the terrorists accuse us of being. He handed ISIS propaganda manna from heaven. His actions are everything ISIS says we are.”

Nevertheless, should Gallagher still be found guilty, the U.S. Justice Department is reportedly already preparing a possible pardon for Donald Trump’s approval.

The question begs, why?

ON TARGET: Let’s be more creative in our retainment and recruitment of fighter pilots

Lieutenant-Colonel Darcy Molstad, from 425 Tactical Fighter Squadron, 3 Wing Bagotville, Quebec. Lieutenant-Colonel Molstad’s hometown is Edmonton, Alberta. PHOTO: DND

By Scott Taylor

On June 10, Lieutenant General Al Meinzinger, the Commander of the Royal Canadian Air Force, sent out a message to all personnel outlining several new initiatives which are intended to address the military’s chronic shortage of experienced pilots and ground crew.

As of last fall the RCAF were admittedly short of at least 275 pilots, and the Auditor General report claimed that due to the shortage of qualified personnel, Canada was unable to fully operate the current fleet of CF-18 Hornet fighter jets.

The Liberal government solution to this was to announce the acquisition of 18 used CF-18 fighters from Australia to add to the number of parked planes that we cannot fly or maintain now. But I digress.

The gist of Meinzinger’s latest message is that the RCAF will implement signing bonuses to attract trained fighter pilots back into the service and offer cash retention bonuses to keep those experienced pilots and ground crew in uniform.

The root cause of the present shortage is the worldwide boom in demand for commercial pilots. Some Canadian defence observers have pointed the finger of blame at the singular inability of successive Federal governments to acquire a modern replacement for the thirty-five year old fleet of CF-18’s. The gaping hole in this theory is the fact that when they leave the RCAF they are heading to jobs wherein they will be flying passenger planes. Instead of engaging in high speed maneuvers, vertical climbs and dives they will be making gradual ascents and descents and looking to avoid turbulence.  This is the career change equivalent of a formula one race car driver getting a retirement job driving a school bus.

There was also never a drought of volunteers to learn how to pilot a Sea King helicopter, and those things were in service for over 50 years. What the airlines offer former RCAF pilots is far more than just a lucrative paycheque, they also offer for far more flexibility in terms of where these individuals can reside. At present, if you are going to be part of a fighter Squadron you are stationed at either Cold Lake, Alberta or Bagotville, Quebec.

Neither of these remote centers could be considered an urban hub. This means that employment opportunities for pilots’ spouses is severely limited as are schooling options or special needs facilities for the kids.

During the Cold War, Canada had three fighter squadrons stationed in West Germany; posting to which afforded personnel and their families easy travel access to all of Western Europe. The current options from Bagotville and Cold Lake are, well, a lot less exiting.

I understand the operational necessity of having our fighter aircraft based in these northern bases. However, the question begs, do our pilots and their families need to be permanently based there?

What if our fighter squadrons were officially based in major urban centres for all of their administrative duties, with simulator training capabilities, like firefighters who rotate shifts living at the fire hall? Why not simply transport the pilots and ground crew into Bagotville and Cold Lake when they are to conduct their actual flying operations? Obviously, in a time of crisis it would be a case of all-hands-on-deck, and in such circumstances you would really not want all the families there anyway.

Even flying for the airlines, flight crews spend days away from their families if they are on the long haul routes. Under such a system of commuting in and out of forward operating fighter bases, the spouses could enjoy the career opportunities of a major city, which they are denied under the current arrangement.

Cash bonuses for signing and retention of personnel might work in the short term, but it is necessary to sort out a longer-term solution. There is no indication that the global demand for skilled aviators is going to diminish in the foreseeable future, and RCAF pilots are among the best in the world. It costs a fortune to train such pilots, so perhaps it is time we get more creative about keeping them in uniform. Dangling a cash carrot won’t fool them for long.

ON TARGET: U.S. Absurdity and Hypocrisy In Cuba

By Scott Taylor

On Tuesday, June 4, the Trump administration made the surprise announcement that it was imposing a new set of travel restrictions on Americans wishing to visit Cuba. Effective almost immediately, group educational and cultural trips are no longer permitted, and perhaps most significantly, cruise ships, private yachts and fishing vessels are no longer allowed to visit Cuban ports.

Following Fidel Castro’s revolution 1953-1959, the U.S. had imposed a total travel ban and a crippling trade embargo on Cuba. President Barack Obama relaxed those restrictions in 2016 when his administration opened the door for American tourists to visit the island. Since that juncture, the initial trickle of U.S. visitors has grown into a veritable flood. In the first 4 months of 2019, more than 250,000 Americans travelled to Cuba, and that figure does not include that of Cuban-Americans visiting family.

Last week’s announcement will have the intended consequence of financially punishing the Cuban tourist industry.

The reason for re-imposing the ban was explained to the media by U.S. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. “Cuba continues to play a destabilizing role in the western hemisphere, providing a communist foothold in the region and propping up U.S. adversaries in places like Venezuela and Nicaragua by fomenting instability, undermining the rule of law and suppressing democratic processes.”  Mnuchin said in a statement.

To be blunt, the only thing that outweighs the absurdity of Mnuchin’s statement is the hypocrisy.

How exactly is the dirt-poor island nation of Cuba “propping up” America’s oil, gas and gold rich adversary in Venezuela?

If Cuba is a communist foothold where is the other foot?

Are we to expect bankrupt, embargoed North Korea to form an alliance with bankrupt, embargoed Cuba enroute to a communist wave engulfing the planet?

As for the allegation of suppressing democratic processes, I’m guessing that Mnuchin is referring to the recent political upheaval in Venezuela. For their part, Cuba continues to recognize Nicolas Maduro as the ruling president of Venezuela. For the record, Maduro was elected in what has been called a flawed election in 2018. The major “flaw” in the exercise of democratic process was that the opposition boycotted the polls.

Since Maduro’s predecessor and mentor, Hugo Chavez was elected president in 1998. Venezuela has propped up the Castro regime in Cuba with the provision of heavily discounted oil and gas. So, it is no mystery why Cuba would support the status quo in Venezuela.

On the flipside of that we have the Canadian led Lima Group of fourteen continental American countries, which has simply selected Juan Guaido as the legitimate President of Venezuela. There was no democratic process, as the charismatic, U.S. educated Guaido was simply chosen by a committee of fourteen foreign countries, whose selection process was in turn ratified by the U.S.

As events have since unfolded, Guaido remains an unwelcome choice even to the sanction suffering Venezuelan people. Guaido’s farcical attempt to overthrow Maduro by effecting a military coup April 30 failed embarrassingly and could hardly be labeled as anything close to a democratic process.

Getting back to Cuba, if the Trump administration wants Americans out of there they should start by closing down their naval base and detention centre at Guantanamo Bay.

The very existence of this U.S. military base on occupied foreign soil sorely undermines America’s denunciation of Russia doing the same thing in the Crimea. For the record, the U.S. took possession of this 116 square kilometer site in 1898 after capturing the island from the Spanish.

