How Canada can help Iraq
Scott Taylor of Esprit de Corps has an excellent idea.
...
After the Dayton Peace Accord was signed in 1995, and the Liberal government announced that our over-rotated army units were coming home from the Balkans for a "rest and refit," the M113 carrier fleet was sent en masse for a complete modernization overhaul. Valued at about $400 million, the M113 upgrade program had barely gotten underway when the army brass decided to plot a different course for the future. Instead of buying replacements for our aging Leopard main battle tanks, the revised plan was to acquire Stryker mobile gun systems...
Without tracked Leopard tanks, there was no longer a need to operate tracked M113 carriers...
In an effort to recover some of the lost capital, the Canadian government quietly put the entire M113 fleet up for sale...
Canada can unload 300 or so unused armoured vehicles onto the new Iraqi army. As they have just been completely overhauled and refurbished, these M113s would be a godsend to the Iraqi soldiers and they would be compatible with the ones they now possess. For Bush and his hard-pressed accountants on the Iraq file, this generous gesture would equate to more than a billion dollars worth of hardware, and it would provide protection for about five battalions worth of Iraqi soldiers. Most importantly, as the M113 possesses no integral weapon system, it poses no risk to American troops, and even Canadians fervently opposed to Bush’s invasion of Iraq cannot voice opposition to the provision of protection to Iraqi security officers...
Cross-posted to Daimnation!
...
After the Dayton Peace Accord was signed in 1995, and the Liberal government announced that our over-rotated army units were coming home from the Balkans for a "rest and refit," the M113 carrier fleet was sent en masse for a complete modernization overhaul. Valued at about $400 million, the M113 upgrade program had barely gotten underway when the army brass decided to plot a different course for the future. Instead of buying replacements for our aging Leopard main battle tanks, the revised plan was to acquire Stryker mobile gun systems...
Without tracked Leopard tanks, there was no longer a need to operate tracked M113 carriers...
In an effort to recover some of the lost capital, the Canadian government quietly put the entire M113 fleet up for sale...
Canada can unload 300 or so unused armoured vehicles onto the new Iraqi army. As they have just been completely overhauled and refurbished, these M113s would be a godsend to the Iraqi soldiers and they would be compatible with the ones they now possess. For Bush and his hard-pressed accountants on the Iraq file, this generous gesture would equate to more than a billion dollars worth of hardware, and it would provide protection for about five battalions worth of Iraqi soldiers. Most importantly, as the M113 possesses no integral weapon system, it poses no risk to American troops, and even Canadians fervently opposed to Bush’s invasion of Iraq cannot voice opposition to the provision of protection to Iraqi security officers...
Cross-posted to Daimnation!
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 2:51 p.m.
2 Comments:
Hey, great plan. I'm sure we'd all like to see Canada arming Iraq's new theocratic, Iran friendly government.
Snark aside, a better proposal would be to do this for Afghanistan. At least their paper democracy hasn't turned out to be a theocratic, Iran friendly one.
mr mcclelland: for once a constructive thought. The problem however is that Afstan is landlocked and there is no easy way Canada could get the M113s there. We could comparatively simply ship them by sea to Iraq.
You might wish to consult this guest-post at "Daimnation!":
"THE GRIZZLY ROAD TO DARFUR"
http://www.damianpenny.com/archived/005238.html
Mark
Ottawa
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