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ninty is Offline
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Join Date: Jan 2002
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Default 04-29-2003, 07:00 PM

Well, it’s partly true.

Canada actually had 31 personel IN Iraq attached to US and British units on exchange programs. The govt would not take them out. So when you look at it, the 45 countries that supported the war, only US, British, and Australians sent troops. So Canada actually had the 4th highest amount of troops there and we didn't even formally support the war.

Anyway the ships in the gulf are there for "Operation Apollo" which is the War against Terrorism, not the Iraq war. Our ships were not to detain any Iraqi’s. If we found some, we would call the US and they would come over and beat them, but we couldn't get involved. On the Other hand, if we saw OBL, we'd kick his ass pretty hard.

Currently there are 2 Frigates and 1 destroyer in the gulf. The Destroyer is leading a task force of 12 International ships from US, Britain and a bunch of other countries.

I haven't heard anything of increased numbers in Bosnia; we just had a platoon of Calgary Highlanders come back form there. They were there for 6 months on roto with the reg force.

As for Afghanistan, yes we are sending 2 roto's there starting this summer. Probably abound 2000 ground troops. However keep in mind we are not replacing US troops because the US troops there are Combat troops. Our troops going in will be Peacekeepers under the UN. We did, if you recall, have over 850 Combat troops from the PPCLI there last year with the Americans and worked with them many times.

Yes, if we supported the war we probably couldn't have supplied many troops as the poster said, but that’s not why we did not support the campaign. Before the war 70% of Canadians did not want the war, so the government listened. I don't think you can base your support for a war on whether or not you have the troops to go. We still could have said "We support the US" and not gotten this entire backlash.

Anyway, the guy who wrote this sounds kind of like a dumbass. I haven’t heard of any travel advisories to the states, I love going to the states, I haven’t heard of Canadian cars being vandalized either. I have heard of some companies not doing business with Canadian companies, but those people have bigger problems if they think we can't ahev an opinion of our own. Those people need to take their head out of their ass.

Freedom fries and all that stuff is BS in my opinion. Countries have a right to disagree. France doesn't owe the US anything. Yes, the US and other countries have "saved" france many times, but that was up to us to decide to participate. If anyone thinks that France has to do what the US says because the US kicked out the Germans or went into Vietnam, I think they need a reality check as well.

Anyway, sorry for getting so political. The last few paragraphs were my opinion and nothing else. The other ones were facts.
  
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