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 fuel somewhere over the Mediterranean or the Adriatic, and the closest tanker has the only fuel in the area.

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 duty, whether it be a NATO duty, or whether it be as they are today in the multinational force and observers in the Sinai, the Chief of the Defence Staff retains the national command of those men and women.

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 really bad, and you're trying to relate what the heck is going on to a higher headquarters that is beyond the sound of the guns, beyond the sound of the impact, and you're trying to get as many tools as you can to save your people, and nothing's perfect, and the situation's awful, you need every tool you can get.

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, dealing with the interests, and reconciling the interests on both of those sides.

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 to their defence.

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 low of anything, we have been abject failures at predicting the future.

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 of the caveats depends on the national interest of each of the respective countries concerned.

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 terms of operations and intelligence in order to protect this continent, whether it be the deputy commander of NORAD in Colorado Springs all the way through to any exchange of U.S. and Canadian men and women on both sides of the border.

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 peacekeeping stability operation that became a full-blown insurgency, you would not deal with putting down land mines from a tactical or operational standpoint.

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.