The U.S. set up a rental agreement with Cuban authorities to pay $2,000 in gold coins per year for the use of the land. In 1934, they raised that rent price to USD$4,085 and dropped the proviso that it is paid in gold. A simple cheque will do.

When Castro seized power in 1959, he demanded that the Americans vacate Cuban soil.

Instead the U.S. have continued to convince themselves that this is not an illegal occupation because every year they dutifully send a cheque for the $4,085 made payable to the “Treasurer General of the Republic”.

The cheques go un-cashed and that bureaucratic position was eliminated when Castro took power.

Nevertheless, if we are to believe Mnuchin, Cuba is the meddler in our Western Hemisphere.

ON TARGET: Canadian Government is Failing to Protect the Privacy of Journalists

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Globe and Mail broke the story about Irving Shipbuilding being allowed to claim a CAD$40 million industrial benefit for a French fry factory as part of a contract to build navy ships. As odd as this might sound, that was not the bizarre part of this news story.

Shortly after the Globe and Mail had asked the government to confirm the investment in an Alberta French fry plant was considered an allowable industrial offset for the navy contract, a lawyer from Irving contacted the newspaper. The message was that the shipbuilder was prepared to take legal action if necessary.

This was the second time in recent weeks that Irving resorted to the tactic of libel chill in the form of threatening reporters with lawsuits over potentially damaging stories.

Back in March my colleague David Pugliese from the Ottawa Citizen made an inquiry to the media liaison desk at the Department of National Defence as well as to Public Services and Procurement Canada. Sources had told Pugliese that there was some alleged welding problems with one of the newly built Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS) and he was seeking to confirm the story.

Just hours later, Pugliese was surprised to receive a phone call from none other than Kevin McCoy, the President of Irving Shipbuilding. According to Pugliese, McCoy threatened to sue the Ottawa Citizen if they published a story, which contained false information.

What the Citizen did publish instead was the story of how the government had shared not only the question about welding problems, but also the identity of the reporter working on the story.

In this more recent case of the Globe and Mail French fry story, it was the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development that breached the privacy of the reporter by providing the information to Irving. The fact that Irving did not learn from their earlier public relations fiasco with the Citizen makes me question the competence of their communications department.

In defending the decision to threaten lawsuits, Irving Shipbuilding spokesman Sean Lewis told reporters “We did advise reporters that we would pursue legal action because we knew the reporters had highly inaccurate information that would cause our company, and the reputation of our hard working employees considerable reputational damage.”

Fair enough, a company should have the right to protect its public image. The problem is that in both cases, the reporter’s information was not “highly inaccurate”. Irving did indeed receive a $40 million credit towards its industrial benefit obligations on a navy shipbuilding contract, from a $425 million investment in the Cavendish Farms frozen potato-processing plant in Lethbridge, Alberta. Nobody has ever alleged that there was any misconduct on the part of any of the parties involved.

The crux of the matter is the way in which the AOPS contracts are structured on this major crown shipbuilding project – valued at over $2.4 billion that allows for investment in french fry jobs to offset re-investment obligations. If there are any questions about how that is the case, then it is the government of Canada that has the explaining to do, not Irving.

In the case of the alleged welding problems with the AOPS, DND did subsequently admit there were indeed some minor problems. In other words, without the threatening call from McCoy, which revealed a breach of privacy on the part of DND, there would likely have been no story.

In both instances, suffice to say that Irving overreacted and behaved like a schoolyard bully. Had they simply provided the requested information to their client – the government of Canada, who in turn would respond to the media, they would have avoided controversy.

However, it is also true that had DND, Procurement Services, and the Department of Science, Innovation, and Economic Development simply safeguarded the identity of the journalists as per the existing guidelines under the Privacy Act, Irving would not have known whom to threaten.

The Canadian Surface Combatant project has only just begun and there are bound to be countless more media requests made regarding Irving in the coming decade of production. Let’s hope that government officials have learned from these two lessons that Irving is unrepentantly self-protective.

Public Procurement Minister Carla Qualtrough tried to deflect the blame on to Irving when she told reporters that their threat of a lawsuit was “certainly not a behaviour I would engage in, and I wish there was respect shown to journalists for doing their jobs.”

I’m sorry Carla, but that respect would start with government officials not turning over the names of media requests to industry.

ON TARGET: Kandahar Monument Belongs At Beechwood

By Scott Taylor

On Monday, May 13, a low-key, invitation only, VIP ceremony took place at the Department of National Defence’s new Carling Campus. This was held to re-dedicate the monument, which had originally stood on the Kandahar airfield during Canada’s decade long commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan.

The cenotaph began as an impromptu tribute to fallen comrades, and it continued to grow as Canadian casualties mounted. In the end, the Kandahar monument displayed the individual grave markers of all 158 soldiers killed in theatre.

While it was never meant to be permanent, once Canada concluded the mission in Afghanistan, the military felt it was only fitting to repatriate this symbol of sacrifice, which had been created by the comrades of the fallen.

Once back in Canada the problem arose as to where to relocate the Kandahar memorial.

Most potential sites required approvals from multiple government departments, which inevitably got bogged down in the bloated Ottawa bureaucracy. The decision was thus made, and announced, while the Harper conservative government was still in power, that the Kandahar memorial’s new home would be at DND’s new headquarter facility in the sprawling campus that was once Nortel.

For those who were even aware of this project at the time, this decision met no objection and set off no alarm bells. It was simply seen as this touching tribute, made by soldiers, for their fellow soldiers getting a permanent relocation. No biggie.

Three days after the low key, May 13 2019 ceremony was held, DND posted up details of the event on Facebook, and quickly this whole memorial issue became an explosive affair throughout the entire Canadian defence community.

Suddenly people became aware that if this monument is inside a secure military headquarter facility, it will not be accessible to the general public. Families of the fallen were outraged – and rightly so – that they were not invited to attend the dedication, and the vast majority would remain unable to even visit the site. Questions were asked and no answers given as to why DND would quietly put this notice on Facebook rather than the more conventional process of issuing a press release. Columnists and commentators took up the cudgel to bash the brass for their insensitivity over the handling of such a sensitive and emotional issue.

By Wednesday, May 22, the backlash and anger forced the Chief of Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance to make a vow to set this right. “We’ll turn this around,” Vance told reporters. “Where we want to get to is that anybody who wants to visit that memorial can visit.”

For his part, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he wanted answers as to why the decision was made to hold the May 13 ceremony in secret and to not include the families of the fallen. Ironically, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, the man who should be able to answer for those decisions, was standing directly behind Trudeau as he made that pledge.

General Vance has said that the Kandahar Memorial will not be moved, but rather his team will be tasked with finding ways to allow more public access. While a noble gesture, this will ultimately prove an impossible task. A functioning military headquarters facility needs to be secure from the public by its very nature. Vance has since offered a lengthy apology and insists that they are working to provide continuous scheduled visit opportunities for those who wish access the memorial.

