Fallen Canadian Coming Home

Ramp Ceremony held for Pte Robert Costall 1st Battlion of the Princess Patricias Canadian Light Infantry (1PPCLI). DND



CP - Dead Canadian soldier remembered as a brave 'young kid' with a dream

Write The Troops - Here
Let our troops know they have support at home.

Canada & US Cut Off Hamas

CTV - Canada Cuts Relations With Palestinian Authority
SDA - Hear No Evil, Fund No Evil
Reuters - US cuts off contacts with Hamas-led government
CP - Canada severs relations with 'terrorist' Palestinian government

No Connection Right?

Camp Saddam
What we've learned about Iraq's terrorist training camps.
Stephen F. Hayes - Weekly Standard
REPRESENTATIVE John Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, appeared on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, March 19, to evaluate the war in Iraq on its third anniversary. Murtha, a decorated veteran and longtime hawk, has become a leading spokesman for his party on the war. And on the show, he spoke of what "probably worries me the most" about the U.S. effort in Iraq. The war, said Murtha, is a diversion from the global war on terror.

"There was no terrorism in Iraq before we went there," said Murtha. "None. There was no connection with al Qaeda, there was no connection with, with terrorism in Iraq itself." This is now the conventional wisdom on Iraq and terrorism. It is wrong.

A new study from the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia, paints quite a different picture. According to captured documents cited in the study and first reported in THE WEEKLY STANDARD in January, the former Iraqi regime was training non-Iraqi Arabs in terrorist techniques. More @ Weekly Standard

Recommended Listening For The Week

Todd Rundgren - Todd

Listened to this for the first time at 15. Great album.

Discography

Soldier On The Mend

Soldier who lost legs in Afghanistan bomb attack recovering in Edmonton

Master Cpl. Paul Franklin credits a plastic hula-girl good-luck charm, hard training and a promise to his wife to come home alive for helping him survive a suicide bomb explosion in Afghanistan that cost him both his legs.

In his first interview since the Jan. 15 attack, a remarkably upbeat Franklin recounted the nightmarish blast that caused him indescribable pain and put his wife and young son on an emotional roller-coaster.

Franklin, a medic with 1 Field Ambulance, remembers watching a taxi hit the armoured jeep he was driving that day near Kandahar and then flying through the air after it exploded.

When he landed, he began rubbing his upper body to extinguish flames that were burning his face and hair.

Then Franklin looked down and noticed one of his legs was missing and his lifeblood was gushing away.

"My buddy all of sudden showed up and put his hands on my shoulder, Cpl. Jake Petton," Franklin said as he calmly sat in a wheelchair at Edmonton Garrison with his wife Audra looking on.

"He placed a tourniquet on my leg. The funny thing is three days earlier I had given him a brand-new tourniquet and trained him on it.

'It is kind of funny that nearly three days later there he is, putting it on me to save my life." More @ CP

Watch That Knife Son

Shiites Observe Ashoura

Fun

No Pilots Required

Canada's air force to establish first all pilotless formation in Afghanistan
Canada's air force will cross a technological threshhold this month with the establishment in Afghanistan of its first organized flight of pilotless aircraft.

An entire flight of Sperwer tactical uninhabited aerial vehicles will soon be fully operational for reconnaissance missions over the windswept desert and craggy mountains passes in the vicinity of Kandahar.

A few of the remote-controlled aircraft are already deployed, but more are on the way.

Using real-time video and a host of infrared and other specialized sensors, the drones are sent aloft to monitor the surrounding countryside and to track down insurgents, hopefully before they become a threat to Canada's 2,200 troops on the ground. - CP

TV Stupidity Kills 7, Maims Others

Seven Killed In Uruguay TV Stunt

A runaway train killed seven people and injured at least 11, severing some of their limbs, during the filming of a TV show in Uruguay, police said.

The accident occurred during a "test of strength" challenge to raise money for a hospital in Young, 380km (235 miles) west of the capital, Montevideo.

Contestants were pushing and pulling a train and two carriages when the vehicle gained speed and ran them over.

Local authorities have declared three days of mourning. - BBC

Video Aftermath

New Iraq Reading List

Post-Haste - The first batch of captured documents from pre-war Iraq and Afghanistan are now available online.
Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard on the new batch of released docs on pre-war Iraq and its WMD program and connections to terrorism.

Sir Paul Blows It

Seal hunt quota raised

Just two weeks after megastar Paul McCartney made a high-profile appeal to end the slaughter of seal pups, the federal government has announced new, higher quotas for this year's hunt off the East Coast.

Federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn said Canada's harp seal population is thriving and can easily support a catch limit of 325,000 seals, plus 10,000 more for aboriginal communities.

The limit last year was 320,000 seals. More @ Globe & Mail

My only question is where do we get us some seal meat and some trendy seal skin mitties?

