ON TARGET: Putin Is No Big Boy When It Comes To Executions

By Scott Taylor

I must admit that up until last week I had never heard of Alexei Navalny. Now we are being told that Navalny is a very vocal critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin who has been organizing opposition support in Russia and plotting mayhem in the streets of neighbouring Belarus. The reason we know this is because Navalny is presently (at time of writing) in a coma in hospital in the Siberian city of Omsk.

Western intelligence sources have already claimed that Navalny’s condition is the result of an attempted assassination by Russian Intelligence operatives. Of course Putin himself is the logical suspect for ordering this ‘hit’ on his political nemesis.

The plotline conjured up by those western intelligence reports is that Navalny ingested the poison when he drank a cup of tea at the airport in Tomsk. He was waiting for a flight to Moscow. However once airborne, Navalny began exhibiting symptoms and the pilot quickly rerouted to make an emergency landing at Omsk.

Since western intelligence reports are unquestionably reliable the question begs what the hell is wrong with the Russian GRU secret service? Why are they so fascinated with the use of poison and elaborate James Bond style, over elaborate execution plots?

If they wanted Navalny dead without garnering international attention why not just shoot him, take his wallet and have the Tomsk police chief rule it as a robbery gone bad. Case closed.

Instead these GRU clowns plant an agent in the Tomsk airport to slip the poison into his takeout cup of tea. The poison must be very slow acting as Navalny is able to board the plane before submitting to it. The midflight reaction guarantees there are multiple witnesses to his distress which in turn leads to an emergency landing by the pilot. All kinds of attention, and once again the GRU’s intended target doesn’t die.

Did these GRU agents learn nothing from their high profile failed assassination attempt on Sergei Skripal? According to western intelligence narrative, in March 2018, two GRU agents entered the U.K armed with the deadly nerve-agent Novichok. They were intent on killing Skripal – a convicted double agent who had been released from a Russian jail in a 2010 spy swap with the U.K. 

Skripal had settled down in the sleepy country town of Salisbury with his daughter Yulia. The GRU assassins thought the best means of eliminating Skripal was to smear the super deadly Novichok agent on the door handle of the Skripal residence.

The two Skripals – Sergei and Yulia – were both found in distress in a nearby park on March 4, 2018. The pair were hospitalized in critical condition. The U.K announced that Novichok was the substance and that meant the GRU and, by extraction, Putin was to blame. In a show of solidarity allied nations including Canada expelled Russian diplomats from embassies all around the world to protest this outrage.

Again one has to ask why the GRU would not have simply shot Skripal, taken his wallet and have this incident swept under the carpet as a common robbery? Instead they created an international backlash against Russia and in the end both Skripals fully recovered within a few weeks.

Putin and the GRU should take lessons in extra-judicial executions from the U.S. When Donald Trump wanted Iranian General Qasem Soleimani killed, the CIA did not have an agent lace his tea cup with poison at a civilian airport.

Nor did any U.S. spies wipe a nerve agent on his family doorknob.

Hell no. On Jan. 3, 2020 a predator drone operator at the U.S. base in Doha, Qatar simply pushed a button and fired a missile into Soleimani’s entourage at the Baghdad airport.

Unlike Putin and the cowardly GRU, there was no phony denials of Soleimani’s execution on the part of the U.S.

President Trump gleefully hailed Soleimani’s death and took full credit. That’s how the big boys take care of their nemesis.

ON TARGET: Kandahar Cenotaph Should be Located at Beechwood Cemetery

By Scott Taylor

Last week the Kandahar Cenotaph was back in the news as it was reported that the Memorial Hall built to house it had suffered severe weather damage during the winter.

While the Department of National Defence states that the contents of the Cenotaph were unaffected, the estimated cost of the repairs to the Memorial Hall is $500,000.

The building has been closed since February and the repairs are not expected to be complete before December.

The origins of this cenotaph date back to 2006 when Canadian troops based at the Kandahar airfield assembled a collection of commemorative plaques dedicated to each soldier killed in Afghanistan up to that date.

As the unwinnable war dragged on the cenotaph continued to grow with each new death. By the time Canada concluded the combat phase of the Afghanistan mission and withdrew from Kandahar the memorial site included a total of 161 plaques.

Of this total 158 were fallen soldiers plus diplomat Glyn Berry, Calgary Herald Journalist Michelle Lang and a civilian under DND contract Marc Cyr.

It was a unique and authentic memorial collection, made in the field by soldiers honouring their own comrades. As such the decision was made to pack and crate the cenotaph and bring it home to Canadian soil. That part was simple but once it was back in Ottawa the military faced a real head-scratcher as to what to do with it.

Finding a suitable location in the national capital was particularly challenging as all such zoning decisions involve multiple levels of government bureaucracy.

It also represents the sacrifice made in Canada’s first military defeat. It is a visual reminder that NATO, the world’s most sophisticated and powerful military alliance, failed to subdue the primitive but fanatical Afghan insurgents.

Canada cut its losses completely when we withdrew from the training mission to Afghanistan in 2014, and that occasion was marked with a ‘Day of Honour’ on Parliament Hill rather than a ‘Victory Parade’.

That said, it is important to remember our soldiers’ sacrifice even if it was in vain. Those men and women died in the service of Canada.

To kickstart the stalled relocation process, the decision was eventually taken to cut through the Gordian’s knot of red tape involving outside departments and simply place the Kandahar Cenotaph inside the DND Headquarters building known as the Carling Campus.

Construction on the new memorial hall started in 2017 in a project valued at $3 million. The hall was ready in 2019.

To mark the occasion a dedication ceremony involving a handful of military brass and DND personnel was held at the Carling Campus site. A few days later DND Public Affairs posted announcements and photos of the dedication.

Within hours the feces was hitting the fan right across the country as the families of the fallen realized they had not been invited to honour their loved ones.

The backlash forced a hasty retreat, promises to find the culprits responsible for the oversight and pledges to set things right. To their credit, DND did organize a blockbuster event in August 2019 to ‘re-dedicate’ the Kandahar Cenotaph and this time it included up to six family members of each of the fallen.

However, as this latest story of weather damage serves to remind us, this tribute to Canadian sacrifice in Afghanistan remains in a non-public space. The Carling Campus is a functioning military headquarters, which by its very nature requires a high level of security rather than open accessibility.

At present, when it eventually re-opens, the policy is that visitors can make appointments to view the cenotaph at this rather remote location in western Ottawa.

This is an unworkable half-measure which can easily be rectified. Rather than spend the $500,000 in repairs to the memorial hall, the Cenotaph should be relocated to Beechwood Cemetery.

It is after all the National Memorial Center. Beechwood is just outside the downtown core and it is publicly accessible.

There were even discussions on getting a Light Armoured Vehicle (LAV) as a centrepiece for what could be a truly fitting tribute to those who paid the ultimate price in the service of Canada.

ON TARGET: It's Bucking Broncos Time At NDHQ

By Scott Taylor

There was a series of stories last week by Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese which clearly illustrates the culture of defiance and invincibility that exists within National Defence Headquarters’ upper echelons.

The genesis of this current saga has its roots dating back to some extraordinary testimony at a December 2018 pre-trial hearing in the Vice Admiral Mark Norman case.

Norman had been suspended from his duties as the Vice Chief of Defence Staff and was subsequently charged with Breach of Trust. It was alleged by the prosecution that Norman had communicated cabinet confidence information to a Quebec based shipyard.

Norman’s legal team had been struggling to get information from the government that was needed in his defence and had used the federal Access to Information law to request such documents. Others had also requested similar records under the access law.

However at the pre-trial hearing a Canadian Armed Forces major testified that the requested documentation had been deliberately hidden. According to the witness, who had been tasked with collecting the Norman files, a brigadier-general had boastfully claimed that when the documents were created, Norman’s name was deliberately not used. There would also be later testimony that the military had used code names like ‘Kraken’ a phonetic play on Norman’s former title as Commander, Royal Canadian Navy (CRNC).

This all meant that any search for records about ‘Mark Norman’ would come back as ‘nil’. According to the witness the unnamed brigadier-general made it sound like such deliberate thwarting of the Access to Information law was commonplace. “This is not our first rodeo” was the brigadier-general’s alleged reaction to the conscientious major’s incredulity.

Needless to say, this testimony set off alarm bell’s within the legal community. Federal information Commissioner Caroline Maynard – who’s job is to oversee the implementation of the ATI process - immediately began an investigation into DND and the CAF. Within two months Maynard’s office concluded that what had transpired in the Norman case was a possible “commission of an offence” under the Access Act.