A face saving solution could be to move the monument to the Beechwood National Memorial Center. This is Canada’s equivalent to the U.S. National Military Cemetery in Arlington Virginia. It is an incredible facility that takes great pride in preserving Canada’s military heritage. It is also the final resting place of 27 Afghanistan veterans, the highest concentration of fallen warriors from that conflict in any Canadian cemetery.

Thus it would only be fitting if tributes to all 158 fatalities, in the form of the Kandahar memorial, could have a place of honour in Canada’s national military cemetery. Given that Beechwood is publically accessible, a place where our warriors are buried and soldiers are mourned, I think it would be a perfect fit. It is also a private sector enterprise, which means, if desired, the Kandahar memorial could be relocated there without having to cut through a Gordian’s knot of bureaucratic red tape.

ON TARGET: Trump’s reckless sabre rattling with Iran is all the excuse we need to bring Canadian troops home from Iraq

By Scott Taylor

Almost unmentioned in Canadian mainstream media is the steadily escalating tension between the U.S. and Iran. In recent days the Pentagon has deployed an additional Aircraft carrier battle group and strategic air assets to the Persian Gulf region, citing an increased albeit undefined, threat from Iran. The Americans have also taken the unusual step of withdrawing all unnecessary personnel from their massive embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

This has prompted the German Defence Ministry to suspend their training mission in Iraq. There were approximately 160 German military personnel assigned to that mission.

Canada has decided to go in the opposite direction by extending our military commitment to Iraq until March 2021. Between the approximately 250 Canadians assigned to the NATO training mission, and Special Forces personnel still assisting Iraqi forces in northern Iraq, Canada has an authorized strength of up to 850 personnel in theatre.

Despite the best efforts of the Canadian Armed Forces Public Affairs branch to promote this ongoing commitment, the Iraq mission has become a forgotten front. The threat of Daesh (ISIS or ISIL) has almost been completely stamped out, and mercifully, Canada has only suffered one friendly fire fatality since first deploying troops to Iraq in 2014.

A year ago Canada agreed to take command of the NATO led training mission in Iraq because the Liberal government knew they could not sell the Canadian Public on sending troops back into the Afghanistan war. That is where the NATO leaders wanted us, which seems an incredibly ironic twist in that we originally agreed to go into Afghanistan because it was not Iraq. But I digress.

The problem with the current NATO plan for Iraq – no matter how masterfully it is commanded by Canadians – is that it is doomed to fail. The root causes of the ongoing violent strife in Iraq – devastated infrastructure, rampant unemployment, inter-factional hatred and the resultant failed economy – will not be rectified by training thousands of more young Iraqi males how to kill.

Did we learn nothing from our failed decade long involvement in Afghanistan?

In the bitter fighting which pitted the U.S. led coalition, (including Canadian Special Forces operatives), against the Daesh stronghold of Mosul, that entire city was reduced to rubble. The Iraqi government estimated it will need US$88 billion to rebuild the basic infrastructure yet a mere US$30 billion has been pledged to date by international donors. No one can guess where they will make up the US$58 billion shortfall, but in the meantime Canada will spend more than $400 million a year having our best soldiers teach Iraqi youth how to keep destroying and killing.

For the record, the Iraqi regime in Baghdad recently sought to ban violent video games to prevent their youth from becoming de-sensitized to violence. On the flip side, Canada is leading a mission to teach Iraqi youth how to use real weapons.

Canada’s tenuous grasp of the complex Iraqi equation was perhaps best illustrated back in 2014 when our military trainers first deployed to northern Iraq. A senior level decision was made to allow our soldiers to wear the green, white, and red, with a yellow sunburst flag of Kurdistan on their desert camouflage uniforms. First of all, such a splash of colour defeats the premise of camouflage, but more importantly, Kurdistan is not a recognized independent country. It is rather, the desired end state for the separatist Kurds, whose quest for statehood runs counter to Canada’s official policy of supporting a single unified Iraq.

As everyone familiar with the region predicted, once Daesh was gone, the Iraqi factions began fighting among themselves. Canadian trained Kurdish militia did in fact clash with the central government Iraqi forces that are supported by the Canadian government. Needless to say, the Canadian advisors quietly removed the Kurdistan flags from their combat uniforms.

Now that the U.S. is threatening to widen this conflict by engaging Iran, Canada should admit that this would change the existing parameters. We should follow the lead of Germany, and those non-essential U.S. embassy staff, and remove our personnel from harm’s way. Canadian troops do not shy away from a fight, but no one in their right mind simply jumps into a wood chipper for the hell of it.

The silver lining in this entire brinksmanship between the U.S. and Iran threatening imminent Armageddon is that the price of oil has risen to nearly US$65 a barrel.

ON TARGET: Party Plane Antics Go Unpunished: Tiger Williams’ Charges Dropped

By Scott Taylor

Last week the surprising announcement that the Crown Prosecutor’s Office was staying the single charge of Breach of Trust against Vice-Admiral Mark Norman ignited a massive media storm. This was indeed a major development in a saga that has gripped the attention of the entire defence community since Norman was first suspended from his duties as Canada’s Vice Chief of Defence Staff nearly two and a half years ago.

In the interest of full disclosure, I consider Norman to be a friend and I am pleased that he has been exonerated. This story is still far from over and I will continue to watch with great interest exactly how both the Liberal government and the Canadian Armed Forces chain of command will go about reengaging this fine officer to active duty.

Almost lost in the frenzied coverage of Norman’s case was the announcement that the Ottawa Crown Attorney was dropping the sexual assault case against former NHL hockey star Tiger Williams in exchange for an apology to the alleged victim. Effectively, the dropping of charges in this case closes the lid on a military incident now known as the ‘Party Plane’ scandal.

The particular flight in question took place in December 2017 and was part of an ongoing program wherein RCAF Airbus planes were used to transport VIP’s on morale boosting visits to Canadian troops deployed overseas. Then Chief of the Defence Staff Rick Hillier first initiated the practice in order to inspire our soldiers fighting the war in Afghanistan. The VIP list usually included NHL old-timers like Tiger Williams along with Olympic athletes, rock n’ roll bands and various television personalities.

Over time, many of the VIP’s making repeat tours began to take advantage of the status afforded to them aboard these flights. Rules on drinking alcohol were at first bent and then by the time of the ‘Party Plane’ incident were completely broken.

Facebook videos surfaced showing the band Carpet Frogs playing the Doobie Brother’s 1970 hit song China Grove in the aisles of the Airbus while drunken VIP’s danced. Media soon got wind of the fact that a flight attendant had complained of being sexually assaulted by Williams during that flight, along with many of the other sordid details of the VIP’s urinating themselves and leaving behind coffee cups of tobacco spit.

The story proved impossible for the military to contain. Williams was eventually charged with sexual assault and Chief of the Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance put a hold on any future morale boosting junkets.

