Defence – Page 5 – mackaycartoons

Thursday October 2, 2014

October 1, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

Thursday October 2, 2014

Military mission in Iraq ‘noble and necessary,’ Stephen Harper says

Canada is preparing to dispatch fighter jets to Iraq on a military mission against Islamic extremists that Prime Minister Stephen Harper hails as “noble and necessary.”

As the Conservative government privately considered its options Tuesday, Harper publicly left little doubt that Canada would soon be joining other nations in the escalating battle against the Islamic State fighters.

“I believe that the mission undertaken by our allies . . . is of necessary actions and of noble actions,” Harper said in the Commons.

“When we think something is necessary and noble, we do not sit back and say only other people should do it. The Canadian way is we do our part.”

But the prime minister also vowed that if Canada commits to a combat role, it would not be a long, protracted battle, as leaders in Britain and Australia have warned.

“We will obviously look carefully at steps that we believe would not leave us there in a quagmire for years,” he said.

Asked how he would define victory, Harper said the goal would be to cripple the Islamic State’s capacity to continue a “genocide” against people in Iraq and Syria and plan attacks against Canada.

“The government will act. We will act with our allies to make sure those capacities are degraded in a way that they will not continue to be a threat to this country,” he said.

Canada is weighing a recent U.S. request for additional help in the battle against the Islamic State, an Al Qaeda splinter group that has been claiming territory in Syria and swaths of Iraq.

On the table is a proposal to send CF-18 fighters to join ongoing airstrikes, along with possible contributions of air-to-air refueller aircraft and CP-140 Aurora reconnaissance planes.

The government also must decide whether to extend the ongoing non-combat mission by a small team of military advisers in northern Iraq that is due to end on Saturday. (Source: Toronto Star)

OTHER MEDIA

Posted to National Newswatch.

Post by Enough Harper.

Wednesday September 3, 2014

September 3, 2014 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday September 3, 2014

Despite tough talk, Canadian Forces are badly under-funded

Is Russian president Vladimir Putin a bad, bad man? We think probably he is. Do the butchers of the Islamic State, now running amok in Iraq and Syria, pose a clear and present danger to Western civilization? It seems so.

Therefore it’s good, we can agree, that this country’s prime minister and foreign minister, Stephen Harper and John Baird, can get their Winston Churchill on now and then. Harper and Baird’s denunciations of Putin’s reckless invasion of Ukraine, a sovereign country that had not fired so much as a rubber band towards Russia, have been refreshingly blunt.

Oh – except for our military, which, according to reporting by the Canadian Press’s Murray Brewster, is about to have another $2.7-billion lopped off its annual budget. Awkward. Postmedia’s Matthew Fisher reports that Ottawa is under pressure from North Atlantic Treaty Organization members to spend more, not less, as Harper heads to Wales for a NATO summit. Might someone at this confab publicly suggest that, when it comes to smiting evil, Canada is mostly bluster?

This is in no way intended as a slight against the Canadian Forces, whose members have displayed such skill, courage and simple good humour, in so many foreign engagements. No one who travels with the CF, or watches them work, can fail to appreciate their worth. The same very high standards, I observed recently, are exemplified by the Canadian Coast Guard. Thank goodness for them.

But the simple truth is that Canada’s military is badly under-resourced, given the range of emerging global threats, and the United States’ continuing withdrawal from its long-standing role as global policeman. Setting aside a sharp increase in defence spending between 2002 and 2010, the pattern has been for Ottawa to use the CF as a kind of piggy bank. When money is tight, it can safely be lopped out of the defence budget, because a) soldiers, sailors and airmen and women can’t complain too bitterly and b) the defence of North America is essentially an American responsibility. Right?

The Jean Chretien-Paul Martin Liberals famously balanced the federal budget on the backs of the CF during its so-called “decade of darkness,” in the 1990s. Those cuts were so severe that on some bases, according to soldiers I have spoken to, every second light bulb was unscrewed to save power. The Airborne Regiment was disbanded in the wake of the Somalia affair. Major procurements were cancelled, delayed or botched. In 2005, ringing in the dawn of a new era, Harper promised to undo all that. And until roughly 2010, with Canada at war in Afghanistan, his government delivered. (Source: Canada.com)

OTHER MEDIA

Posted to Yahoo News Canada.

FEEDBACK

Editorial cartoon blatant sexism (Sept 7)

Editorial cartoon published Sept. 3

I totally agree with the sentiment of the cartoon, which showed Stephen Harper as a weak crybaby next to a strong leader.