As Maynard does not have the authority to investigate such offences, her office notified the Attorney General. In turn the Attorney General’s office alerted the Public Prosecution Service of Canada. This would be the same public prosecutors who were handling the charge against Norman.

Nevertheless the prosecution service notified the RCMP about Maynard’s concerns.

Realizing that because they were the agency that had conducted the original investigation, which resulted in the charge against Norman, the RCMP felt they could be in conflict of interest. Therefore, they handed the case over to the Ontario Provincial Police. At least that was the story.

Maynard’s concerns and actions regarding the Norman case were released in a report tabled Wednesday 29 July. This prompted keen eyed reporter Pugliese to ask about the status and results of the OPP investigation.

Pugliese’s inquiry prompted the revelation that nothing was ever done. Due to an “administrative error” the RCMP never got around to contacting the OPP.

That has now been remedied. Following Pugliese’s query, the OPP have now belatedly opened an investigation. We wish them Godspeed on a very cold trail.

Of course the bombshell revelation’s in the major’s testimony also alarmed officials at DND. As such Deputy Minister Jody Thomas detailed the Canadian Force’s National Investigative Service (CFNIS) to leave no stone unturned in their investigation to find the culprit(s).

Alas, the case proved too difficult for the military gumshoes to crack. The case was closed as their sleuthing efforts “did not reveal sufficient evidence to pursue criminal or service offence charges in the matter.”

No documentation of the CFNIS investigation was released to Pugliese, who was told he could only obtain them with an Access to Information request. Which of course brings us full circle to where this all began. This was not DND’s first rodeo and it won’t be their last.

For the record, the case against Norman collapsed before trial in May 2019. The Vice-Admiral retired and received a financial settlement from the Crown.

ON TARGET: Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV... Germany?

By Scott Taylor

Whoah! I remembered it again! Last Wednesday U.S. Secretary of Defence Mark Esper announced plans for the withdrawal of 12,000 American military personnel from their current bases in Germany. On July 29th, true to form, top cognitive genius tweeted.

Germany pays Russia billions of dollars a year for Energy, and we are supposed to protect Germany from Russia. What’s that all about? Also, Germany is very delinquent in their 2% fee to NATO. We are therefore moving some troops out of Germany!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020

For a man who has repeatedly claimed to be “the most militaristic person ever” Trump seems to have little real grasp on how this defence stuff actually works.

First of all, the U.S. presently has roughly 38,600 military personnel stationed on German sovereign soil.

Over the past decade the German taxpayers have spent over $1.1 billion U.S. (approximately $100 million annually) to accommodate these U.S. soldiers.

From the U.S. airbase at Ramstein the Americans conducted airstrikes during their 2003 invasion of Iraq, a war which Germany opposed. To this day Ramstein is used as a control center for deadly extra-judicial U.S drone strikes in Yemen and elsewhere.

Also troubling to many German citizens is the fact that the U.S. uses the German air force base at Buchel to house an estimated 20 American nuclear warheads.

The huge U.S. hospital facility at Landstuhl has also been the treatment center for U.S. and allied (including Canadians) wounded during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

So Trump’s assertion that the U.S. military presence in Germany is solely to protect Germans from Russian aggression is patently false. Even after this current planned reduction, there will still be over 26,000 U.S. personnel on the ground. Ramstein will continue to coordinate drone strikes, Landstuhl will still treat battlefield casualties and the nuclear warheads will remain on German soil.

Of the 12,000 being withdrawn, the bulk of these troops will be re-positioned to other European countries such as Italy, Poland and the Baltic States. In other worlds, they will still be between the German citizenry and any hostile Russian aggressors.

As for the fact that Germany buys much of its oil and gas from Russia, how can that really bother Trump the capitalist when the U.S. imports most of its energy from Saudi Arabia? Enough said.

Which brings us to Trump’s other point that Germany is being “very delinquent in their 2% fee to NATO.”

For those who are not familiar with the structure of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, it is a 28-country military alliance. It is not a golf and country club with annual membership “fees”.

What Trump is referring to stems from a NATO summit held in Wales in 2014. At that meeting member states agreed to set a goal of spending 2% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence.

In this regard Canada is also ‘delinquent’ in the eyes of Trump as just prior to the pandemic we spent slightly over 1.3% of our GDP on defence. This is an equivalent percentage to that spent by the recently ‘punished’ Germany pre-COVID19 crisis.

Many have argued that the arbitrary figure of 2% is meaningless as the GDP’s of the various members differ so greatly. For instance in 2019 Bulgaria, which has a relatively puny GDP, bought a total of eight F-16 fighter jets at a one time cost of $1.5 billion and this pushed their defence budget up to 3.25 percent of its economic output.

Only the U.S. spent a higher percentage at 3.4% GDP on defence, but that amount equals more than all other NATO members combined. For the record, Canada’s annual expenditure in actual dollars ranks us number six in spending within the alliance.

However, for those Canadian defence analysts that for the past five years have dutifully parroted the “2% GDP on Defence” party line – your wish might soon be granted.

In April alone Canada’s GDP shrunk by over 11% which means our defence budget climbed above the 1.5% mark. If our economy continues to tank, Trump will get his wish and Canada will soon be spending more than 2% GDP on defence.

Hell, it could be 3% by Christmas. If so, I can think of a few defence cheerleaders in Canada who can shut down their think tanks and leave a ‘mission-accomplished’ sign on the door.

ON TARGET: Vance to Retire: Who will be Canada’s Next CDS?

By Scott Taylor

It was announced last Thursday that Chief of the Defence Staff, General Jonathan Vance will be stepping down from his post as Canada’s top soldier. There was no ‘effective immediately’ caveat, so it is presumed that Vance will continue to lead the Canadian Armed Forces until such time as the Trudeau Liberal government has selected his successor.

One can probably assume that with the current distractions such as the ME-to-WE conflict of interest allegations, the COVID pandemic and resultant collapse of the Canadian economy, Trudeau will be in no rush to sit and sift through the CV’s of his senior generals. As a result, insiders expect that Vance will keep his job through this fall and possibly even into early 2021.

However the sweepstakes have begun and pundits are already laying odds on who will be Canada’s next CDS.

There is no clear-cut frontrunner from the pack of Canada’s senior officers.

While in theory the CDS post is to be rotated through the three service branches – Navy, Army and Air force – for the past thirty years this has not been the case in practice. Army generals have been the incumbent six times, Air force generals thrice and a Navy Admiral only once (and that was only an aborted 11 month term).

During the scandal plagued era of the mid-nineties the Liberal government of the day actually left the CDS position vacant for more than a year.

One of the contributing factors as to why General Vance has no heir apparent stems from the Vice Admiral Mark Norman affair. In 2017 the RCMP alleged that Norman – then the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff – had leaked government information to a shipyard.

General Vance suspended Norman while the case was played out in the courts. As a result the VCDS position became a revolving door with Norman’s responsibilities being handed off in quick succession to VAdm Ron Lloyd, LGen Paul Wynnyk, LGen Jean-Marc Lanthier and as of just a few days ago LGen Mike Rouleau.

The legal case against Norman collapsed, but the admiral chose a settlement and retirement over returning to his old job. Lloyd, Wynnyk and Lanthier have also all since retired.

Although the ink is still wet on his new VCDS business cards, many consider that Rouleau is a top contender to replace Vance. Prior to his current post Rouleau commanded the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM) and more recently he presided over Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC).

Rouleau’s replacement at CJOC, LGen Chris Coates is also in the running for Vance’s office as he was until recently the Deputy Commander of NORAD.

Then there are the three current service branch heads – LGen Wayne Eyre the Army Commander LGen Al Meinzinger the RCAF commander and Vice Admiral Art McDonald head of the RCN.

Of those three, Meinzinger has the most experience as a three-star general with Eyre and McDonald only recently having been promoted to their present rank.

Vice-Admiral Haydn Edmundson is currently the Chief of Military Personnel and could very easily be the dark horse in this race if the RCN are finally to get their turn at the top job.

There has also been some speculation that the Trudeau Liberals will want to be the first to appoint a female general to command the CAF.

To make that happen there are two possible options. The first would be to convince LGen Christine Whitecross to cancel her imminent retirement and accept a post which she has previously said she is not interested in attaining.