However, to his discredit, Vance also tried to justify what had happened on that flight. “The band was playing in the back of the plane, that’s team building for people who have never met soldiers before and are going to go into maybe a dangerous place” Vance explained to reporters. “So, it’s not Mardi Gras, it’s not a party. It’s a mission.”

While Vance tried to portray this as if the passengers were about to deplane into a war zone, on the flight in question they were enroute to Athens, Greece. Their first visit was to be aboard the HMCS Charlottetown in tourist friendly, Piraeus harbor.

The military also tried to downplay the actual cost of the flight by stating it was a mere $15,000 when in fact and independent estimate put that cost at $337,000 (not including the cost to fly the original flight attendant crew home from Riga, Latvia on commercial flights).

An RCAF flight safety investigation concluded that the drunken antics of the VIP’s had indeed put the other passengers at risk, but Vance inexplicably disagreed with that finding. I am not a safety expert, but I would suspect that fellow passengers inebriated to the point of voiding their bladders involuntarily would be a hindrance to others in an in-flight emergency. Just saying.

The worst part of this whole story is the fact that it all took place while the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, Lieutenant-General Alain Parent, and Canadian Forces Chief Warrant Officer Kevin West were on board.

In her witness statement at Williams’ court hearing last Tuesday, the flight attendant victim of the alleged sexual assault commented on the lack of support she got in this instance from Parent and West. “I was lost, confused and feeling pretty betrayed. I was overwhelmed by the lack of support from the higher ranks.” she wrote.

For the record, no disciplinary or administrative action was taken against Parent or West and both officers are now retired from the military.

The party flights remain on hold.

ON TARGET: Inappropriate Indeed

Twitter/@tarekfatah

By Scott Taylor

Last week the social media platforms were set abuzz over a photograph depicting a squad of armed Canadian soldiers in combat uniforms, seemingly on patrol on the streets of Toronto. The majority of these soldiers wore regimental turbans adorned with the cap badges of several different militia units. They were in loose order, rather than in formed ranks and they carried their C-7 assault rifles at the ‘low-ready’ as if on patrol.

The photo was first posted by Toronto Sun columnist Tarek Fatah along with his commentary on this as being “Canadian Sikh soldiers march in Toronto’s Khalsa Day Parade. What’s next? Jewish soldiers to mark Yom Kippur or Hindu soldiers marching for Diwali? Stop it please. Trudeau is turning our Canadian Armed Forces into an ethnic vote getting spectacle. Stop ghettoizing our military.”

Admittedly, at first glance the photo appeared to be a fake news story, a bit of doctored click bait which Fatah had fallen for. My colleague David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen, undoubtedly Canada’s best defence reporter, retweeted Fatah’s twitter post with a cautionary alert to it possibly being a fake, and a promise that he would follow up the story with Public Affairs.

Turns out that photo was indeed authentic, and that the participation of these Sikh-Canadian soldiers in the April 28, Khalsa Day parade had been authorized by no less than the Commander of 32 Canadian Brigade.

The approval for participation is easy enough to understand, as the Khalsa Day parade is a significant annual event for the Sikh community, drawing a crowd of over 100,000.

Where the wheels came off this cart was when the Commanding Officer of the Lorne Scots Regiment was tasked to fulfill his Brigade Commander’s commitment. Apparently, this Lieutenant-Colonel wanted to demonstrate to the Khalsa Day parade audience that Canada’s Army is a well equipped, capable combat force. To facilitate this he authorized the participants to march in ‘full fighting order’, with assault rifles. Who instructed them to carry these weapons at the ‘low-ready’ is not clear.

For those familiar with such things, it is well known that on the rare occasions in which soldiers are authorized to parade in public with weapons, there are strict guidelines to follow. As one would expect, the Canadian Armed Forces manual on Drill and Ceremony is very specific about every movement and proper sequence. Hence the surprise among the military community to see this squad posed more for an actual war-zone, than on ceremonial parade in the streets of Canada’s largest city.

In responding to media questions about this incident, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, himself a Sikh-Canadian veteran, stated that “While the intentions to participate in this event were good, the choice that was made was inappropriate.”

A military spokesperson confirmed that the incident is currently under investigation and could result in administrative or disciplinary measures being taken.

In response to the military’s admission of this being ‘inappropriate’ some would be army supporters began questioning why this particular parade was being singled out by the top brass. Several other photos appeared online showing similar scenes – one included a fully geared up Special Forces operative on the streets of Edmonton – as if somehow these multiple wrongs would somehow make a right.

Personally, I don’t agree with Fatah’s assertion that participation in such events ghettoizes our military. Nor do I agree with Balpreet Singh Bopari of the world Sikh organization in Canada, who commented to media in the wake of the parade “If this was a group of white soldiers, people who don’t look different, it wouldn’t have been an issue.”

Turbans have been official headgear in the Canadian Military since 1986 and Sikh-Canadians in uniform are a familiar sight within the military community.

What upset people was the image of Canadian soldiers casually displaying lethal weapons, in ragged formation on a civilian street.

This case will not need a lengthy investigation to determine who made the ‘inappropriate’ blunder. That is the beauty of a clearly defined chain of command. It should also not result in a re-writing of the guidelines. Those are already clearly defined – they just need to be followed.

ON TARGET: Not all war crimes are equal

By Scott Taylor

On Easter Sunday Radio-Canada aired an interview with Omar Khadr wherein the former boy-soldier and subsequent detainee discussed his captivity in Guantanamo Bay. There was nothing new about Khadr’s tale, but simply appearing on the airwaves of our national broadcaster was enough to set off a frenzy across the social media spectrum.

The standard lines from the hate-Khadr crowd are that he is a terrorist who committed a war crime, who was then rewarded by the Canadian government with a $10.5 million settlement.

For Radio-Canada to interview him, and for the studio audience to have given Khadr a standing ovation was enough to spark a grass roots campaign calling on the Liberal government to defund the entire CBC Radio-Canada network.

For the record, Khadr was just 15 years old when U.S. troops captured him following a firefight in the village of Ayub Kheyl in 2002. That makes him a boy-soldier, a minor who was put in harm’s way by his father who was admittedly a member of al-Qaeda. That is on the father, not the boy.

The action that took place was conventional combat between U.S. Special Forces and the insurgents. Khadr was not planting bombs in a marketplace, he was fighting a battle, and ergo he is not a terrorist. The ‘war crime’ to which Khadr plead guilty in order to obtain his eventual release was the killing of U.S. Special Forces Sergeant Christopher Speer.

At the time of his death, Speer and his comrades were in the process of killing Khadr’s colleagues, and Khadr, the sole survivor was grievously wounded in the firefight. The weapon Khadr is alleged to have used was a grenade, which is a short-range area weapon, meaning Speer was not singled out as a target. To call his death in battle a ‘murder’ is ludicrous and to label that action as a ‘war crime’ is insane.

