Afstan and poor CF PR

This really does seem stupid:

A Canadian officer in Afghanistan sent a personal thank you to the German government after he and his crew rumbling along in a tank borrowed from the NATO ally survived a powerful Taliban roadside bomb blast.

"My crew stumbled upon an (improvised explosive device) and made history as the first (crew) to test the (Leopard 2A6)M-packet," said the unidentified officer in an e-mail to German defence officials about the specially-designed battle tank.

"It worked as it should."

The crew of four was battered by the blast and the driver broke a hip, but otherwise they were fine.

The note, passed to Berlin through a Canadian defence attache, has been quoted in the German media, but Canada’s Defence Department was loath to acknowledge its existence.

Interview requests with both army and defence officials in Ottawa were denied and in what has become a troubling pattern for the department, it released only a series of written answers to questions about the incident posed by The Canadian Press.

The 13-line note failed to explain the unprecedented secrecy surrounding the incident.

Defence analyst Alain Pellerin said Canadian officials’ silence mystifies him when they have an opportunity to trumpet such a success, particularly since the tanks’ formidable presence has helped contribute to a decline in civilian casualties in their areas of operation.