Peter MacKay wishes Canada's Afghan troops had been better prepared

Rick Mercer said it best:
http://www.rickmercer.com/Rick-s-Rant/B ... diers.aspx

It's always former defence ministers, retired generals/admirals, etc that come out with these sort of statements. Stating that we need more/better equipment more funding, etc.

The ones currently in those positions seem to like to say everything is hunky dory even when it clearly is not.

Boy, I've supported them in the past but this current government is folding like a pair of deuces on all matters of Defence, now that the troops are home from Afghanistan. They're sure losing me fast. I don't like to be manipulated, so.

Amazing, isn't it. Those fucking assholes, that could have done something about it
when they had the authority, did nothing, and now whine like andy that 'oh, I wish it
had been different'.

The only real man not to do this shit on either side of the Atlantic
is Gen. Sir Mike Jackson.

It's not so easy as he say, war is not magic.

I wish they had been brought home once it became nation building instead of hunting Bin Laden. Just a lot of unnecessary killing and maiming of our soldiers for no good reason except for status with the US. What a waste. At one time, the opposition was derided for wanting to cut and run. So we cut and run anyway, just after losing a lot more people. Sending soldiers to die or be crippled for political cred. Disgusting beyond words.

What a fucking hypocritical sack of shit. "We should have done more for them, but fuck the ones that we broke....not our responsibility." Two guys I went to school with were over there. One flew choppers and the other was a doctor at KAF....the bullshit that happened over there was why they quit the military last year. Not even a thank you after 20+ years of service each. One now flies for STARS and the other practices at St Bs and teaches at U of Ms faculty of medicine

Fruit of the poisonous tree. Everything that came out of the adventures in Afghanistan (and in Iraq too for the US and Brits) was based on lies and deceptions. If that's the foundation the war effort was based on, all thanks to the Bush Admin and their think-tank neo-cons in DC, then nothing good comes from any of it in the end. The only moral option in the future is to not let it happen again. Then again, considering Iraq/Afghanistan happened only three decades after Vietnam with no one learning anything at all from that lesson apparently, human nature and the innate malice of those in the seats of power guarantee that it probably will happen all over again.

WWII followed only twenty years after WWI....in a sense it was only time to catch a breath for both sides. Face it, we like to kill each other, and more often than not it`s each other rather than the coloured folk.

Is it any wonder? The ONLY MoD we had that seemed to honestly give a shit about our soldiers and vets was promptly fired by Chretien for "making too much noise about it".
I can't remember his name off-hand but it would have been around the time after our boys came back from the cluster f*ck known as Bosnia. Some of them were coming down with some pretty messed up illnesses which turned out to be symptoms from bauxite poisoning.
The MoD was fired for giving a damn and wanting the govt to help them out, as they were certainly obligated to do.

If he wishes they were better prepared, then maybe he should have done something about that. This government, like all of those before since the 1960s, have been negligent in the defence portfolio.

.. to put it mildly ...

Maybe the next Defence Minister should be an ex Military General who understands the needs of Military personal when deployed, of course that's easier said than done.

They tried that with Gordon O'Connor. Ex-military, but he was too well acquainted with the ol' Ottawa two-step, especially when it came to relationships with those embedded too deeply at DND procurement.