The second would be to promote once again the very recently promoted LGen Frances Allen. Regardless of how capable and qualified Allen may be, such an accelerated promotion over the heads of the more experience male three-star generals would undoubtedly be viewed as blatant tokenism on the part of the Trudeau government.

The race is on and it will be interesting to watch. As for General Vance, I wish to take this opportunity to thank him for his service. I have often criticized his actions or inactions in this column, but never without personal respect for the uniform he has chosen to wear for the past 39 years.

ON TARGET: How Is It a Hate Crime To Hate Nazis?

Photo courtesy US Holocaust Memorial Museum

By Scott Taylor

In the wake of the high profile Black Lives Matter movement there has been a lot of soul searching into a North American history riddled with racism and the institutional glorification of colonialism. In the U.S. we have seen protestors topple statues of Confederate generals and Christopher Columbus.

Closer to home, around June 21 a monument was vandalized at a cemetery in Oakville, Ontario. When first reported it was stated that the Halton-Regional Police Service was treating this as a “hate motivated offense due to the nature of the graffiti.” At the time, police said they would not release images of the graffiti so as not to spread the suspect’s message. So far, so good.

However, social media has a habit of leaping firewalls and it did not take long for those missing details to come to light. It turns out that the defaced monument is actually a tribute to the 14 SS Division (Galizien) and the offending message spray painted on it read “Nazi war monument.”

That’s right folks, as hard as it is to fathom there is actually a monument on Canadian soil that pays tribute to Hitler’s SS troops. For the suspect to have labelled this a Nazi war monument may constitute vandalism but it is an accurate statement. Which therefore begs the question as to why the Halton-Regional police would be treating this as a hate crime? How can hating Nazis be a crime, let alone a hate crime?

My colleague David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen posed that question to the Halton-Regional police and their spokesman Const. Steve Elms replied by email. “This incident occurred to a monument and the graffiti appeared to target an identifiable group.”

That ‘identifiable group’ would be the members of the 14th SS Division (Galizien) all of whom took an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler and who were commanded by Heinrich Himmler, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

For those of you still in disbelief that a monument to these Nazi’s would exist in Canada let me provide some historical context.

The 14 SS Division (Galizien) was initially comprised of Ukrainian volunteers. It was established in 1943 when the fortunes of war had begun to turn against Hitler and the German war machine needed to increase its manpower to counter that of the Allies. The 14 SS Division fought against the Soviet Union on the eastern front but surrendered to the U.S. forces in Austria in 1945. After being interned at camps in Italy, eventually many of these SS troops immigrated to Canada. Hence the subsequent erection of a memorial to their fallen comrades in the St. Volodymyr’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church cemetery in Oakville.

Apologists for the Ukrainian SS claim they were in fact heroes who were striving to establish an independent state. Others make the weak excuse that many of these SS troopers were forcibly and illegally conscripted by the Germans.

While I’m sure there were such conscripts, I’m equally sure that if they were forced against their will to fight for a cause they did not believe in, they would not erect a glorious monument to the unit in which they were forced to serve.

One would presume that as their commander, SS leader Himmler would understand the nature of the Ukrainian SS members. In a speech to this division in May 1944 Himmler told the assembled 14th Division SS members, “Your homeland has become more beautiful since you have lost – on our initiatives, I must say – the residents who were so often a dirty blemish on Galicia’s good name – namely the Jews, I know if I ordered you to liquidate the Poles, I would be giving you permission to do what you are eager to do anyway.” Himmler’s comments were reportedly greeted with cheers.

For the record it must be remembered that some 40,000 ethnic Ukrainian-Canadians fought against the Nazis in the Second World War wearing a Canadian uniform.

Which makes the Halton-Regional Police comment about the message on the monument targeting an identifiable group even more puzzling as it is clearly aimed specifically at Nazis.

This was vandalism of private property – not a hate crime against Nazi’s.

ON TARGET: Armed Intrusion at Rideau Hall Could Have Ended Far Differently

Corey Hurren (centre) in a photo from his company's Instagram account during an outing for Canadian Armed Forces reservists this past winter.

By Scott Taylor

In the early hours of Thursday 2 July, there was a bizarre incident in the nation’s capital. A pickup truck smashed through the security gates at Rideau Hall. The impact disabled the vehicle and the driver continued his intrusion on foot. The RCMP confronted the man and after a ninety-minute negotiation 46-year-old Corey Hurren was arrested and taken into custody.

Rideau Hall is the official residence of Governor General Julie Payette and since 2015 Rideau cottage located on the same grounds have been home to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family.

Neither Payette nor the Trudeau family were at home at the time of the incident.

However we now know that Hurren was well armed with several weapons and that he intended to send a ‘wake-up call’ to Canadians. Hurren had detailed his troubled thoughts in a two-page letter, the contents of which have subsequently been shared with the media.

In addition to personal financial issues stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, Hurren felt that Canada was becoming a “communist dictatorship.”

In the letter Hurren also apologized to his family and friends in advance for the actions he was about to take and noted that he did not want to go on living with the pain. In other words, his letter reads like the final words of a man intent on committing suicide-by-cop.

One can only bet that had either the Governor General or Prime Minister been on the premises and endangered by the armed Hurren, such would have been the outcome.

What makes Hurren’s actions so bizarre is that he is not some run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory whack job, he is in fact a serving member of the Canadian Armed Forces.

Documents show that from April 1997 until October 2000 Hurren was a reservist with the 10th Field Artillery Regiment based in Regina, Sask. He had been released with the rank of Corporal. Last year Hurren re-enlisted as a member of the 4th Canadian Ranger Patrol Group. As part of the CAF effort to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic Hurren was placed on active duty.

In addition to his service as a Ranger Hurren ran a sausage business in his hometown of Bowsman, Manitoba. It was this business which Hurren felt would not recover from the economic impact of the Pandemic.

While none of the weapons or ammunition found on Hurren’s possession at the time of his arrest were CAF property, he did make a point of sending a copy of his two-page letter to his Ranger supervisor prior to the intrusion at Rideau Hall.

That supervisor had the presence of mind to call 911 and was therefore able to assist the RCMP during their prolonged negotiations with Hurren prior to his arrest.

As a serving member of the CAF, Hurren would have taken an oath of loyalty to the Queen of Canada, and therefore it seems incredible that he would have pursued this desperate course of action.

It would also appear that his connection to the Canadian military and respect for the institution were in no way diminished or sullied. Arriving in Ottawa on Canada Day after a 28 hour drive from Bowsman, Hurren’s first order of business was to pay a visit to the Canadian War Museum. Unfortunately for the luckless Hurren the COVID-19 pandemic dealt him yet another blow as the CWM has been locked down since mid-March.

While this particular incident was resolved in an anti-climatic manner, it could have ended much differently. A serving soldier on active duty assembles a small arsenal of loaded weapons and drives halfway across Canada to deliver a ‘wake-up’ call with an attack on Rideau Hall. That is serious stuff far beyond a simple ‘mental health’ episode.

The RCMP officers involved are to be commended on their poise and patience. I cannot imagine a similar peaceful surrender if someone crashed the gates of the White House intent on sending a ‘wake-up call’ to Donald Trump.

ON TARGET: You Don’t Need to Pay Afghan Extremists a Bounty to Kill Foreign Occupiers

Afghan extremists have been happily killing would be foreign occupiers for centuries.

By Scott Taylor

With COVID-19 pandemic resurgent throughout the U.S. and the Black Lives Matter movement still garnering headlines there is now a third bombshell story competing for the American media’s attention.

Last week the New York Times broke the story that U.S. intelligence sources allege that Russian intelligence operatives have been paying a bounty to Afghan insurgents who target and kill U.S. soldiers.

The allegations -although unproven and based solely on unnamed intelligence sources - were quickly accepted as fact. Overnight the story angle became ‘when was Donald Trump made aware of these reports?’ and ‘why has Trump not taken action against the Russians?’

For the hard core Colonel Blimp Brigade – including the usual war-mongers here in Canada – this allegation was a Eureka moment: We didn’t lose the war in Afghanistan ourselves it was Russian interference that prevented our victory!

This conclusion defies all logic and would only be embraced by the wilfully blind.

Let me be clear that if there is any shred of truth that Russian intelligence paid Afghans to kill Americans it would amount to a heinous crime deserving of sanction. However it would be foolhardy to believe that such blood payments altered in any way the failed course of the American-led war in Afghanistan.

Even to accept the New York Times expose as gospel truth, they claim that the Russian bounty on U.S. soldiers was only ‘implemented in recent years.’

