[Bloquez l'empire!] Canada Makes New "Killer" Copters for Iraq Occupation

[Mary Foster]

From: "TASC" <tasc at web.ca>

> Learning to Kill: What Canadians' Tax Dollars Did on Their Summer
Vacation:
>
> Canada Manufacturing the New "Hunter, Killer, Survivor" Copters Bound for
> Iraq, Afghanistan
>
> It can not only "track its prey, it can move in for the kill." It
> features a 2,000 rounds-per-minute machine gun, Hellfire missiles, and
> space for up to 38 tubes of Advanced Precision Kill Weapons Systems
> (APKWS), which promise a "lower cost per kill" than the other leading
> brands.
>
> And it's being built right here in peace-lovin' Canada. The Bell
> Armed Reconnaissance Helicopter, advertised on the company's website as
> "Hunter. Killer. Survivor," is, according to a company news release, able
> to "provide the [U.S.] Army with exceptional mission versatility and with
> the flexibility to accomplish armed
> reconnaissance, light attack, troop insertion, and special operations
> missions with a single aircraft. The Bell ARH will also provide greater
> deployability, interoperability and survivability."
>
> The helicopters will be put together in the corporation's Mirabel,
> Quebec plant before being shipped to the U.S. for completion and delivery.
>
> Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters are an increasingly popular part
> of the war against Iraq for U.S. forces. According to an article in Flight
> International, March 16, 2004, the copters are part of an army overhaul of
> its strategic vision. The article quotes General Richard Cody, the U.S.
> army's deputy chief of staff for operations, as claiming that what is
> changing is "the army's propensity to fight more joint operations with
> helicopters more in the close fight supporting our ground manoeuvre forces
> for killing, reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition."
>
> The article also notes that the ARHs would replace the Kiowa
> Warrior copters which, despite the aircraft's limitations, have provided
> numerous "valuable" lessons on the advantage of using small aerial
gunships
> to support ground units.
>
> By now, it is hoped that Canadians are not terribly surprised by
> this latest in a decades-long corporate participation in U.S. wars.
Indeed,
> when those warrior gunships head in low and spray a wedding, market, or
> hospital with bullets, chances are those bullets ripping apart human flesh
> below are supplied by SNC-TEC, the Quebec-based military manufacturer
owned
> by multinational giant SNC-Lavalin. At their annual general meeting in
May,
> overshadowed by a noisy street protest, CEO Jacques Lamarre pleaded with
> reporters to call his product "ammunition," not "bullets."
>
> Chances are as well that in Basra and Baghdad, Kabul and Kandahar,
> machine guns and other rapid-firing weapons supplied by Kitchener,
> Ontario's Diemaco, Canada's "Centre of Excellence for Small Arms," are
> pumping out those SNC bullets at the rate of 800 rounds a minute.
>
> "This is not a sporting rifle, and war is not a sporting activity,"
> Harvie Andre, former Associate Minister of War, said in reference to the
> Diemaco C-7 Rifle.
>
> "If it can be said of a death-dealing weapon, [the C-7] appeared to
> have no vices when I fired it on the highly sophisticated indoor range at
> Diemaco...the C-7 fires around 800 rounds a minute," then military affairs
> reporter Ron Lowman told Toronto Star readers 1986.
>
> Meanwhile, Milton, Ontario's Northstar Aerospace is working to
> improve the efficiency of another U.S. Army killing machine, the Apache
> AH-64, that "will facilitate added horsepower without the penalty of added
> weight." Northstar is providing what it calls "Face Gear" technology,
> developed with research and development funding support from Technology
> Partnerships Canada, an agency of Industry Canada.
>
> Described by industry analyst Global Security as the world's "most
> sophisticated -- and expensive -- attack helicopter," the Apache has been
> used extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq, highly  praised for its deadly
> nature, and has been implicated in numerous civilian massacres in Iraq and
> Afghanistan.
>
> Bob Hunt, an Army aviation spokesman at the Redstone Arsenal, home
> of the Army Aviation and Missile Command in Huntsville, Alabama, praises
> Apache because with it, "You designate the targets, you shoot your
> missiles, and you turn around and leave. Push the button, shoot and scoot.
> Big advantages for survivability and lethality."
>
> And what is modern war without real-time surveillance, tracking,
> and targetting data provided by the space warfare geniuses at COMDEV, the
> Cambridge, Ontario based manufacturers who won yet another "unspecified"
> military contract in June worth $8.2 million  but "the name of the
customer
> and the satellite program involved cannot be named at this time,"
according
> to a company press release. COMDEV was also a corporate consultant to the
> Pentagon's Vision 2020 document, the hallucinatory wet dream of space
> warriors predicting the stationing of offensive weapons platforms in the
> heavens within the next 20 years.
>
> The latest profit-taking on the murder market, traditionally a
> strong suit of the Canadian business community (Korea and Vietnam did
> wonders for the industry, and the ongoing nuclear arms build-up provides
> mega profits for this country's shameful uranium mining and processing
> industry), provides a backdrop to an even larger part of Canadian
