Is This the First Step Towards Canada in Iraq?

Quietly, and without much National fanfare the HMCS Ottawa sails toward the Persian Gulf. Is this a routine mission in support of Afghanistan; or our new Prime Minister helping out his American counterpart?

     225 sailors on board the HMCS Ottawa set sail Monday for the Persian Gulf. If you weren’t aware of this it’s not surprising, the deployment just happened to coincide with the 5th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, leaving precious little TV news time and newspaper column inches to report the story. This is a tactic made immortal by an episode of The West Wing entitled Take out the Trash day. For the uninitiated Governments routinely drop news stories they don’t want getting much attention on days such as Fridays because so many fewer people read newspapers or watch the news on Saturdays than weekdays.

Circumstantial Evidence?

     That a Canadian warship is heading to the Persian Gulf isn’t exactly an eye catcher, but when you take in to account the recent change in government, said government’s view that we should have been there all along, the upcoming midterm elections in the United States, said election’s focus on Iraq as an issue, and the fact that this is the first of our ships to go there in about a year (when a different government was in power) you’ve got yourself an eyebrow raiser. Of course this is all circumstantial evidence, but when a shadowy right wing government is in power circumstantial is sometimes the only evidence available until it’s too late.

How Would we Know the Difference?

     What resources do we, the general public, have to know where any of our deployed warships are at any given moment? It stands to reason that if we did have a way it could be used by an enemy to attack them. How hard would it be for one of our ships to relieve an American one so its sailors could be sent ashore to fight? As for the crew on board how do they know where they are? I imagine from a distance all shorelines look pretty much the same, also career military men are generally more Conservative so the senior staff could be in on it.

Know Thy Enemy

     The point is those of us on the opposition side need to understand the enemy we face across the aisle. Conservatives don’t care about honor, especially when they’re trying desperately to gain a majority. We need to question everything these people do, to make sure that they know we’re watching every move they make. These people aren’t like us; they are sneaky, manipulative and deceitful, if you need more proof of that simply Google “Buckets of Grewal”.