As for the $10.5 million payout, this was not a reward to Khadr for killing Speer, but rather compensation for Canada having violated his rights by allowing him to suffer torture and a 10 year long illegal detainment at the hands of his U.S. captors.

In a perfect world, the U.S. would have paid to compensate Khadr, but alas, such is not the case.

Another recent stretch of the definition of a ‘war crime’ is that of Boutros Massroua. The 54-year-old resident of British Columbia is originally from Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, which borders Syria. Prior to claiming refugee status in Canada in 2015, Massroua plied his trade as a vehicle mechanic in his hometown.

He is a Catholic Christian who was allegedly hired by Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL) to repair pick-up trucks. No one has ever accused Massroua of picking up a weapon or harming anyone personally, but as a result of fixing up trucks for the Daesh evildoers, this mechanic has been deemed to have committed a crime against humanity by a Vancouver-based Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada tribunal.

The Board’s ruling noted that “If it weren’t for [Massroua’s] work on these armed vehicles, these vehicles would not be returning to Syria with guns on top of them – to shoot unarmed women, children, men of every religion, to blow up buildings.” I understand that it is a crime to aid and abet a criminal in the direct commission of a crime, but to link the fixing of vehicles – for money – to the evil acts of Daesh seems a bit over the top.

On the flip side of this, we have the story of decorated U.S. Navy Seal, Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher who was arrested in September 2018 on over a dozen charges of premeditated murder and attempted murder. The atrocities which Gallagher allegedly committed took place in Iraq in 2017 as the U.S. led alliance, including Canada’s special forces, were driving Daesh fighters out of Mosul.

The shocking allegations were brought forward, not by left-wing, liberal pacifists, but by seven elite fellow Navy Seals. According to these eyewitnesses, Gallagher deliberately gunned down a young schoolgirl and an unarmed old man. He would indiscriminately spray machine gun bullets and rockets into civilian neighbourhoods and on one occasion he allegedly stabbed to death an unarmed, wounded teenage captive.

Initially, the reports of Gallagher’s actions were ignored by the Navy brass, and the accusers were warned that their careers could be impacted should they pursue matters.

However, when threatened with it being disclosed to the media, the investigation was launched which led to Gallagher’s arrest. Supporters of the accused include 40 Republican Members of Congress who have signed a letter calling for the Navy to release Gallagher from jail pending his trial, and President Donald Trump who tweeted out that the imprisoned SEAL would be moved to a ‘less restrictive confinement’.

To date, a crowd funding initiative has raised US$375,000 for Gallagher’s defence.

If all war crimes were treated equally, one can only wonder when they will arrest the mechanic who fixed Gallagher’s vehicle?

ON TARGET: U.S. Claim To Moral High Ground Is Pure Hypocrisy

By Scott Taylor

For those who read through to the back pages of the world affairs section, the conflict in Libya has been back in the news of late. For a country that has been consumed by violent anarchy since NATO led rebels toppled the Moammar Gadhafi regime in October 2011, a renewed outbreak of hostilities hardly seems worthy of note. However, this time around there was a bizarre new twist.

The capital Tripoli is presently under heavy attack from the Libyan National Army, which is commanded by a warlord named Khalifa Haftar.

Defending Tripoli is a collection of tribal militias, and troops loyal to the UN recognized government of Libya.

There is a second self-proclaimed Libyan government based in the eastern city of Tobruk.

In actuality, these rival regimes are impotent administrations with the real power lying with the militia leaders, and warlords like Haftar.

So far, there is nothing really new about this situation since the former anti-Gadhafi rebels began fighting among themselves immediately after their common enemy was murdered in the streets of Sirte: Libya quickly devolved into a failed state divided into a myriad of armed fiefdoms.

What did make the latest Haftar offensive against Tripoli newsworthy was the U.S. reaction.

On Sunday, April 7, it was announced that the American military was going to withdraw a contingent of troops from Libya. “The security realities on the ground in Libya are growing increasingly complex and unpredictable,” noted a U.S. Marine Corps General Thomas Waldhauser. “Even with an adjustment of the force, we will continue to remain agile in support of existing U.S. strategy.”

First of all, who even knew that the U.S. had a contingent of troops in Libya in the first place? Even during the rebellion in 2011, the deployment of U.S., British, French and yes, even Canadian special forces, troops on the ground was officially denied. Canada unofficially let the cat out of the bag by having members of the Special Operations Regiment (CSOR) march in the Nov. 24, 2011 victory parade on Parliament Hill, but no official announcement was ever made.

As for the U.S. troops in Libya, no mention was made of how many were withdrawn, or how many remain on the ground.

While I understand that tactically the U.S. commanders would hate to tip off the enemy, the fact is that America is not presently at war with Libya. If U.S. troops are fighting and killing people in Libya, exactly who are they battling? Just as important is the question of who exactly are they fighting in support of, and under what legal authority?

General Waldhauser states that his command will still be able to support “existing U.S. strategy.” Given the past seven and a half years of instability and widespread carnage perhaps it is time for the U.S. planners to revisit that “existing strategy.”

It was similarly announced last December by U.S. President Donald Trump that U.S. troops were to be withdrawn from Syria. It was simply accepted without question that America somehow had the legal authority to deploy their troops on foreign sovereign territory.

In 2014, the U.S. had been invited back into Iraq to lead a multinational coalition in the fight against Daesh (aka ISIS or ISIL). This coalition included Canadian fighter jets and special forces personnel, and it is by extension under this agreement that Canadian military personnel remain as trainers in Iraq today.

However, even though Daesh operated on both sides of the Syria-Iraq border, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad never invited U.S. forces to assist him in battling Daesh. In fact, Assad instead enlisted the military assistance of both Russia and Iran.

If the U.S. truly respected international law, they would not be withdrawing troops from Libya and Syria, because they should never have been deployed there in the first place.

The NATO cheerleaders and apologists pride themselves on claiming that we, as alliance members, are part of a ‘rules-based international order.’ This, they tell us, is what sets us apart from rogue states like Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, Pakistan, etc. who simply play by their own set of rules.

If the true rule of the jungle is that ‘might is right’ then let’s start being honest with ourselves and quit the hypocritical moral posturing.

Rules are only for the weak.

ON TARGET: Beards And Bare Legs: This Ain't Grandpa's Army

By Scott Taylor

In an attempt to boost recruitment and to shore up retention, the Canadian Armed Forces have recently made several changes to regulations regarding the dress and deportment of uniformed personnel.

First, it was allowing male service members to grow beards. Previously it was only sailors on shore duties and in the pioneer section in infantry regiments that were allowed to grow facial hair. However, during the lengthy deployment in Afghanistan Canadian Special Forces operatives began sporting beards, and the ‘cool factor’ generated by these elite commandos led to the practice being authorized in theatre for all frontline soldiers as a cultural recognition for local Afghan custom.

This trend continued among Canadian Special Forces operatives when they deployed to northern Iraq in 2014, and continues to this day despite the fact that the vast majority of Iraqi males are clean-shaven. But I digress.