For those keeping track, the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and initially Russia was a key supporter of that effort with a shared enemy in al-Qaeda extremists.

Relations between Russia and the U.S. did not sour until the crisis in Ukraine in 2014, so that would mean that the American-led occupation of Afghanistan was combating a fanatical resistance for a decade and a half before the Russians began paying out these alleged kill rewards.

As a reporter who covered the war in Afghanistan, I was privy to a lot of claims made by international officials as to NATO’s inability to suppress the insurgency.

Many believed that foreign fighters seeking an international holy war were the problem, and a standard refrain was that this was all Pakistan’s fault. Were it not for those outsides forces they believed that the grateful Afghans would treat our soldiers as ‘liberators’.

Never once did I hear any suggestion that Russia was the destabilizing force through their bribing of Afghans with ‘up to $100,000’ for each American soldier killed.

Such a notion of the Taliban warrior as a greedy mercenary also defies any understanding of their fanatical mindset. The reason that the Taliban have been so resilient in their defiance is that they are more than willing to die for their cause.

The collective failure of the NATO trained and equipped Afghan security forces when fighting the Taliban is that the Afghan Army soldiers want to live to cash their comparatively lucrative paycheques.

In other words, if the Russian’s have indeed been paying out six figure bounties, they have been wasting their money. As thousands of years of history clearly demonstrated, the Afghans don’t need a reward to kill foreign invaders, and one would think the Russians of all people would have learned that lesson during their decade long occupation of Afghanistan (1979-1989).

Another thing to keep in mind is that just six months ago a dossier dubbed the Afghanistan Papers was made public by the Washington Post. In this 2000-page document compiled by the Special Inspector General of Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) it was concluded that the U.S. public has been consistently misled about an unwinnable war.

The report was based on hundreds of interviews with those key figures directing the Afghanistan conflict. The two main themes concluded by SIGAR were that U.S. officials manipulated statistics to portray to the American public non-existent progress and that successive U.S. administrations had failed to clamp down on the widespread corruption.

Not once in the report did anyone blame the lost war on Russian bounties.

ON TARGET: War Crimes Haunt Kosovo’s President

By Scott Taylor

Last week it was announced that Kosovo President Hasim Thaçi faces a war crimes indictment from the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers. According to the special prosecutors, Thaçi along with eight other former senior military officials of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are collectively accused of committing “nearly 100 murders.”

In addition to the murders, Thaçi and his gang-of-eight are also alleged to have engaged in “torture, persecution and enforced disappearance.”

For those unfamiliar with the recent history of the Balkans it might seem startling that the President of a European nation could be indicted for such violent crimes. However for those who have studied the exploits of Thaçi closely, it begs the question: what took so long to charge him?

The crazy part about all of this is that Hashim Thaçi has never pretended to be anything other than what he is, and by that I mean a career criminal and a thug.

Back in 1993 at the age of 25, Thaçi became a member of the ethnic Albanian KLA, which at the time was listed by the CIA as a terrorist organization.

Thaçi’s self-given nickname was “Snake” and he was responsible for trafficking drugs and weapons for the KLA. In 1997 he was convicted in absentia of committing acts of terrorism by the District Court in Pristina and sentenced to 10 years in prison.

However, in 1998 as KLA Albanian separatists forces were openly waging an insurgency against Yugoslav security forces, the U.S. State Department had a change of heart. The ‘terrorist’ KLA suddenly became the freedom fighter KLA and their ringleader Thaçi aka ‘Snake’ was propelled into the role of statesman.

In March 1999, NATO forces including Canada, intervened in Kosovo in support of the KLA. After a 78-day bombing campaign the Yugoslavs were forced to capitulate.

Naturally it was Thaçi and his fellow KLA leadership that dominated the post-conflict political landscape in Kosovo. Thaçi was elected Prime Minister of Kosovo in 2007 and on 17 February 2008, he made a unilateral declaration of independence.

The U.S. immediately recognized Kosovo as an independent state and pressured other countries – including Canada to similarly re-draw the map of Europe.

The Russians used their veto to deny Kosovo membership at the UN and other European countries with separatist movements within their own borders have blocked Kosovo from joining NATO and the E.U.

So while Kosovo remains in a sort of international status limbo, Thaçi has been living up to his old nickname,

The German Intelligence Agency BND conducted a recent investigation into Thaçi and his regime and concluded “The key players (including Thaçi) are involved in inter-linkages between politics, business and organized crime structures in Kosovo.” To put it bluntly, Kosovo is a narco-criminal enterprise.

A separate report conducted for the Council of Europe had a far more sinister overtone. It implicated Thaçi and the former KLA commanders of such heinous crimes as human organ trafficking. Innocent victims – both ethnic Serbian and Albanian – were allegedly executed for the purpose of harvesting their organs on the black market.

In November 2017, Prime Minister Trudeau hosted President Thaçi when he visited Ottawa. Thaçi’s message at the time was that Canada and Kosovo were being targeted by Russian meddling because our two great nations shared the same “principles and values.’

Because Thaçi’s comments mirrored the narrative of the Liberal government – that being ‘Russia bad’ – the Canadian media simply parotted these sentiments without giving any honest context.

Thaçi aka ‘Snake’ presides over a failed narco-criminal state and he has now personally been indicted for war crimes. How the hell does that align with Canadian principles and values?

ON TARGET: Senseless Spinning on the Challenger Jet Purchase

Robert Sullivan - Flickr

By Scott Taylor

On Saturday, June 6 the Department of National Defence made an announcement that they were purchasing two new Challenger Jets for the RCAF. This was a sole-source acquisition worth $105 million to aircraft manufacturer Bombardier.

Given the weekend release of this news and the fact in this era of pandemic bailout, spending $105 million now sounds like chump change, the Challenger purchase caused nary a ripple in the media.

This did not stop senior DND officials from laying down a barrage of pre-emptory deflection. In her comments on the Challenger acquisition, Jody Thomas the Deputy Minister of DND noted that the RCAF’s existing Challenger fleet had been used to deliver medical supplies to battle COVID-19 in remote regions.

For his part, Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance posted social media messages outlining how Challenger jets have “proven themselves time and time again while supporting humanitarian missions and helping during COVID-19.” It was also pointed out by DND that a Challenger had recently been used to deploy the flight safety team in the wake of the fatal April 29 Cyclone helicopter crash in the Mediterranean Sea.

Glaringly absent from the official equation was any mention of the Challenger jets primary function which has always been VIP transport. The procurement documentation for the two new jets clearly states that these are to be ‘VIP aircraft’ to be used for VIP transport.

For anyone even remotely aware of the aviation world, the Challenger jet has become the iconic brand name associated with executive VIP aircraft. It is like the Kleenex of tissue papers. Everyone knows what they are so why the official attempt to spin the Challengers into some sort of air-ambulance, utility delivery plane?

Most Canadians would not object to our political and military leadership having access to such VIP transport. After all we are a G-8 nation and it would be a national embarrassment should our Prime Minister arrive at a world leaders summit via a commercial flight. Similarly I do not think we want to see our Chief of Defence Staff stepping off a Greyhound bus with his attendant staff officers.

We get that there is a certain amount of prestige and privilege afforded to those who hold high office. Therefore, it is not the use of such an asset that causes the government embarrassment. It is the abuse of these executive jets for non-official personal travel that causes the public outrage.

Who can forget the occasions when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used a RCAF challenger jet for trips to Costa Rica, St Kitts and to the Aga Khan’s private Island?

In these instances nobody questioned the fact that the RCAF owned and operated Challenger VIP transports. What angered them was the perceived misuse of a national resource for personal purposes.

Former Defence Minister and current candidate for Conservative Party leader Peter MacKay was accused of taking such abuse of privilege to new heights back in the summer of 2010. While at a remote fishing lodge in Newfoundland, MacKay’s office requested a RCAF search and rescue helicopter to fly him to nearby Gander Airport. When word of this flight broke in the media the opposition parties called for MacKay’s resignation.

Now we have come full circle. First it was MacKay using a federal rescue aircraft as his own VIP transportation and now we have Jody Thomas and Jonathan Vance telling the Canadian public that our Challenger VIP transport planes are really just medical assistance planes.

The fact is that nobody is going to chastise senior leaders if they properly use the resources to which they are authorized to employ. However, if they abuse that authority we have every right to call them on it.

