Canada in Iraq: At war by any other name ...

By: Michael Den Tandt, National Post 

As the pivotal battle of the war with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant begins, Canada is deeply implicated, with about 600 soldiers deployed in four countries, more than a quarter of those in ground combat. You wouldn’t know it though, unless you dug around. There is no stream of independent dispatches from embedded reporters, as was the rule during the 2002-14 Afghan campaign because there is no embed program. And the Defence Department has been exceptionally stingy with information. “Operational security” is a handy excuse. It doesn’t justify the level of secrecy.

There will be quibbling, as is customary whenever Canada fields soldiers carrying loaded firearms, about whether the troops “advising and assisting” Kurdish forces in northern Iraq are actually in combat. It may be in the Liberal government’s political interest to assert that, although Canadians have exchanged fire with the enemy — we don’t know how often, that’s a secret — these have been “defensive” actions only. The truth is much simpler, as it has been since the Conservative government launched the mission in 2014: Canada is at war. That’s what it means to provide intelligence, targeting for airstrikes, refuelling, aerial surveillance and leadership on the ground, at the front. To call it anything else is dishonest. It’s also a great disservice to the soldiers risking life and limb.

THE TRUTH IS MUCH SIMPLER ... CANADA IS AT WAR.

If we acknowledge that Canada is at war — and, reading between the lines of recent remarks from Brig.-Gen. Peter Dawe and an “update” Monday from Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan, this conclusion is inevitable — then certain other conclusions also become inevitable. The first is that the Liberals either did not know, or knew and did not care, when they promised last year to remove Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 jets from “combat” in Iraq and Syria, that this would soon prove to be an empty gesture.

The campaign pledge to end Canada’s role in coalition bombardment of ISIL positions — based on the specious notion that bombing was somehow more aggressive or combative than, say, refuelling or targeting — did not withstand scrutiny from the get-go.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to replace the CF-18s with a more robust ground training mission, it was pointed out that ground training was both more dangerous than flying bombing runs and no less combative, given the nature of modern war. Humanitarian work and training require force protection; force protection requires intelligence; intelligence applied requires pre-emptive action, which sometimes mean bombing.


In an integrated command, such as the coalition against ISIL is, there is no distinction between the left hand and the right. They work together.

There can be no effective training of ground troops in a shooting war without accompanying those troops into combat, a point made during the election campaign. This was a central lesson of the Afghan war. Canadian trainers in Kandahar found they needed to join Afghan trainees on the battlefield to be credible. Trainers from other nations, who stayed mostly behind the wire and out of harm’s way, got little traction, Afghan contacts told me at the time.

Perhaps because it made so little sense upon examination, the vow to pull the CF-18s was not popular with most Canadians, polls indicated in 2015. But it did have an obvious political benefit: it helped make a vote for the Grits more palatable to the more pacifist-minded New Democratic Party voters who were the Liberals’ main strategic target in Campaign 2015.

The CF-18 withdrawal reflected Trudeau’s genuine desire to keep Canada at some remove from a conflict that had, after all, begun with president George W. Bush’s catastrophic decision to pre-emptively invade Iraq in 2003. Likewise the “whole-of-government” approach to Iraq introduced in February, including a boost in of humanitarian assistance and a tripling of the special forces contingent, was in keeping with the PM’s desire for Canada to have lasting impact on the ground, rather than “just bombing.”

The arguments that there is no such thing as “just bombing” in modern warfare, as applied by the U.S.led coalition in Iraq and Syria, that bombing is precisely targeted, and that it protects allies on the ground, fell on deaf ears. Last winter, when the Liberals could have changed course and left the fighters in place, they chose not to, the political imperative of keeping this signature promise apparently outweighing military considerations, frank speech and common sense.

Yet now Canada is at war outside Mosul, with soldiers on the front lines of what appears to be ISIL’s last stand as a wannabe state with its own territory — and, thanks to the lack of independent reports from the scene, something that can only be done with relative security through an embed program, we know next to nothing about it, beyond the scraps of mission data parcelled out on a Defence website.

Transparent and accountable? No. This is neither.

Canada in Iraq: More Canadian intelligence, less ball hockey

By: David Pugliese, National Post 

Canada’s much-vaunted surveillance planes operating over Iraq were so limited in the information they could collect and share with allies, Canadian military personnel planning CF-18 attacks had to rely on the U.S. for data, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The briefing, produced last year on lessons learned from operations in Iraq in 2014, also pointed out efforts to set up ball hockey facilities and a Tim Hortons for personnel at a base in Kuwait should take a back seat to getting key components of the mission in place.

