Shining a light in all the right places

I've been critical of Gloria Galloway in recent weeks. But she's done well in a piece today about the Role 3 medical facility at KAF:

"For the month of July, for all of the reporting facilities, we had the highest number of casualties coming in to our facility," Col. McLeod said.

The increase is not attributable to a corresponding climb in casualties among Canadians. In fact, the military says the number of Canadians hurt during their tactical operations is on a slight decline.

"There are increased numbers of Afghan National Army and Afghan National Police casualties which would, from my perspective, be attributable to their increased role in operations," said Captain Chris Quinlan, a staff operations officer in the current operations branch.

"I have a hard time saying there is any success or anything positive related to casualties. But I would say it's attributable to the fact that they [the Afghans] are doing their job better. They are going places they never would have gone before and taking a lead role that they would not have taken before." [Babbler's emphasis]

It would have been very easy to gloss over that quote, and simply run with the narrative theme that more traffic through the hospital means things are worse in Kandahar province. Good on Galloway for playing it differently.



These doctors, nurses, and technicians do fantastic, live-saving work for long hours in very spartan conditions. They deserve every bit of praise and attention they get.