But I strongly object to the choice of a young female as a representative of a diminutive, weak, indecisive, crybaby, etc. individual juxtaposed beside a strong, virile, decisive male.

I’m surprised that an editor allowed this blatant sexism to be published.

Cecile Aurini, Hamilton

Friday, April 5, 2013

April 5, 2013 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday, April 5, 2013

North Korea Moves Missile to Coast

Most analysts do not believe that North Korea has a missile powerful enough to deliver a nuclear warhead to the United States mainland or that it is reckless enough to strike the American military in the Pacific. Still, with the North’s bellicose language showing no signs of letting up, the United States said Wednesday that it was speeding the deployment of an advanced missile defense system to Guam in the next few weeks, two years ahead of schedule, in what the Pentagon said was a “precautionary move” to protect American naval and air forces from the threat of a North Korean missile attack.

Testifying before a parliamentary hearing, Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin of South Korea said the missile North Korea had moved to the east coast, possibly “for demonstration or for training,” appeared not to be a KN-08, which analysts say is the closest thing North Korea has to an intercontinental ballistic missile, though its exact range is not known. The new missile was unveiled during a military parade in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, in April last year.

South Korean news media quoted military officials as saying that the missile was a Musudan. Deployed around 2007, the Musudan is a ballistic missile with a range of more than 1,900 miles, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry. Guam is nearly 2,200 miles from North Korea.

Wee Yong-sub, an army colonel and deputy spokesman for the Defense Ministry, would say only that the South Korean and American militaries had been closely monitoring the movements of all North Korean missiles, including the Musudan.

“Chances are not high that they will lead to a full-scale war,” said Mr. Kim, the defense minister, referring to the North Korean threats. “But given the nature of the North Korean regime, it’s possible that they will launch a localized provocation.”

Wednesday December 12, 2012

December 12, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday December 12, 2012

3 reports of fighter jet cost overruns are due this week

Wings are clipped on Peter MacKay ‘F-35’

A confidential report says Christmas break can’t come soon enough for the government, as it braces for up to three reports about the costs for the F-35 fighter jet before the House rises.

Expected as early as today is the accounting firm KPMG’s independent audit, which is reported to tally the total costs of the F-35 procurement project to anywhere from $40 billion to $46 billion, a figure almost three times the cost the government touted while shooting down anyone who disagreed, including its own parliamentary budget officer. Kevin Page estimated the cost was closer to $30 billion.

Although the KPMG report uses a longer life-cycle estimate for the jets (36 years) than the government did (20 years), the significantly higher cost will likely bring on a firestorm of outrage from opposition benches. That is, if it’s possible to ratchet up any further the outrage that emanated from the NDP and the Liberals Tuesday, as opposition members flung back at the government seemingly every claim it ever made about the F-35s.

To the government, it might have seemed like being confronted with their own ghosts of Christmas past, as the opposition chided them for underestimating the cost, for warning that if the F-35 project was cancelled taxpayers would be out a billion dollars, and for speculating that without the F-35s lives could possibly be lost.

The F-35 file is so contentious that it’s no longer handled by Defence Minister Peter MacKay, who had become a lightning rod for controversy over the fighter jets. After a scathing report from the auditor general in April, the file was transferred to Minister of Public Works Rona Ambrose. (Source: CBC News)

Wednesday April 4, 2012

April 4, 2012 by Graeme MacKay

By Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator, Wednesday April 4, 2012

Auditor general slams Canada’s plan to buy F-35 jets

Opposition parties accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of dodging responsibility for the F-35 fiasco and said Defence Minister Peter McKay should be fired for allowing Parliament to be misled about cost overruns and other problems with the trouble-plagued $25 billion fighter purchase.

“It’s absolutely scandalous that the Canadian government would intentionally provide information that they knew to be false,” NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair said after the federal auditor general released a report saying defence officials kept Canadians in the dark about cost overruns and production delays on the aircraft Ottawa plans to buy.

“Ministers are accountable before Parliament and the Prime Minister is the first among them,” Mulcair told the media. “Did he (Harper) know that the information was false that the Conservative government was giving? If so, it’s unconscionable. And, if he didn’t know, frankly, it’s a question of incompetence.”

The criticism mounted even as the Conservative government moved quickly Tuesday to quell the fallout from Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s scathing report, which includes the stunning conclusion that the fighters could cost $10 billion more than the defence department has publicly acknowledged.

Harper responded by freezing the budget for the controversial fighter jet purchase and stripped the defence department of responsibility for the procurement process, handing it instead to a new secretariat within Public Works and Government Services. (Source: Toronto Star)