Some free advice to the DND public affairs brain trust: If you want to avoid a media crapstorm, stop spinning and simply tell us the truth.

ON TARGET: DND: Where Even the Leaks get Leaked!

By Scott Taylor

Top officials at the Department of National Defence recently formulated a plan on how to crack down on those within their ranks who leak unclassified, albeit embarrassing information, to the news media. It didn’t take long, however, for details about the plan to be leaked to Ottawa Citizen reporter David Pugliese.

While this incident was clearly illustrative of how little control the DND has over the flow of internal unclassified information, it also reveals the proprietary mindset of our military leadership in that they somehow ‘own’ the truth.

What is disturbing about this revelation is the nature of the two most recent ‘leaks’ which were the genesis for this latest planned crack down.

One was regarding the recent crash of a Cyclone helicopter and the other was the allegations of abuse and neglect witnessed by troops serving in long term care facilities in Ontario and Quebec during the pandemic.

It was on Wednesday 29 April that the Cyclone helicopter from HMCS Fredericton crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Although news of the crash was circulating on Greek media sites almost immediately, it took DND over 24 hours to issue a formal statement.

That statement advised Canadians that “One member of the Canadian Armed Forces was killed … and five others remain missing following an accident involving a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CH-148 Cyclone helicopter.”

No details as to the possible cause of the crash were provided but we were told that the crew of Fredericton “had lost contact with the helicopter” prior to the crash.

Statements made at the time by Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan and Chief of Defence Staff General Jonathan Vance implied that the Cyclone had crashed some distance from the warship.

All the initial Canadian media reports portrayed this as an extensive and ongoing search and rescue effort to save the five CAF members who were ‘confirmed missing.’

On the afternoon of Friday 1 May, over 48 hours after the crash DND issued an updated statement advising the public the five missing souls were ‘presumed dead’ and the nature of the effort was now that of search and recover.

It was around this timeframe that one of those nefarious ‘leakers’ contacted the CBC with some contradictory information. It turned out that the Cyclone crashed in the immediate vicinity of Fredericton while doing a flypast for a photo op.

The ship did not ‘lose contact’ with the Cyclone as had been suggested, as some of the crew witnessed the crash in real time. Once pressed, DND confirmed that there were indeed witnesses and that their testimony would be included in the investigation into the crash.

One can only imagine the frustration, which led to the leaker or leakers contacting CBC with this vital piece of information. For more than two days journalists – myself included had been sharing the DND provided false narrative, and someone felt the truth about the fate of their comrades needed to be told.

Instead of hunting down the leakers of truth, DND should be investigating who thought it would be a good idea to insert the false element of ‘mystery’ to this tragedy, and why?

There would be no rhyme or reason for the Fredericton to have misrepresented the true nature of this incident to NDHQ. So it seems likely the idea to provide misleading information to the news media originated within National Defence headquarters in Ottawa.

As for the leak of the report detailing allegations of abuse and neglect in the long term care facilities; one has to believe the motivation was to prompt some immediate reforms. As we have seen, the outrage generated by the details of that report have already set in motion a flurry of policy reviews in both Ontario and Quebec.

By their nature service-members are not natural ‘leakers’ and under normal circumstances they are very comfortable reporting things through their chain of command.

When a leak occurs, it is not about embarrassing the institution, it is about setting the record straight. If DND wants to prevent leaks, they need to tell the truth in a timely manner rather than trying to control and manipulate the message.

ON TARGET: Trump: “The Most Militaristic Person Ever”

By Scott Taylor

Just two weeks ago it would have seemed almost unfathomable that something could knock the COVID-19 pandemic out of the headlines yet the death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis Police has done just that. The video footage of Floyd being suffocated by a policeman’s knee to his throat went viral. Initially the four arresting officers involved were fired by the Minneapolis police chief and that is what sparked the outrage. Everyone knows that murder is not a firing offence-it is a capital crime.

Floyd’s death sparked a powder keg of pent up frustration and outrage over police brutality and the inequality of the U.S. justice system. Ignoring the threat of spreading the coronavirus, crowds of protestors took to the streets of most major American cities.

As racial injustice is not confined within the boundaries of America’s borders, marches were also staged in Canada and throughout many European capitals. Almost without exception these international demonstrations were peaceful whereas from the outset many of the American protests turned violent.

Military police clear LaFayette Park on 1 June, 2020

Things quickly escalated out of control as President Donald Trump felt that the best way to counter people protesting police brutality was to exert more authority. To augment police forces Trump advocated deploying National Guard units and chastised those governors who resisted doing so as being “weak.”

The whole Trump ‘tough guy’ routine seems to have been the driving force behind his bizarre response to the crisis. Since he first hit the presidential campaign trail in 2016, Trump has repeatedly claimed to be “the most militaristic person ever.” This makes no sense, as Trump never served in uniform and used a total of five deferments, including that of bone spurs, to avoid being drafted to fight the war in Vietnam.

In response to his boast of martial prowess the New York Daily News labelled him “G.I. Joke” and more recently he has been dubbed ‘Bunker Boy’ after it was revealed that he and his family took refuge in the White House emergency shelter during one of the initial protests.

In response to these criticisms Trump had military police in riot gear clear peaceful protestors from Lafayette Square so that he and his entourage could bravely walk to the Church of St. John’s. This landmark place of worship had been burned by protestors and Trump staged a photo op of himself holding a bible in front of the damaged structure.

This was Trump play-acting at being a war time president evoking memories of Winston Churchill inspecting the bomb damaged streets of London during the Blitz in WWII.

The big difference being that Churchill was fighting a foreign enemy and his acts of defiance had a unifying effect on the people of Britain. Trump’s ‘war’ is against his own people who are seeking equality and justice.

Trump’s plan is to apply more military force – possibly invoking the insurrection act which will allow him to deploy regular troops against American citizens – in order to ‘dominate’ them.

California National Guard at protest in los Angeles with unit name on shields

To be fair, Trump is not alone in this insanity as evidenced by a recent tweet from Republican Senator Tom Cotton, which read “And if necessary, the 10th Mountain, 82 Airborne, 1st Cav, 3rd infantry – whatever it takes to restore order. No quarter for insurrectionists, anarchists, rioters and looters.”

For those not familiar with the term ‘no quarter’ it means ‘take no prisoners.’ This clown Cotton is calling for U.S. soldiers to shoot and kill Americans without due judicial process.

Canada is not without racial injustice, proof of which being demonstrations held in Toronto, Ottawa and Halifax last week. However the current crisis has served to illustrate that there are indeed cultural differences between Canada and our southern neighbour.

Social media has recently resurrected the observation by the late comedian Robin Williams that “Canada is like the old lady’s apartment above a meth lab.”

One image that drove this point home to me was a photo depicting protestors confronting a line of riot police whose shields were all emblazoned with the words ‘California National Guard.’

I cannot imagine that Canadian militia units have such crowd control equipment complete with their unit name on it. “This beat down brought to you courtesy of The Princess Louise Fusiliers.”

https://www.stripes.com/news/us/active-duty-troops-could-deploy-on-washington-streets-to-stop-protests-1.632074

ON TARGET: Snowbird Tragedy Blows Up a Storm of Emotion

By Scott Taylor

On Thursday 27 May, 431 Squadron of the RCAF held a Celebration of Life ceremony inside an aircraft hangar at CFB Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan. This sad tribute was to honour Captain Jennifer Casey who lost her life on 17 May in a Tutor aircraft crash outside Kamloops, B.C.

To meet the challenge of social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, the ceremony involved only a few well-spaced guests and speakers. To allow Casey’s family, friends and comrades to share the moment, 431 Squadron arranged to have the event live streamed on video.

This ceremony in Saskatchewan followed a homecoming funeral procession in Casey’s hometown Halifax the previous Sunday. The plane carrying her casket was met by Governor General Julie Payette and Minister of National Defence Harjit Sajjan. Hundreds of mourners turned out on the streets of Halifax to pay their final respects to Captain Casey.

On a personal note, it was only when the obituaries were published that I realized I had known her as ‘Jenn from the Rick Howe Show’, which she produced during her former career in journalism. She would call to book me as a guest on the show and I had met her on several occasions when I was in the 95.7 talk studios. Her death shocked and saddened Canadians from coast to coast.

To date there has been no exact cause given for the crash of the Snowbird Tutor which killed Casey and left pilot Captain Richard MacDougall injured.

There is abundant amateur video, which was broadcast by the media showing the Tutor aircraft make a sudden climb shortly after the take off. Both MacDougall and Casey ejected but the parachutes do not fully deploy.

