Foreign Affairs committee  May I just say that throughout my whole career, I've realized that the plan and all the planning gets you to the start point and then all bets are off. You know, if you're really lucky, it follows the plan, but we're finding that you're never lucky. Aircraft are running dry of

Foreign Affairs committee  I think that's a question for a lawyer, and normally in my old job I had a platoon of them all around me.

Foreign Affairs committee  The Canadian Forces must abide by the law of the land, and the code of service discipline applies, along with criminal law. Therefore, that individual or those individuals could be subject to prosecution.

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, I think the kinds of instructions I signed off on December 3, 2008 were really clear, that the Canadian Forces would not be an active party to this whatsoever. I would also say to you that whenever we send our men and women on whatever duty, whether it be United Nations dut

Foreign Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, ladies and gentlemen, I guess what I would say to you is a line that I used when I was in Iraq, because of how complicated it was, that the further you are from the sound of the guns, the less you understand. When you're there on the ground and the situation is going r

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, the answer to all of this is diplomacy and dealing with those troubled lands to try to bring the friction to some level of resolution. We know the areas around the world where there is that turbulence and friction. The solution is not military. The solution is diplomacy, d

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, as I said in my statement, yes.

Foreign Affairs committee  I don't have any insight at all. What I would say to you from a land warfare tactical and operational standpoint is that the U.S. has treaties with a number of nations around the world where, with regard to any kind of invasion of those nations, the U.S. is treaty-bound to come

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, I don't know. We have great relationships in terms of trust and confidence with them, but I don't know enough about their thinking with regard to this and the current situation in some of the hotspots around the world, so I really can't comment on that.

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, from my understanding just in reading this over the last few days, that doesn't happen military to military. The kind of discussion you're talking about happens at a diplomatic government-to-government level. While at any one moment we can assess that the probability is lo

Foreign Affairs committee  I would say, sir, from my experiences in not only Iraq but Afghanistan, Bosnia, and every peacekeeping mission that I've either seen or followed, and I was chief of joint operations for two and a half years in Kosovo missions and Africa missions, that the level of and the nature

Foreign Affairs committee  Sir, I would say that the most unique and profound agreement is NORAD, and now we've surpassed 50 years of our relationship with NORAD. Again, this is a relationship where, at the highest level of government, through the military structure, we have a seamless relationship in te

Foreign Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the warm welcome. We arrived in Iraq in January 2004, and we thought we were on a peacekeeping stability mission. This became a combat operation after Easter of 2004, with operations in Fallujah and Sadr City. For that whole period, which was a peacekeepi

Foreign Affairs committee  During my time in Iraq, there was no knowledge at all about cluster bombs being in theatre, nor was there any planning of that type of munition back in 2004.

Foreign Affairs committee  Absolutely. Having been on exercise in a lot of troubled areas, whether in the Middle East, the Korean Peninsula, or Europe, the scars are very deep, so dealing with our allies and trying to convince them to move to more modern times is very tough.