Canada offered to aid Iraq invasion: WikiLeaks

Blame Canada?

Chretien's a two-faced (insert epithet here).

Big surprise.

Fixd.

I'm not really surprised. Nations do stuff like that pretty frequently, I'd guess. Particularly nations as close as ours. I suspect it went sort of the other way about 70 years ago.

Well before Hitler declared war against the US we would build bombers put then on barges and rather than deliver them which would violate our neutrality, we would shove them into Canadian waters. That way be could give you a hand yet still be PC.
The Krauts might have been offended.

...or one could say that Canada wanted to do the civilized thing if it were done quietly.

Um, just an offer?

I thought some pictures came out showing JTF-2 operating in Iraq shortly after our PM said we weren't going.

This is pretty much par for the course with Canadian politicians. Say one thing, do another, and hope you don't get caught.

This is not news. We had ships in the gulf assiting in Operations the hole time the invasion was going on. Big Deal!!

Well, it is kind of a big deal in the respect that it puts the final nails into the sanctimonious anti-American coffin that the Chretien Liberals built around the myth that they were 100% against George Bush and his "war-for-oil".

I know the pics you are talking about but they arent from Iraq, JC denied that JTF members were detaining suspected terrorists, then these pics came out and people were outraged because they felt that detaining suspects was "uncanadian". People should have been more upset because he was caught in a huge lie. He should have said that to maintain operational security.....blah blah blah

Indeed. The hypocrites were playing both sides of the fence on that one. Good to see them gone.

Even at the time, I don't think it was secret that Canada would be offering all kinds of assisatnce that didn't involve actually invading Iraq. I remember for instance, the LIberal governmetn at thet time offering Candian resources to train Iraqi police recruits after the fall of Saddam's regime.

The government was walking a fine line between fighting terrorism--which it supported, and invading adn opccupying Iraq--which it opposed. A lot of stuff fell into the grey area--intercepting boats in the Strait of Hoirmuz being an excample offered in the aritcle.

There certainly was an anti-American element running amok in the Liberal party at the time, though that was certainly not an attitude held by all--John Manley leaps to mind. Regardless, it wasn't just Chrtien--it was clear that Canadians were not interested in joining with the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Given that, it could just have easily been base political instinct, as opposed to reflexive anti-Americanism, that led to Canada saying no.

Which turned out to be a pretty smart move.

I tend to think of this in the same light as when we supplied military goods to Canada in WW II prior to Pearl Harbor and Hitler declaring war on us.

Politically we wanted to help, but the political realities of the day put some constraints on what we can do openly.

Although outside of Kuwait Saddam was perfectly happy to only murder and oppress his own people where Hitler felt a bit less limited.

In both cases I agree that yes what we did in 1939-1941 and what the Canadian government did were smart moves.

So I guess this revelation means Iggy was actually Chretiens front man.

+1