I rest assured that the RCAF will conduct a full and thorough investigation into the cause of the accident. At the time of the crash the Snowbird Squadron was transiting from Kamloops, B.C to Vancouver Island to complete the final leg of a cross-country morale boosting tour to lift Canadians’ spirits during the COVID-19 lockdown.

This tragedy has given voice to aviation experts who point to the advanced age of the Tutor aircraft which first entered service with the RCAF in 1963. However, since the 431 Air Demonstration Squadron was first stood up in 1971, they have experienced a total of 24 accidents or mishaps, eight of which proved fatal resulting in a total of nine dead military personnel. 

Of those incidents only eight were deemed mechanical failures and only two of those eight resulted in fatalities. The Snowbird Squadron prides itself on meticulous maintenance of their admittedly aging aircraft. The majority of the accidents have been the result of mid-air collisions, wing tip collisions or bird strikes.

For those who question why the RCAF would endanger its personnel by having them perform aerobatic formation flying, the fact is there is an inherent risk to such aerial demonstrations. That is what creates the ‘wow’ factor when the Snowbirds perform at air shows. People don’t pay to watch formula one cars drive around the track at the public speed limit.

As to the future of the RCAF maintaining the Snowbirds, the hard truth is that the Tutors will need to be replaced. The current timeline sees a possible procurement of new jets sometime between 2026 and 2035 with a budgeted cost of between $500 million and $1.5 billion.

With this most recent crash putting the Squadron back in the spotlight and depending on the full extent of the economic havoc to yet be caused by COVID-19 crisis, it may be difficult for the government to justify the expenditure of such sums of money to a fiscally struggling public.

It may require the RCAF to investigate avenues which would involve some form of corporate sponsorship to offload the costs. The Canadian Army has been very successful in relying upon corporate partners to stage their annual Army Run so it would not be unprecedented.

RIP Captain Jennifer Casey and I wish a full and speedy recover to Captain Richard MacDougall.

ON TARGET: Forget Venezuela it is Time to Remove Trump

By Scott Taylor

In early May we had that bizarre little incident wherein a handful of mercenaries attempted to overthrow the Venezuelan government. The sixty or so would be ‘liberators’ were easily defeated by security forces loyal to President Nicolas Maduro, with eight killed and the remainder captured. Among these captured were two ex-American special forces operatives who worked for the Florida based security firm Silvercorp.

The President-Founder of Silvercorp is Canadian born Jordan Goudreau who served a stint in the Canadian Armed Forces before joining the U.S. military to become a Special Forces operative.

Goudreau did not take part in the actual attack but he did announce the attempted coup d’état on Sunday May 3 before the raid began. Once the attempted liberation devolved into a chaotic botched fiasco, our good man Goudreau told the media that he had been contracted by Juan Guaido to overthrow Maduro.

To prove his point Goudreau produced a contract complete with Guaido’s signature dated October 2019. In exchange for $213 million (U.S.) Silvercorp was to invade Venezuela and overthrow Maduro.

The comical ending to the Silvercorp coup attempt is embarrassing for Canada because Juan Guaido is the man that Canada chose to be the President of Venezuela. Guaido never ran in a Presidential election but when the voters of that country re-elected Nicolas Maduro to a second term in 2018, outside countries did not like the outcome.

Under the direction of then Minister of Global Affairs Chrystia Freeland, Canada formed a collection of 14 American States, which has become known as the Lima Group.

In January 2019 the Lima Group recognized Juan Guaido as Venezuela’s President. Since then a total of 60 countries have followed suit and meddled in Venezuela’s internal politics by recognizing the unelected Guaido as that nation’s President.

If that is how we are doing things these days why not set our collective sights on the U.S.A? During the COVID-19 crisis Donald Trump has become increasingly unhinged and the American people are suffering dire consequences as a result of his demented leadership. Case in point, at a recent press conference Trump suddenly blurted out that he has been taking the anti-malaria drug Hydroxychloroquine as a preventive measure to ward off COVID-19.

While the media broadcast his stated claim the fact is that virtually nobody believes he was telling the truth. There is no proven science that Hydroxychloroquine protects against COVID-19 but it is known to have harmful side effects for patients that are obese or have heart conditions. Trump is obese and has a heart disease. No doctor would let him take the drug.

Last Thursday Trump doubled down on the lie when he told reporters that he would stop taking Hydroxychloroquine in two days because that is when its two week ‘regimen’ would be up. Hydroxychloroquine is a prophylactic drug not an antibiotic - it does not have a ‘regimen’ meaning it only works when you take it.

The majority of the ‘fake news’ during this pandemic has come from the mouth of the POTUS. As late as March 1st, 2020 he was telling Americans that the virus was a Democrat ‘hoax.’ He also stated that it would go away by itself in the warmer weather, he mused about ingesting bleach as a possible cure, he refuses to wear a mask even while touring a mask-making plant and now he is bragging that it is a ‘badge of honour’ for the U.S.A to be leading the world in all statistics; The most tested, the most cases and the most deaths.

Nicolas Maduro may be a bad hombre but I do not think he has ever boasted that he succeeded in leading the world in dead Venezuelans.

If Guaido can be named as that country’s president by a group of outside nations then why not do the same for the U.S.? Freeland should assemble the Lima Group and recognize Barack Obama as the interim acting U.S. President until their election in November. At least Obama was once elected President by the American People.

However, we all know that this will never happen even though Trump’s continued Presidency threatens the entire world. Which makes it all the more puzzling that Canada would still be leading the way to interfere in Venezuela’s politics.

Military coups are not a democratic process.

ON TARGET: DND’s Inexplicable Distortion of Facts in Helicopter Crash

By Scott Taylor

On Wednesday April 29 a RCAF Cyclone helicopter crashed in the Mediterranean Sea while returning to HMCS Fredericton from a training mission. Word of this tragedy was first reported by Greek news outlets and it was soon circulating on Canadian social media platforms.

Most mainstream media reporters were leery that this story could in fact be ‘fake news’ as the Greek media were reporting the downed helicopter to be a Sikorsky Sea King which are no longer in service with the RCN.

When DND did issue a formal statement on Thursday April 30, Canadians were advised that “One member of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) was killed … and five other members remain missing following an accident involving a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) CH-148 Cyclone helicopter.”

We were also informed that “HMCS Fredericton and NATO allies continue to search for the other five members of the helicopters crew.” Details as to the cause of the crash were unknown and media were informed that the crew of HMCS Fredericton “had lost contact with the helicopter” prior to the crash.

When this story did break in Canada, with official confirmation and complete with the name of the individual killed and the names of the five “confirmed missing” it resonated throughout the military community like a wildfire. The scenario painted was that of a mystery crash sparking a major search and rescue operation by the NATO naval task group.

Commentators pondered the vastness of the Ionian Sea posing a challenge for the searchers, and social media posters prayed for the rescue of the five missing members.

Late in the afternoon on Friday, May 1, a full 48 hours after the crash, DND issued an updated statement wherein the ‘confirmed missing’ were now “presumed deceased.” No longer was it a ‘search and rescue’ operation, it had transitioned into a ‘search and recovery’ task.

As a nation united in grief Canada mourned the loss of Captains Brenden Ian MacDonald, Kevin Hagen, Maxime Miron-Morin, Sub-Lieutenants Abbigail Cowbrough, Matthew Pyke and Master-Corporal Matthew Cousins.

Once the initial shock of this tragedy subsided additional details of the crash began to surface. It turns out that the Cyclone was in sight of the Fredericton at the time of the accident. In full view in fact as the helicopter was allegedly doing a low level flypast as part of a photo-shoot when it suddenly and violently plunged into the waves.

The DND has since confirmed that eye witness testimony will be part of their official investigation into the cause of the crash. With this being the case one has to wonder why the Canadian media, myself included, were being fed such deceptive details in the initial 48 hours.

To wit; the Fredericton did not ‘lose contact’ with the helicopter if the crew actually watched it crash. The search site would have involved a few hundred square feet of Ocean, not the entire Ionian Sea.

What makes no sense is why someone in the DND communication chain-of-command would have felt it a good idea to change the details to add some unnecessary mystery to the incident, not to mention generating false hope among the friends and family of the five ‘confirmed missing.’

There would be no need to cover-up the fact that the helicopter was doing a photo pass at the time, as everyone familiar with RCN operations knows this is a routine exercise.

