Afstan: The Toronto Star gets the military facts wrong
In an editorial July 28 the Star writes that "Soon after the 9/11 attacks, former Liberal prime minister Jean Chrétien deployed a few commandos to help oust the Taliban." This mis-states the facts in three ways:
1) The Taliban were ousted from power, and most of Afghanistan, by December, 2001. Most Canadian troops did not arrive at Kandahar until February, 2002. Their mission ranged from helping US forces hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants to providing airfield security.
2) There were not a "few" Canadian soldiers; there were some 750 of them.
3) They were not "commandos"; most were members of the 3rd Battalion of the regular infantry regiment, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
There were, however, some 40 Canadian special forces soldiers from Joint Task Force Two also serving in the area; but they were only a small part of the overall mission, not all of it as the editorial suggests. They arrived, also at Kandahar, in December, 2001 after the Taliban had been driven from power--by the Afghan Northern Alliance with air and special forces support from the US and UK, but without any help from Western ground forces.
How typical of the Star--especially the minimizing of our first combat mission in Afstan under M. Chrétien (unless of course the Star simply does not know the facts, scary from Canada's largest circulation newspaper).
Update: The Star printed my letter about this.
1) The Taliban were ousted from power, and most of Afghanistan, by December, 2001. Most Canadian troops did not arrive at Kandahar until February, 2002. Their mission ranged from helping US forces hunt down Taliban and al Qaeda remnants to providing airfield security.
2) There were not a "few" Canadian soldiers; there were some 750 of them.
3) They were not "commandos"; most were members of the 3rd Battalion of the regular infantry regiment, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry.
There were, however, some 40 Canadian special forces soldiers from Joint Task Force Two also serving in the area; but they were only a small part of the overall mission, not all of it as the editorial suggests. They arrived, also at Kandahar, in December, 2001 after the Taliban had been driven from power--by the Afghan Northern Alliance with air and special forces support from the US and UK, but without any help from Western ground forces.
How typical of the Star--especially the minimizing of our first combat mission in Afstan under M. Chrétien (unless of course the Star simply does not know the facts, scary from Canada's largest circulation newspaper).
Update: The Star printed my letter about this.
posted by Mark, Ottawa at 9:33 a.m.
6 Comments:
Can I ask a question? And I mean this seriously: how much of this confusion do you ascribe to ignorance and how much do you ascribe to bad information dissemination on the part of the CF and DND. I know that there are some who view that this is not their function (apparently forgetting that we live now, and not 200 years ago), but I wonder how much this is a two way street.
Cameron: Both ignorance and political leaning to the Liberals. All the info about the 2002 mission has been up there for yonks at the DND website and the mission was also fully reported in our media at the time.
Remember the 2002 friendly fire death of four Canadians?
There is no excuse for this sort of disinformation by the Star.
Mark
Ottawa
Mark, I honestly think you read more into things than you should.
Cameron: I may be over-reading but how does one explain (or excuse) the Star's surpassing ignorance?
Mark
Ottawa
There is a reason that the paper is cynically referred to as the "red" Star. Again an editorial with a slant to make it look like we are doing nothing but combat over there. No mention of what the Provincial Reconstruction Team's have already accomplished.
The most telling part of the editorial is towards the end when it points out how Harper didn't do what the Star wanted. Waaaaaa
Mark, freaked out journalist, over his or her head, writing about a subject they don't know enough about on a deadline?
And remember that excuse and explain have two different meanings.
They were wrong. No excuse.
Why were they wrong? I'd like an explanation from them.
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