The fact is that among Canadian servicemen it has become cool to grow a beard, and it coincides with the current hipster wave in Canadian society. To boost morale among those already in uniform and to entice hipster recruits to join, the rules have now been changed.

In situations where personnel require the use of gas masks, obviously common sense will prevail.

Last week it was reported that female service members would be allowed to wear their hair in a ponytail. Previous regulations required any hair hanging below the shirt collar to be either braided or worn up in a bun.

Again, it is assumed that in cases where dangling hair could be caught in machinery, practicality will dictate the hairstyle.

The CAF also made it permissible for female personnel to go bare legged on extremely hot days. Under the previous regulations, nylons were required to be worn at work at all times, regardless of the temperature and resultant discomfort.

An allowance has also been made in the case of female footwear, wherein personnel are now authorized to wear flats, rather than the previously specified 5 cm heels. The one exception to this remains the prohibited wearing of ballerina style shoes.

Again the stated intention of making these dress code amendments is to improve the morale of the currently serving women, and to make the military a more attractive career option for the younger generation of female recruits.

When you throw in the recently revised policies recognizing the legalization of marijuana and the resultant new regulations concerning its use for CAF members, it is safe to say this is no longer your grandfather’s armed forces.

I dare say that it is a slippery slope once you start making allowances to accommodate individual tastes in an institution that’s core value is disciplined conformity.

Not that I believe we should remain tied to tradition. Were that the case, the CAF would still be flogging soldiers lashed to cannon wheels.

The U.S. is facing a similar crunch in terms of maintaining their military manpower levels, due to widespread disinterest in the current generation to embark upon a martial career. In an effort to get recruits in the door, the U.S. has begun to offer signing bonuses of up to US$40,000, as well as incentives to pay off student loan debts. Last year the Pentagon spent a whopping US$600 million on signing bonuses, along with US$1.6 billion on recruiting.

For the first time in history, even the U.S. Marine Corps has had to start enticing recruits with cash incentives. More alarmingly, since 2017 the Marine Corps has had to reduce its minimum admission standards and offer 25% more medical, mental health, recreational drug and misconduct waivers just to meet their minimum manning levels.

Canada led the way down this path when they set the basic fitness recruitment to zero back in 2006. That’s right folks, even if you cannot perform a single sit-up, you can still enlist in the CAF. The premise for this is that, should you desire a career in uniform, they will invest the time and energy required to get you into shape prior to beginning basic training. We also upped the maximum age for recruits to 57 years. As long as you can still fulfill a three-year basic engagement before the mandatory retirement age of 60, you can join the CAF.

I still believe that the Canadian military is not just among the best in the world – it is the best in the world. However, I fear that if we change our recruiting ideology from the ‘be all that you can be’ to ‘be what you want to be’ we will soon lose that edge.

People won’t join or stay in the Forces just because they can grow a beard, wear a ponytail and smoke dope. However, belonging to an elite, professional military formation should generate its own positive morale boost.

ON TARGET: NATO's Not So Stellar History

By Scott Taylor

This past week there was much back patting and harrumphs of self-congratulation from the self-appointed cheerleaders of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The reason for this latest round of celebration is that the venerable old military alliance turned 70 on April 4.

On that date in 1949, Canada along with the eleven other original members, signed a collective defence agreement aimed at deterring Soviet Union aggression into Western Europe.

In the interest of full disclosure I volunteered to serve in the Canadian Military during the Cold War and I am proud to wear my NATO service medal on formal occasions.

That said, the primary objective of NATO – the containment of the Soviets – was achieved in 1990 when the Soviet Union imploded through an economic collapse of the communist system. Despite this essentially bloodless victory over the collective nemesis, NATO not only continued to exist as a military alliance, it has also continued to steadily increase its membership.

There are now 29 full-fledged member nations in NATO with a combined annual defence expenditure well in excess of $1 trillion (USD).

To put this in perspective, the Putin regime of Russian aggressors spends around $68 billion annually on its defence forces, which is less than one-sixteenth of what NATO spends to defend itself.

If we look at the NATO alliance’s track record, we certainly can list the Cold War in the ‘win’ column.

However, over the past seven decades NATO has had a less than stellar record as a purveyor of world peace.

In 1956 there was the Suez Crisis wherein two NATO members – Britain and France invaded Egypt and pushed the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon. The situation was defused by Canada – a third NATO member – when Prime Minister Lester Pearson created the concept of a United Nations Peacekeeping force.

Turkey and Greece – both NATO members – clashed on the Island of Cyprus in 1974. That still simmering dispute remains a powder keg to this day with opposing forces separated and monitored by UN Peacekeeping troops.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO felt confident enough to use its military might to redraw the map of Europe. In 1995, NATO used airstrikes to intervene in the bloody civil war in Bosnia. By bombing in support of Croatian and Bosnian Muslim forces, the Bosnian Serbs were forced to accept the Dayton Accord Peace proposal. NATO cheerleaders claim this to be a victorious campaign to end a war. Fair enough.

However, then we had the 1999, 78-day NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in support of Albanian separatists in the autonomous region of Kosovo.  

This military air-assault, followed by NATO’s occupation of Serbian sovereign territory, led to the 2008 unilateral declaration of independence of Kosovo. Despite the NATO leadership’s best intentions, to date Kosovo remains anything but independent.

At present only 102 countries recognize Kosovo as a state with 93 still regarding this to be a Serbian province. As such, Kosovo cannot be admitted into the UN, or the European Union. It has the poorest economy in Europe, the highest rate of unemployment and not surprisingly the highest crime rate.

The long suffering Serbian minority reside in enclaves protected by E.U. troops, and the massive U.S. military base known as Camp Bondsteel serves to house illegal combatants deemed to be enemies of American interests.

In other words, the NATO bombing of Serbia did not produce a positive result. Far from it.

The next major effort for the NATO alliance began in 2002 when the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established to rebuild Afghanistan. Seventeen years later, the NATO led ISAF has yet to come close to fulfilling its objective.

For twelve of those years, Canadian troops - some 30,000 in total – deployed as a party of ISAF to prop up the puppet regime, which the U.S. had installed in Kabul.

In theatre, Canada lost 158 soldiers killed, 2,000 (+) wounded or physically injured, and countless others inflicted with the invisible wounds of PTSD. In a new report released earlier this month the U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan (SIGAR) cites the NATO trained Afghan security forces as one of the major threats to achieving peace in that country.

According to SIGAR, Afghanistan cannot afford to maintain the 300,000(+) soldiers currently on payroll. These armed individuals would pose a “serious threat to Afghanistan’s stability” should the international community stop funding their pay-cheques. Are we to seriously believe that after seventeen years committed to this conflict, no one at NATO saw this coming?

In the case of Libya in 2011, NATO happily launched an air campaign to help the Libyan rebels oust Moammar Gadafi.

Unlike Afghanistan, in the post-Gadafi celebrations, NATO never even bothered to install a puppet regime. Instead we simply let Libya collapse into a failed state, awash in violent anarchy.