I understand that the DND would want to have complete certainty before announcing the death of the crew to the public. However if from the outset we were told the Cyclone crash was witnessed by sailors aboard Fredericton and no survivors were seen, that would have been more accurate.

In this era of ‘fake news’ by malign actors we need our official sources to provide us with accurate details. In this case the DND was inexplicably off the mark.

ON TARGET: Botched Venezuela Coup d’etat: The Canadian Connection

By Scott Taylor

Last week a bizarre drama unfolded on the shores of Venezuela. Security forces engaged several boatloads of armed gunmen resulting in eight dead and a dozen prisoners. Two of those who surrendered to Venezuelan authorities were ex-US Special Forces soldiers who had identity cards showing they worked for Silvercorp USA; a Florida based private security company.

Just prior to the skirmishes, on Sunday, May 3, Silvercorp President Jordan Goudreau had proclaimed to the media that he was launching an invasion to liberate Venezuela and arrest President Nicholas Maduro.

The Canadian-born Goudreau served as a reservist with the Canadian Armed Forces before enlisting in the U.S. military where he eventually was selected for the special forces.

Goudreau claimed that his actions were part of a contract he had signed with a chap named Juan Guaido.

When the attempted Rambo-style invasion literally washed up on the Venezuelan shores, Guaido was quick to denounce any knowledge of the armed invasion.

Unfortunately for Guaido and other members of the Venezuelan opposition, there exists a signed contract between them and Silvercorp dated October 2019. The deliverable on that contract was the invasion of Venezuela and the overthrow of Maduro in exchange for $213 million (US).

For those who may have lost track of the Venezuelan political crisis in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, it must be remembered that Guaido was chosen as president of Venezuela in January 2019. This was not the choice of Venezuelan voters who had elected Nicolas Maduro to a second term in 2018; rather Guaido was instead selected by the Lima Group which is led by Canada and includes 14 other Central and South American countries.

Since Lima Group made their choice, Guaido has been recognized as Venezuela’s president by a total of 60 countries, the most notable being the USA. This means that over 120 countries do not recognize Guaido’s presidency, the most notable of them being Venezuela itself.

This past February Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Deputy Minister Chrystia Freeland hosted Guaido in Ottawa. Following that meeting, Freeland held a press conference wherein she told reporters that the Lima Group and Guaido were all seeking the same goal of a “peaceful transition to democracy.”

Meanwhile, completely unbeknownst to Freeland, Guaido had already signed a contract with a mercenary to invade his own country.

That contract, which was published last week in the Washington Post, firmly tapes Guaido’s feet to the bicycle pedals in this botched coup. However Goudreau has also made the claim that his invasion had the sanction of the Trump administration.

A photograph of Goudreau with Donald Trump, purportedly taken on October 18, 2018 in Charlotte, North Carolina, was posted on Goudreau’s Instagram account.

Although the U.S. government has thus far denied having any involvement with the attempted coup d’état, Venezuelan participants in the botched raid stated they were seeking the bounty money offered by the Trump administration for the arrest of Maduro.

On March 16, 2020, just as the wave of COVID-19 was swallowing up all available media space, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a total value of $55 million for the arrest and detention of Maduro and four of his top aides. The price on Maduro’s head was $15 million. The reason given for placing a bounty on these leaders was that they were considered “Narco-Terrorists.”

According to Pompeo, these dastardly Venezuelans were using the cover and confusion of the COVID-19 pandemic to flood the U.S. with cheap illegal narcotics. He offered no proof, nor did he explain how such a scheme was to succeed. The Venezuelan Narco-Giveaway plot seems less feasible than Goudreau’s 60-man invasion of Venezuela – and we saw how that unfolded.

Hopefully Canada will cut its ties to Guaido now that his true colours have been revealed. The Venezuelan people deserve better.

ON TARGET: Tight-Knit Military Family Hit Hard by Tragedy

By Scott Taylor

Last Wednesday sources within the military community began contacting Esprit de Corps magazine with information that a potential tragedy was unfolding in the Mediterranean. Our first reaction was to treat the rumours as a possible ‘fake news’ story initiated by a NATO adversary to spread discrediting disinformation about the Canadian Armed Forces.

However as events unfolded DND soon confirmed that the initial Greek media reports were correct: A CH-148 Cyclone helicopter had gone down in the Ionian Sea between Italy and Greece.

Following the notification of next of kin it was revealed that the body of Sub Lt Abbigail Cowbrough had been found at the crash site and a search was ongoing for her five missing crew members; Captain Brenden Ian MacDonald, Kevin Hagen, Maxime Miron-Morin, Sub-Lt Matthew Pyke and Master Corporal Matthew Cousins.

On Friday the Canadian Armed Forces announced that the five missing were now presumed dead.

The tragic news shocked the Canadian public and devastated the military community. Social media platforms exploded with an outpouring of grief and empathy for the families and loved ones of the victims. It was widely discussed in the public postings how hard this loss would hit the tight-knit crew of HMCS Fredericton, the frigate from which the CH-148 Cyclone was operating from at the time of the incident.

The public commentary was illustrative of just how personally inter-connected are the members of CAF. Many serving and former service members shared personal anecdotes and their memories of time spent with the six victims. It was noted that Captain Brendan MacDonald one of the Cyclone pilots was the eldest of the three siblings serving in the Canadian military. All three had been in the cadet program before enlisting. This was also the case with Sub-Lt Abbigail Cowbrough who was a piper in the Cadets before enrolling in the Royal Military College.

Many mothers of serving members wrote to express their understanding of the anxiety parents have when their children are deployed on operations.

What is not widely known by the general public is just exactly how close-knit the CAF family is in its composition. There is always the official nod to the unique camaraderie brought about by earning the right to wear a CAF uniform but the bonds often go far deeper.

There are approximately 6,000 military married couples within the CAF, which means almost one in five members are married to a fellow service-member. A recent study revealed that over 40% of all recruits who join the military have either one or both parents in the service.

This is why a tragedy such as this latest Cyclone disaster has such a hard hitting impact on the entire CAF. Even if they have no direct link to the victims, service-members realize that the military profession is never risk free.

One of the most common phrases uttered by civilians when they hear of such a tragedy is ‘I can’t imagine what these families must be going through.” For the military community it is something they can envision all too well.

For that reason, the families, friends, loved ones and comrades of Cowbrough, MacDonald, Hagen, Miron-Morin, Pyke and Cousins are not alone in their grief, the entire extended military family is standing with them.

In the weeks to come DND will learn more about the exact cause of the crash, but for now our thoughts and prayers should be for the families of the fallen.

As for the six victims involved in the crash, we shall remember their sacrifice.

ON TARGET: COVID-19 Crisis: Canada’s Response Compared to the USA

By Scott Taylor

As this COVID-19 has now affected the entire globe it is interesting to observe just how it has impacted different cultures, aside from actual mortality rates or those measures governments have taken to contain the spread of the virus.

In Italy for instance, one of those countries that has been exceptionally hard hit by COVID-19, locked down residents of apartment buildings, have organized collective concerts. In Spain, another European hot spot policemen have entertained in the empty streets to the amusement of the citizens they are forcibly containing in their homes.

In Canada we have thus far met the challenge of social distancing and a locked down economy with a quiet resolve. The new normal is something akin to the ‘walk of the penguins’ with everyone shuffling forward in store line-ups at evenly spaced two metre intervals.

We have taken our cues from national and provincial leaders whose press briefings have become part of our daily routine. When historians of the future review the video footage of this crisis they will be able to witness the time-lapse transformation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s finely quaffed hair morphing into a caveman mop top. Aside from xenophobic allegations from MP and Conservative Party leadership candidate Derek Sloan accusing Federal Health Officer Theresa Tam of at best, not having Canada’s interests at heart and at worst being an agent of China – this has not been a particularly divisive crisis in terms of Canadian politics.

All in all, it appears that the measures put in place in Canada have effectively flattened the curve and our mortality rate has been mercifully low in relation to those individuals who have tested positive for the virus.

This stands in strong contrast to the crap show that we have seen unfolding just south of our now restricted border. The USA is now truly number one in all categories of the COVID-19 statistics; it has tested the most citizens, it has recorded the most positive cases, suffered the most deaths and has the most unemployed workforce on the planet.

Despite these statistics there are a large number of Americans who still think this whole pandemic is some sort of hoax, fake news or a conspiracy.

