Commentary: Canada's strange position on Iraq

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http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20070101-102558-1427r

QUEBEC -- While George W. Bush is scrambling to find a way out of his Iraq quagmire, the Canadian government has cleverly found a way to try to satisfy its citizens, who have been against involvement in the invasion from the beginning, and President Bush at the same time.

Of an earlier prime minister, Mackenzie King, the Canadian poet and philosopher F.R. Scott wrote: "Do nothing by halves/ Which can be done by quarters." King was a master of obfuscation, a man who had mastered the ability to confuse.

In this same spirit, former prime minister Jean Chrétien publicly declared that Canada would be staying out of Iraq. As he spoke, he was allowing Canadian troops to be inserted into US and British contingents. snip

Outgoing UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called the Iraqi invasion illegal. That would make Canada an accomplice to a crime. One recalls the old saw about being a little bit pregnant. Yet, the Canadian media consistently refer to the fact that Canada has stayed out of the war, and Canadians generally are ignorant of Canada's involvement.

When this commentator contacted the Defense Department and the office of Gordon O'Connor, the minister, as to the current number of Canadian troops in Iraq, these sources simply stonewalled.

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1. Who's counting their wounded and dead?

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2. I imagine they are being counted as killed in Afghanistan? n/t