Canada initially contributed special forces, Aurora surveillance aircraft, a refuelling plane and CF-18 fighter jets to the international coalition battling Islamic extremists.

The Liberal government withdrew the jets, but expanded the number of special forces and kept the refuelling planes and Auroras.

Canadian military officers have claimed from the beginning of the mission the upgraded CP-140 Auroras are among the most advanced surveillance aircraft in the world.

But the “lessons learned” document, obtained through the Access to Information law, tells a different story.

“The CP140 deployed without the organic capability to share their data with coalition partners,” it notes.

In addition, the software needed to process some CP-140 surveillance data was not available and the air crews needed “greater experience operating over land.”

The Aurora is primarily a maritime surveillance plane, but the upgrades allow it to collect data on ground targets.

The problems didn’t stop with the Auroras. There were concerns about the overall lack of ability to share information Canada collected from various sources with its allies. In addition, the Canadian Forces had problems accessing coalition intelligence data without having to go through a U.S. military intermediary.

Gathering information about targets the CF-18s were to attack proved difficult. Problems with the planes’ targeting pods “severely” limited some information gathering, although the details were censored.

“Poor information” was provided to those deciding on targets. There is a need to increase the capability to “contribute to target discovery,” other comments in the briefing point out.

Military staff asked about the lessons learned said while ball hockey and a Tim Hortons trailer were “a nice boost,” these “projects must wait well into the sustainment phase after the mission’s essential components are all in place.”

Other issues included:
Significant delays in delivering communications equipment and having enough trained personnel.
Military communications personnel sent back to Canada within seven days of arriving in Kuwait, and before the systems were up and running.
Some military personnel, who travelled overseas on civilian flights, had to use their own credit cards to pay up front, then had trouble getting reimbursed. In some cases, they had to spend up to $1,000 just for baggage.
Civilian contractors supporting the refuelling aircraft detachment were not properly prepared for work in Kuwait or the type of accommodation they were given.
There should be a 24/7 duty desk to deal with problems encountered by those on overseas missions. “A list of people who can actually help with problems would be nice,” said one person. “Help accounts suck. They are rarely monitored. Real people with real contact lists only.”

Commanders back in Canada weren’t spared criticism either. Some of those serving in Kuwait questioned the abilities of the Ottawa-based Canadian Joint Operations Command, which co-ordinates military missions at home and around the world.

“Despite the best of intentions and a desire to do so, CJOC is incapable of conducting true 24/7 operations, at least as it concerns targeting,” said one critic.

Canadian Forces spokesman Capt. Vincent Bouchard said in an email many of the challenges outlined in the document are common when setting up a multinational operation abroad.

“The capabilities the Block III CP140s brought to theatre were new, both to the RCAF and our allies,” he said. “As it was expected, it took time to learn how to make the most of these new capabilities in the context of a multinational operation.”

Bouchard said the points raised in the documents were dealt with and the Aurora detachment continues to provide valuable surveillance information for the coalition.

He repeated the Canadian military’s statement the Auroras are “world-class intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft.”

CBC Exclusive: CF-18 commander describes 'having to take lives' in ISIS bombing mission

Originally Published on CBC News: Exclusive Interview

In a wide-ranging interview with CBC News chief correspondent Peter Mansbridge, a CF-18 commander who flew airstrike missions against ISIS in Iraq and Syria provides a detailed account about being in that arena, some of his bombing missions, and "having to take lives."

"What we're doing is a very very unnatural thing for us. We're going out there and we're destroying, we're destroying things sometimes, sometimes we're having to take lives," said Lt.-Col. David Moar.

"It's an unnatural — it's important that we communicate about that, we talk about that as a unit and that we're firm in our resolve about what we're doing."

During the interview, Moar, the CF-18 detachment commander, reviews video of some of those airstrikes, including one attack against an artillery piece that had been "harassing the Iraqi Security Forces."

"They just hooked it up to a vehicle and started moving it down a road and at that point we elected to destroy it," Moar said.

"And there's no doubt here that somebody died, because somebody was driving that vehicle," Mansbridge said.

Moar said, "One thing I have noticed that you can never, until you see the full picture afterwards, you can never really know what is happening under that smoke."

"And are you around long enough to know?" asked Mansbridge

"It's our responsibility to stick around long enough to know," Moar said.