Last week some U.S. ‘patriots’ brandished their assault rifles to exercise their second amendment freedom to bear arms while demanding that the authorities end the lockdown. When frontline healthcare workers counter-protested the would be ‘patriots’ denounced the nurses as ‘traitors’.

The medical face of the U.S. COVID-19 crisis is that of National Health Officer Dr. Anthony Fauci. Even as his projections of the virus spread and death tolls are being proven correct the conspiracy theorists demand he be silenced. Things are so serious that this heretofore-unknown medical official now requires a round-the-clock security detail for his personal protection.

Then we have U.S. President Donald Trump whose combative and divisive rhetoric has only been amplified throughout this crisis.

When the COVID-19 virus was initially a regional outbreak in China and Southeast Asia, Trump publicly downplayed the threat of the disease. Even when the first COVID-19 cases appeared in the U.S., Trump and his regime were warning that the cure of a lockdown would be worse than the spread of the virus because it would kill the American economy.

Last week Trump blamed the World Health Organization (WHO) for failing to sound the alarm early enough to allow America to prepare. As a result of WHO being allegedly ‘China centric’ Trump has ceased funding this international agency.

For the record, the first announcement of ‘pneumonia cases’ was reported in Wuhan China on 31 December 2019. On 5 January 2020 the WHO published a first Disease Outbreak News on the new virus.

Several other warnings were issued by WHO and on 11 March 2020, due to the severity and levels of spread – “and by the alarming levels of international inaction”, the WHO officially declared a pandemic.

Now Trump has stopped funding the agency, which sounded the alarm which he and others ignored.

That does not seem like a smart move for dealing with any future global pandemic.

ON TARGET: Using Common Sense to Deal With COVID 19 At Sea

By Scott Taylor

Earlier this month the Royal Canadian Navy took the precaution of placing two ships companies – HMCS Ville de Quebec and Moncton – into a 14 day quarantine at the Westin NovaScotian in Halifax prior to their operational deployments. While this course of action meant an additional two weeks of separation from family and friends during this stressful period of pandemic lockdown, one has to applaud the decision taken by the Navy brass. 

For anyone familiar with the close confines of a modern warship it is readily apparent that any outbreak of COVID19 aboard ship would be uncontainable. With shared sleeping quarters, communal messing facilities and ablution stations there is no possibility of enforcing quarantine for infected personnel. It is also true that if they are on an operational deployment at sea, then calling in sick from work is not an option.

Our American allies are still dealing with the aftermath of one such an emergency.

In early March the USS Theodore Roosevelt – a nuclear powered aircraft carrier – had a five-day port call in the Vietnamese city of Da Nang. Although the COVID19 outbreak in Vietnam at that time was still minimal, several of the U.S. sailors stayed at a hotel in Da Nang in which two fellow guests were British tourists who had been infected with the virus.

Once the Roosevelt was back out to sea several sailors reported flu like symptoms. By 24 March testing concluded that the COVID19 was indeed aboard the carrier, putting its nearly 5,000 crew members at risk. Senior navy officials were indecisive as to what course of action to take. This prompted the Captain of the Roosevelt to send out an email with an attached memo to 10 of his superior officers and fellow captains. The contents of the memo were leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle and published the following day. 

In pleading for the immediate removal of 90 per cent of his crew to nearby Guam for their own safety, Captain Brett Crozier wrote “We are not at war, and therefore cannot allow a single sailor to perish as a result of this pandemic unnecessarily.”

The revelation that the ship was stricken with the spread of a deadly virus caused embarrassment for the senior navy officials who appeared to have been paralyzed into inactivity while their own sailors remained in peril.

While Crozier’s memo did galvanize the start of an evacuation of the majority of the Roosevelt crew, the embarrassment its release to the media caused led the acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly to remove Crozier from command. This knee-jerk relieving Crozier of command received support from President Donald Trump. “I thought it was terrible, what [Crozier] did to write a letter. I mean this isn’t a class on literature,” Trump told reporters.

Video footage of the dismissed Crozier exiting the Roosevelt to the spontaneous applause of his grateful crew quickly went viral.

Obviously Modly did not see the videos or else he read the tea leaves wrong when he decided to double down on Crozier’s alleged disloyalty.

After flying all the way to Guam, Modly boarded the carrier and addressed the Roosevelt’s crew over the ship’s loudspeaker. In a 15 minute tirade that was laced with profanity Modly accused Crozier of having leaked his own memo to the media. In Modly’s estimation, Crozier was “too naïve or too stupid to be a commanding officer of a ship like this.”

Recordings of Modly’s rant soon went public and in the wake of the angry public backlash which his words had generated, the acting Secretary resigned the following day.

For his part Captain Crozier remains in quarantined isolation in Guam as he was one of over 655 crewmembers to contract COVID19 aboard the Roosevelt. At time of writing, one U.S. Sailor had died from this outbreak.

One has to hope that in the wake of all this Crozier will be reinstated as the Captain of the Roosevelt. 

There is a lesson the RCN can learn from this incident and that is that since we are not at war and the virus is real, the safety of our sailors must take priority over operational duties.

ON TARGET: Forget the Russians & Chinese: Trump is the biggest Source of COVID 19 Disinformation

By Scott Taylor

During this COVID-19 crisis we are repeatedly being warned to be on the lookout for Russian and Chinese disinformation. 

U.S. President Donald Trump warned that we “must not let malign actors exploit the [COVID19] crisis for their own gain.” According to our security experts the Chinese and Russians are in fact using their global pandemic aid deliveries to improve their status within the world order. If that is indeed the case, then these Russians are Chinese strategists are truly diabolical.

Take for example the case of Italy which has been one of the hardest nations in the battle against COVID 19. 

As the confirmed number of cases and death toll skyrocketed in early March, Russia, China and Cuba dispatched medical personnel and supplies to the northern province of Lombardy, which was essentially ground zero for the pandemic in Italy. 

Italian politicians praised these three assisting nations and hailed them as ‘Allies’ in the war against COVID 19.

I found this to be a strange term to use since Italy is a NATO member and part of the European union. While fellow NATO member Germany did contribute considerable medical aid to Italy, other actual allies such as Canada and the U.K and the U.S. were busy preparing domestic resources to deal with the pandemic themselves.

As a result, a very hard pressed Italy accepted the necessary medical supplies from these three malign actors.

Whether this propaganda exercise will generate any long term Italian goodwill towards Russia, China and Cuba remains to be seen.

On the flip side of that has been Trump’s own attempts to exploit the COVID19 crisis for his America’s strategic gain. When the pandemic hit Iran and Venezuela hard the U.S. used their veto at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deny these two malign actors emergency loans to help them cope with the health crisis. In the case of Venezuela Trump’s administration went one step further by issuing an indictment against President Nicolas Maduro. According to the U.S. charges, Maduro and his cronies are narco-terrorists who are implementing a scheme to destabilize America during the COVID19 crisis through widespread distribution of cheap cocaine. That is the plot line worth of an Austin Powers comedy movie. 

However, further destabilizing the Maduro regime at the height of a health crisis while simultaneously denying them access to medical supplies does not bode well for the Venezuelan people. 

Closer to home Canadians saw just where we stand in the eyes of Donald Trump when he ordered the 3M Corporation not to ship vital pre-purchased, protective masks and respirators to Canada. That export impasse was thankfully resolved at the corporate level, but not before Trump revealed his true isolationist colours.

As for the allegations of Chinese and Russian disinformation during the pandemic, one has to presume our security experts are telling the truth. It is also true that the majority of deliberate disinformation efforts uncovered to date have been from domestic organizations affiliated with far right and neo-Nazi fringe groups. Their messages are rife with anti-Semitism and racism aimed at provoking fear and distrust among Canadians.  

However, by far the biggest and most dangerous source of disinformation has been none other than Donald Trump himself. When the outbreak first occurred in Wuhan, China Trump ignored the World Health Organizations warnings. Trump went so far as to call the virus a ‘hoax’ and ‘fake news ’s at public rallies. Trump also proclaimed that once the weather warmed up the coronavirus would simply ‘disappear…. like magic.’

Now that the U.S. has the dubious distinction of being the hardest hit nation on earth, Trump blames the WHO for failing to warn the world about COVID 19 and he has threatened to cut off their funding.

The reason for Trump wanting to cancel payments to the WHO is that he feels they are very “China-centric.” For the record, Trump’s statement was made the same week that China delivered 1,000 urgently required ventilators to hospitals in the State of New York.

Malign actors exploiting the crisis for their own gain indeed.