Presently Canada is leading a NATO training mission in Iraq. One of the oft-repeated quips as to why NATO in general and Canada in particular are taking on this task is because of the success we had in Afghanistan. Again, does nobody read the SIGAR reports?

Ah well, NATO did win the Cold War. I’ll drink to that.

ON TARGET: Is The Omar Khadr Case Finally Closed?

By Scott Taylor

On Monday, March 25, an Alberta judge ruled that convicted war criminal Omar Khadr has completed his eight-year sentence.

The final four years of Khadr’s sentence were served on conditional release in Edmonton.

When Court of Queen’s bench, Chief Justice Mary Moreau gave her ruling, which pronounced Kadr’s punishment completed, she ignited the powder keg of polemic emotions that have shrouded this young man’s controversial case for a decade and a half.

For many Canadians, Omar Khadr deserves no pity. For those in the ‘hang ‘em high’ camp, Khadr fought in Afghanistan as an Islamic extremist, with links to al-Qaeda. He was captured following a firefight in Afghanistan in July 2002, by U.S. Special Forces. During that skirmish Khadr committed a war crime when he threw a grenade that killed U.S. Army Sergeant Christopher Speer. At the scene of the battle, the U.S. Military found a video depicting Khadr being instructed on how to build an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

Khadr is a Canadian citizen, and since Canadian soldiers fought alongside American troop inside Afghanistan, he is a traitor. The fact that the vast majority of Canada’s 158 soldiers killed and 2,000 wounded during our twelve year deployment to Afghanistan were the result of IED’s makes Khadr’s treason all the more despicable in the eyes of his haters.

This is why it is important to remove the emotion from the Khadr equation and to analyze the actual facts of the case.

Yes, Khadr was born in Canada to immigrant parents from Egypt and Palestine. His father, Ahmed was an Islamic extremist with ties to al-Qaeda. Without question, Omar would have grown up in a household wherein he was indoctrinated by his father’s Islamic fundamentalist teachings.

That said, at the time of the 2002 firefight Omar was only 15 years of age. He was a boy in a war zone, and that can only be blamed on the father.

As a former soldier myself, I have always found it strange in the extreme that the U.S. authorities would have charged young Khadr with “murder in violation of the laws of war.”

The circumstances surrounding the July 22, 2002 battle in the eastern Afghanistan village of Ayub Kheyl was not even a surprise ambush. In fact, the U.S. Special Forces had surrounded the village knowing it contained Taliban and other foreign fighters. The collection of huts were engaged by  U.S. Apache helicopter gunships and A-10 Warthog attack aircraft which dropped multiple 225 kilogram bombs.

It was the final stages of this combat, as the U.S. commandos were mopping up, that the grenade was thrown, which took the life of Speers. There is no eyewitness testimony claiming Khadr threw that deadly projectile, but he was the only enemy fighter captured alive. Barely so at that. Khadr was shot three times in the chest and only survived thanks to the skill and professionalism of the U.S. Army medics.

I’m thoroughly baffled as to how killing an enemy soldier in battle constitutes ‘murder’. Especially when the ‘murderer’ was himself a fifteen-year old boy who was grievously wounded in the firefight.

Following his capture, Khadr was detained in the notorious Guantanamo Bay prison at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Despite the fact that he is a Canadian citizen, and a minor in the eyes of the law at the time of infraction, the U.S. considered him and “illegal combatant”.

As such, he was not afforded the basic rights of a recognized Prisoner of War as defined by the Geneva Convention, nor those legal rights afforded to the U.S. citizens charged under the Criminal Code.

In 2010, eight years into his custody in Guantanamo Bay, Khadr plead guilty to the war crime charges as part of a plea bargain that would ultimately repatriate him to Canada.

It is worth noting that at the same juncture, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that a Canadian Intelligence interrogation of Khadr while he was in custody at Guantanamo “offended the most basic Canadian standards of treatment of detained youth suspects”.

It was the gist of that ruling which resulted in Khadr’s successful lawsuit against the Canadian government for their failure to protect his rights as a Canadian citizen.

In 2017, Canada agreed to pay Khadr $10.5 million in compensation for his suffering at the hands of the U.S. authorities.

This payout generated howls of indignation from Canadian veteran’s groups and their supporters who pointed out the discrepancy in payments made to the families of those soldiers killed in Afghanistan.

The lump sum death benefit for a Canadian soldier killed an active duty is only $400,000.

In my opinion this is a valid argument, but on the flip side what dollar value would you put on the lost youth of a fifteen year old boy soldier who was first victimized by his radicalized father, then tortured and abused by the U.S. Military, and ultimately – according to the Supreme Court of Canada – neglected by his own government?

According to a Utah State Court ruling, Tabitha Speer, Christopher Speer’s widow is entitled to $134 million (USD) from Omar Khadr as compensation for her husband’s ‘murder’.

In an unrelated observation, last year boxer Floyd Mayweather made $285 million (USD) for a single fight. Just a reminder that life is not always fair – nor equitable.

ON TARGET: Canada Strongly Condemns Latvian Glorification of Nazis

By Scott Taylor

On Saturday, March 16, Canadians were still coming to grips with the shocking news of a terrorist attack in Christchurch, New Zealand. A white supremacist had gunned down 100 Muslims – 50 killed and 50 wounded – at two separate Mosques during the Friday prayers. The extremist responsible for this massacre - (and like New Zealand Prime Minister Janica Ardern, I refuse to grant him the notoriety he craves by naming him here) - published a 74-page manifesto outlining his right-wing racist views.

The international community was quick to condemn this slaughter of innocents as an act of terrorism. This monstrous act also served to highlight the growing threat stemming from the rise in alt-right, neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic groups around the world.

The Christchurch terrorist himself made a direct link to Canada by lionizing the Quebec City Mosque murder rampage conducted by 28-year old Alexandre Bissonnette on January 29, 2017.

It was indeed a sobering reminder that terrorists come in all colours and from all walks of life.

In stark contrast to this grim reality, mere hours after the Christchurch shootings, over a thousand people marched through the streets of Riga, Latvia to commemorate Hitler’s WWII SS Latvian Legion.

This controversial annual parade to celebrate perpetrators of the Holocaust has taken place since 1990, when Latvia gained independence from the Soviet Union. In 1998 this event was declared the official Day of Remembrance by the Latvian government. Not surprisingly, such a blatant glorification of Nazi’s drew a stern rebuke from the European Union, and in 2000, the SS Latvian Legion parades were once again made “unofficial”. Nevertheless they are allowed to continue. Photographs and videos from this year’s parade – one of the biggest in recent history – show several marchers sporting swastikas on their arms.

Latvian diehard nationalists who defend these parades claim that these Swastikas are in fact the Cross of Thunder, an ancient Central Asian symbol.

Nice try. Since WWII and the adoption of the Swastika by Adolph Hitler’s Nazis, we all know what this symbol has come to stand for.

