I posted this last night but it got lost in the overnight shuffle. I think it is important enough to repost.
If you ever wondered whether Canada's top brass and their senior political masters really "support the troops", wonder no more. They don't. In fact, when our soldiers bleed, when they get torn apart, often ruined for life - top Tories and top Generals see to it that the whole thing is swept under the carpet until statistics are released - on New Year's Eve when nobody's watching.
Scumbags. Scumbags in bemedalled uniforms and in tailored suits. The guys who don't bleed, and never will, collude to make sure your gentle minds don't have to be troubled by those who do - in our name. From TorStar:
" Gun shot wounds, buried bombs, vehicle rollovers, rocket attacks and suicide bombers.
...They are the very incidents that the military has tried to keep out of the public eye with its decision to keep details on wounded soldiers under wraps.
The policy of releasing the number of injured soldiers only once a year — on Dec. 31 — has obscured the intensity of fight facing Canadian soldiers, as well as the nature of the sometimes life-altering injuries. It has also given Canadians back home a mental buffer against the numbing realities of war — soldiers who fight hard also get hurt.
...The fact that injuries are kept out of the public eye illustrates how unaware Canadians are of the price being paid by soldiers in Afghanistan, said Senator Colin Kenny.
“In death, you hope it’s fast and very little suffering. But the suffering of the wounded goes on and on and on,” said Kenny, the former chair of the Senate defence committee.
“All you have to do is go out to the hospital to meet them. You’re looking at people with half their face gone or their mouth is wired up and their ankles are broken because of the force of the IED,” he said.
In addition, some soldiers complain that hiding the wounded prevents them from being recognized and celebrated for their physical sacrifices on behalf of Canada. In hospitals across the country, they are suffering and recovering alone and in silence, something that can contribute to their frustration, breed resentment and lead to mental health problems.
Defence officials defend the secrecy, saying it’s vital to safeguard operational security and keep insurgents in the dark about the toll their attacks are taking on Canadian troops.
I take this stuff personally. My own Dad was one of the horribly wounded from WWII yet he was one of the lucky ones. His wounds ought to have been mortal but he pulled through to live out his life on a tight rope of survival. Some of his friends weren't so lucky like many, many others.
Our military and parliamentary bosses see no end of utility in sending flagged-draped coffins in the back of hearses rolling down the outrageously named "highway of heroes" while they put the trouble cases, including those who had the misfortune to actually survive, out of sight, on the shelf to be recognized as statistics on December 31.
Operational security? My ass. More like a gaggle of uniformed ticket punchers who lack the decency to stand up for the minions they feed into the grinder. And they slam others for not "supporting the troops." But I'll bet they all have those fancy magnetic ribbons on their trunk lids too.
Scumbags. Tory scumbags, Canadian Forces scumbags.
Don't you think this stems from all Governments that have been in power in Canada? Korean War Vets are still not truly recognized in Canada and that took place in the 50's. Personally, in Canada, I don't see one federal government being any better than the other. By the way, what is this thing regarding people who are being interrogated? The Chief Justices say they are no longer allowed to have a lawyer present when being questioned? It was all over Korean news several days ago. Anyong.
ReplyDeleteThe law, as I understand it, is that the cops can interrogate a suspect even if the individual has asked to see a lawyer. The suspect is not obliged to talk and must be warned but statements made without a lawyer present are admissible.
ReplyDeleteWhat concerns me about that is that it seems to create conditions in which interrogators can torment the suspect into a false confession. Interrogation can easily be turned into a powerful, psychological ordeal without the captive ever being physically harmed. There is an ample history of innocent suspects giving false confessions simply to get out of those interrogations.
It's hard to understand why, even if they can't get the suspect's lawyer of choice to attend, we can't provide at least some legal aid duty counsel to be present at interrogations if requested by the suspect.
Cops don't want lawyers present because their techniques to elicit confessions are pretty transparent to those familiar with them. Police are fully entitled to mislead and outright lie to a suspect to elicit confessions.
As to your first point, yes, both Liberals and Tories have failed our wounded veterans at times and to varying degrees.
ReplyDeleteWhat irks me most about Harper is that he used our Afghanistan war dead for rank partisan advantage.
We have elaborate ceremonies featuring formations of soldiers and flag-draped coffins and plenty of media coverage for the dead for whom it has utterly ceased to matter while we subject the wounded, those who will live with Afghanistan for the rest of their lives, with the indignity of obscurity.
As far as I know, Canada's Korean War veterans have not been overlooked by the Legion or Veterans Affairs although they have largely slipped from the public's consciousness. Part of that we inevitable in following just a few years after our forces returned home from WWII. Part of it was because we were part of an effort that simply fought to a draw.
Unfortunately our Afghan veterans won't be coming home even with a draw. Incompetent military and political leadership has seen to that.