Civil War Found - On The Left

Anti-War Movement Casualty of In-Fighting
CNSNews.com

With new polls showing that more than half of Americans believe the war in Iraq is going badly and that Iraq will never become a stable democracy, you might think that anti-war groups in the U.S. would be trumpeting their influence.

Instead, the groups appear to be caught in their own brand of civil war, criticizing each other for management styles, sympathizing with Communist dictators and pandering to the media. They have bickered over alleged racism and even over issues like who would get more microphone time and pay for the portable toilets at anti-war rallies.

The feuding appears to have precluded any kind of nationally coordinated anti-war rallies from happening on March 19, the third-year anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Small, local protests are planned by various anti-war groups around the country.

Tamils Need A Round Of Deportations

Tamil Tigers feeding off Toronto kinsmen, rights group says
Tamil families in Toronto are faced with extortion from Tamil Tigers of up to $10,000 apiece, and Tamil entrepreneurs up to $100,000 each, according to a new report released by Human Rights Watch.

The New-York-based group says that Tamil Tiger fundraisers are increasingly strong-arming the Toronto Tamil community -- the largest Diaspora group outside of war-torn Sri Lanka — as their island nation once again girds for civil war.

Canadian Tamils who don't give money to the separatist cause, according to Human Rights Watch, face the prospect of being beaten or having family members being abused abroad. “Canada is not actually a democracy because we can't open our mouths against the LTTE,” one Toronto Tamil told Human Rights Watch. More @ The Globe & Mail

Lets hope that the extortion victims help with the rounding up and deportation of these guys.

Canadian Troops In Action

Check out this embed story on our forces in Afghanistan. Above is a picture of now Captain Trevor Greene, of Vancouver, who was featured in the story. Greene was seriously injured in an axe attack and remains in a coma.

Update: Axe-attacked Canadian soldier opens his eyes - CTV

War: Canadian-style - Toronto Star

UPDATE: Canadians return to axe attack village - Toronto Star

Then the Prime Minister shows up in Afghanistan - Toronto Star

Civil War Declared By MSM

Dude, Where's My Civil War?

Ralph Peters is in Iraq reporting from the Forward Operating Base Loyalty. He says he's tried hard to find the Iraqi civil war he keeps hearing about, and is still unsuccessful.

I'm trying. I've been trying all week. The other day, I drove another 30 miles or so on the streets and alleys of Baghdad. I'm looking for the civil war that The New York Times declared. And I just can't find it.

Maybe actually being on the ground in Iraq prevents me from seeing it. Perhaps the view's clearer from Manhattan. It could be that my background as an intelligence officer didn't give me the right skills....

In place of the civil war that elements in our media declared, I saw full streets, open shops, traffic jams, donkey carts, Muslim holiday flags - and children everywhere, waving as our Humvees passed. Even the clouds of dust we stirred up didn't deter them. And the presence of children in the streets is the best possible indicator of a low threat level. More @ NewsBusters & NY Post

Recommended Listening For The Week

Damned Damned Damned - 1977

70's Punk at its best.

And of course they have a website.

Terrorist Enablers

Suicide Bombing Endorsed In Kids Book Recommended By Canadian Libraries

The Ontario Library Association of Canada refused to drop from its recommended list a book that includes Palestinian children endorsing suicide bombing.

Palestinian and Israeli children speak about suicide bombings, anti-Semitism, guns and soldiers in “Three Wishes,” by Deborah Ellis.

“In our eyes, the book is perfectly good and we stand by our selection committee and the rights of children to read this book,” said Larry Moore, the association’s executive director. The Canadian Jewish Congress asked for the book to be removed from a list of recommending reading for 8-11 year-olds, saying it does not provide young readers with enough context.

“They speak about suicide bombing and killing Israelis as suitable choices to make and as acts worthy of emulating,” said Len Rudner, the CJC’s national director of community relations. A Palestinian girl discusses her sister, a suicide bomber, as a martyr in paradise and suggests she will follow in her footsteps.

A Palestinian boy says, “Killing an Israeli will make me feel glad. It will make me feel strong.”

Only one school board, the York District board just north of Toronto, has pulled the book from the list, while many others have declined to do so. - Jihad Watch

When Do We Start?

Make immigrants take oath of loyalty
report: If newcomers breach Canada's values, they should be deported, ex-diplomat declares

The federal government should require new immigrants to take an oath of loyalty to Canada and its values -- and deport them if they breach it, a former diplomat says in a study of counter-terrorism policies released yesterday.

The Fraser Institute report, authored by former senior Foreign Affairs official Martin Collacott, also says the government must give special attention to working with the Muslim community since radical Islamic terrorists are currently the greatest danger to Canada's security.

While Canadians are committed to welcoming diverse immigrants from around the world, newcomers must understand that they are expected to accept core Canadian values, the report says.

"If they find such acceptance difficult, they should not come here in the first place," Mr. Collacott writes in Canada's Inadequate Response to Terrorism: The Need for Policy Reform. - More @ Ottawa Citizen
Via Neale News