Many of the SS Latvian Legion apologists argue that this particular military unit was not directly involved in Hitler’s Final Solution to exterminate the Jews.

This is a bit of a moot point as the 27,000 Jews in Latvia were slaughtered in 1941 and 1942 by a Latvian militia known as the Arajs Kommando.

By the time SS leader Heinrich Himmler formed the SS Latvian Legion in 1943, Latvia had been proclaimed “Juden Frei” or “free of Jews” by Hitler’s Third Reich.

The central core of the new SS Latvian Legion was none other than the killers of the Arajs Kommando. That Kommando included a bloodthirsty anti-Semitic officer named Herberts Cukurs, who Holocaust survivors directly link to the murder of Jews.

Latvian supporters of the SS Legion make the point that many members of these two combat divisions – 120,000 personnel in total – were forcibly conscripted by the Germans. That is a historical fact, which is not in dispute.

However, I will argue that if you were forced to wear an SS uniform against your will during WWII, it is unlikely that you would dig it out of your clothes closet to proudly wear it down the streets of Riga 45 years later.

No, those SS Latvian Legion veterans who participate in the parades in ever dwindling numbers were the hardcore SS volunteers.

One argument offered by Latvia’s apologists for their glorification of a Nazi unit is that it is a commemoration of the sacrifice they made. The problem with that logic is that November 11 remains the official national day of remembrance in Latvia, wherein all fallen warriors are grieved.

Needless to say, B’Nai Brith were never fooled by the obfuscation and distortion of history offered up by those Latvians who have so actively sought to re-write history.

Last July 4, B’Nai Brith Canada wrote an open letter to Prime Minister Trudeau on the eve of his visit to Latvia, urging him to condemn these annual parades.

This sentiment was repeated by a Sun newspaper editorial penned by B’Nai Brith President Micheal Mostyn on March 15, 2019 just ahead of this year’s parade.

Well, lo and behold, Global Affairs Canada has now issued a formal condemnation to Latvia.

“Canada is strongly opposed to the glorification of Nazism, and all forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, intolerance and extremism”, stated Amy Mills, spokesperson for Global Affairs Canada. “This is why we condemn the parade to commemorate the Latvian SS Brigade [sic] held in Latvia on March 16th”.

Canada currently has 540 troops stationed in Latvia with the stated mission to protect our NATO partner from Russian aggression and to protect our shared values.

Turns out we don’t share the same viewpoint as Latvia when it comes to glorifying Hitler’s SS. Let’s hope that Canada follows through with the discussions intended to develop what Mills said will be a more “inclusive Latvia”.

ON TARGET: SNC Lavalin Bribery Allegations are Dwarfed by the fact Canada Helped to Destroy Libya in 2011

By Scott Taylor

Almost lost in the current media storm surrounding the resignation of former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould, sparked by allegations that she faced political pressure from Prime Minister Trudeau’s office, is the timeline of events surrounding the original infraction.

Yes, we are all aware that Quebec based engineering giant SNC-Lavalin was lobbying Trudeau’s inner circle hard in order to secure a deferred prosecution agreement, rather than face a possible criminal conviction for bribery charges.

In turn Wilson-Raybould has testified before the Commons Justice committee that Trudeau’s Principal Secretary Gerald Butts, and Chief Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Wernick pressured her on this file. Their argument was that a criminal conviction in court would preclude SNC-Lavalin from bidding on future Federal government tenders. Should that occur, SNC-Lavalin executives had suggested they would fold up their headquarters tent in Montreal, and some 9000 skilled jobs would vanish from the Canadian landscape. This would of course not sit well with voters in an election year.

The recent allegations of attempted political interference in this case have made this a decidedly Liberal Party scandal, with the Conservative opposition circulating petitions urging Trudeau to resign.

Upon closer examination however, the actual accusations of SNC-Lavalin having bribed their way into lucrative Libyan construction contracts spans the period of 2001 to 2011. During that decade it is alleged that SNC-Lavalin representatives paid an estimated $48 million in bribes to members of the Gaddafi family.

During a 2008 visit to Canada it is believed that Garda World was hired by SNC-Lavalin to protect Saadi Gaddafi, the former Libyan President’s third eldest son. That protection by Garda is alleged to have included some $30,000 worth of prostitutes and some tickets to a Spice Girls concert.

The timeframe also puts this sordid affair back onto the Harper Conservatives. Fast forward to the Spring of 2011 and the start of the Libyan uprising. At that juncture, no doubt thanks in part to the $48 million in palm grease paid to the Gaddafi family, SNC-Lavalin had secured billions of dollars’ worth of construction in Libya. Heck, they were even in the process of building a big new jail for the very President we were now labeling as a bloodthirsty despot.

Foreign Affairs minister John Baird was among the loudest and most bellicose of western voices demanding that ‘Gaddafi must go!’.

To help make that happen, Canada was among the first countries to participate in the NATO air campaign aimed at destroying the Gaddafi loyalist forces.

It took a hell of a lot longer than anyone would have imagined for the world’s most sophisticated air armada to defeat a fourth-rate African army, but by early October 2011, the end was clearly nigh. The last of the Gaddafi loyalists were contained alongside their embattled leader in the town of Sirte.

On 11 October, 2011, a full nine days before Libyan rebels would capture and murder Gaddafi, Baird made a secret visit into the rebel held Libyan capital of Tripoli. During that whirlwind trip Baird met with and praised several of the Libyan rebel leaders and he announced Canada’s commitment of $10 million to secure Libyan weapons once the war was finally won.

Travelling with Baird were a number of Canadian business executives, including representatives from SNC-Lavalin, eager to start a new round of lucrative Libyan projects under the new post-Gaddafi leaders. Keep in mind that at this point Gaddafi was still alive and fighting.

So, if we are to believe that paying bribes to corrupt third world leaders in order to obtain contracts is criminal nature, how do we define using military force to effect regime change, and then bringing in the carpet-baggers to profit from the puppet regime which we installed next?

The only problem with the Libyan caper was that Baird and company failed to listen to Ambassador Sandra McCardell. She was with Baird in Tripoli as he used that same visit to reopen our Embassy.

Her prophetic statement to the Canadian Press at that time was that getting the guns out of the hands of young, heavily armed rebels would be the best way for Canada to contribute to Libya’s post-Gaddafi reconstruction. That’s right, the best way to help Libya would be for us to disarm the rebels we had armed.

Baird never did say just how his $10 million pledged funding would actually secure the Libyan arsenals, but suffice it to say whatever he had planned, failed miserably.

Once Gaddafi was dead, the various rebel groups, Islamic extremists, human traffickers and tribal thugs began fighting among themselves. Libya quickly plunged into a failed state of violent anarchy, where it remains to this date.

The Trudeau Liberals tried to avoid a possible criminal conviction for SNC-Lavalin’s alleged bribery. That’s bad.

Canada, along with the U.S., UK and France toppled a dictator and destroyed Libya. That’s worse.