Hillier - or the Liberal - Conservatives - Who is telling the truth? Retired General Hillier - Who to believe - Hillier or Harpers and the Liberal sock puppets - Politicians always tell the truth - Don't they? Gen. Hillier's autobiography is about to be released - In it he makes statements about Afghanistan, treatment of Insurgents that Stevie's sock puppets deny - So who do you believe. Hillier or the Puppets?
Politics news and stories - The Globe and Mail
Hillier-argued-to-keep-troops-in-Kabul/article/Canada's former top soldier says he argued to keep the troops in the relative safety of Kabul, and has rebuffed claims he was responsible for getting the country mired in the bloody battlefields of Kandahar.
The decision to send Canadian soldiers to southern Afghanistan was largely made before Rick Hillier became the country's military commander, the former chief of defense staff says in a provocative new memoir.
Blunt, hard-hitting and often cheeky, Mr. Hillier lays out his side of the story through the tumultuous early years of the war, including his strained relationship with former defense minister Gordon O'Connor and an attempt by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office to limit his public profile.
But it was the Liberals — both publicly and privately — who've tried to shift the blame onto Mr. Hillier for getting into the country into the bloody, bitter guerrilla war in the south, which has claimed the lives of 131 soldiers and one diplomat.“It had already been largely decided that the Canadian presence in Afghanistan was shifting to the southern half of the country,” Mr. Hillier writes about his return to Ottawa in the fall of 2004 after a stint as NATO commander in Kabul.
In a book written two years ago, former Liberal staffer Eugene Lang and academic Janice Gross Stein argued Mr. Hillier persuaded former prime minister Paul Martin to take Canadians into the heartland of the Taliban.
But Mr. Hillier says the decision to set up a provincial base in Kandahar was made before his time — and that he had argued within National Defence for Canada to take over responsibility for the reconstruction of the airport in Kabul, a much more benign assignment.
Politics news and stories - The Globe and Mail
Hillier-argued-to-keep-troops-in-Kabul/article/Canada's former top soldier says he argued to keep the troops in the relative safety of Kabul, and has rebuffed claims he was responsible for getting the country mired in the bloody battlefields of Kandahar.
The decision to send Canadian soldiers to southern Afghanistan was largely made before Rick Hillier became the country's military commander, the former chief of defense staff says in a provocative new memoir.
Blunt, hard-hitting and often cheeky, Mr. Hillier lays out his side of the story through the tumultuous early years of the war, including his strained relationship with former defense minister Gordon O'Connor and an attempt by Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office to limit his public profile.
But it was the Liberals — both publicly and privately — who've tried to shift the blame onto Mr. Hillier for getting into the country into the bloody, bitter guerrilla war in the south, which has claimed the lives of 131 soldiers and one diplomat.“It had already been largely decided that the Canadian presence in Afghanistan was shifting to the southern half of the country,” Mr. Hillier writes about his return to Ottawa in the fall of 2004 after a stint as NATO commander in Kabul.
In a book written two years ago, former Liberal staffer Eugene Lang and academic Janice Gross Stein argued Mr. Hillier persuaded former prime minister Paul Martin to take Canadians into the heartland of the Taliban.
But Mr. Hillier says the decision to set up a provincial base in Kandahar was made before his time — and that he had argued within National Defence for Canada to take over responsibility for the reconstruction of the airport in Kabul, a much more benign assignment.