> complicity in worldwide warmaking: the provision of vast areas of this
> country for war training camps, as well as government-funded "advances" in
> killing technology.
>
> At "Defence and Research Development Canada," for example, Canadian
> scientists continue working feverishly on the burning question which also
> haunted the minds of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorists: "how do we fit 70 tons
> of lethality [killing power] into a 20 ton package?"
>
> In Ottawa in June, a major exercise called Coalition Warrior
> Interoperability Demonstration (CWID) 2005 took place at the space warfare
> research centre at Shirley's Bay.
>
> "Managed by the U.S. Joint Forces Command and by the Defence
> Information Systems Agency, CWID 2005 focuses on global solutions for
> linking agencies and systems involved with homeland security and defence
> issues," according to a War Dept. press release. The 10-day exercise took
> place as Canadian General Ray Henault assumed duties as Chairman of the
> NATO Military Committee, thereby becoming NATO's highest-ranking military
> officer, charged with the task of figuring out where NATO can drop its
> bombs next.
>
> And every year, the NDP government of Saskatchewan proudly hosts
> one of the world's largest air warfare "training" exercises, teaching
young
> men and women to drop bombs from thousands of feet up.
>
> This year, the MAPLE FLAG XXXVIII "exercise" included many NATO
> nations as well as, for the first time, the war-crimes tainted Israeli Air
> Force. More than 5,000 warriors took part in the six-week training regime.
>
> "Maple Flag provides critically important air combat training for
> Canadians and our friends and allies," says Col. C.S. "Duff" Sullivan,
Wing
> Commander of 4 Wing Cold Lake in a War Department website puff piece. "The
> exercise continually strives to provide top-notch training that is
relevant
> and prepares military forces for the
> battleground of the future.  This year, for example, we introduced moving
> and time-sensitive targets, thus adding to the realism and challenge of
the
> exercise."
>
> Air crews took part in simulated 10-day "air campaigns" (the nice
> euphemism for bombing runs) employed over the "vast, unrestricted airspace
> and more than 640 targets of the Cold Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR)."
>
> Writes Lieutenant Sonia "Sonic" Dumouchel-Connock of the Maple Flag
> Public Affairs squad, "Exercise Maple Flag is one of Canada's
contributions
> to making NATO a strong, combat-capable and ready force.
>
>   "The range, the play area [that's right, kids, the "play" area!]
> with the ground-based threats and Red Air air-threats is very good
> training," says Capt. Jonas "Nero" Nerell, the aircraft commander of a
> Swedish Air Force C-130 Hercules transport aircraft that participated in
> period two of the exercise.  "We don't have it in Sweden - which is why we
> come here to participate in MAPLE FLAG every year."
>
> In a May 12 release, "Sonic" Dumouchel-Connock notes that the Cold
> Lake Air Weapons Range (CLAWR) is "the place to go to conduct air combat
> training. Covering more than 1 million hectares, the CLAWR covers a good
> portion of northwestern Saskatchewan and northeastern Alberta-and is part
> of the larger 4 Wing Low Level Flying Area that spans from British
Columbia
> to Manitoba....The realism and abundance of targets has earned the range
> the label of 'world's largest Hollywood set'."
>
> Maple Leaf is but a part of the daily air testing that Canada hosts
> for U.S. military equipment. Canadian airspace has been designated for
U.S.
> training of its unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) program, enabling the Air
> Force to play with the concept of pilotless bombers which, if crashed, do
> not produce the politically sensitive need for a body bag.
>
> In 2004, Nova Scotia hosted testing of the U.S. Air Force V-22
> Osprey, which according to the Pentagon is "the most flexible, capable,
and
> revolutionary combat troop transport aircraft in the world. It will be the
> weapon of choice for the full spectrum of combat."
>
> "This war [Iraq] has definitely exposed the need for a V-22," U.S.
> Lt. Gen. Maxwell C. Bailey was quoted as saying at the time. And so Canada
> was more than happy to open up some airspace to help fill that need.
>
>   "It's fitting that this milestone was reached by Osprey No. 24 on
> our crucial icing detachment in Canada," said Col. Craig Olson, USAF, V-22
> Joint Program Manager.
>
> And so it should come as no surprise that, with a war budget in
> Canada rapidly approaching $20 billion annually (or $55 million a day),
> Canada's general's have developed a a freedom to shoot from the lip
without
> any concern about sntimental liberal backlash.
>
> Few would be unfamiliar by now with the bull-in-a-china-shop
> ravings of Canada's military head Rick Hillier, a soldier's soldier who
> reminded Canadians that " We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be
> able to kill people."
>
> Hillier's comments received support from all political parties,
> including NDP leader Jack Layton, who found Hillier's foaming at the mouth
> an "appropriate response" rather than indicative of the  need for a quick
> psychological checkup or at least a rabies shot. The NDP was similarly
> acquiescent on the new Martin war economy budget.
>
> While Hillier's comments offended the sensibilities of liberal
> Canadians who prefer to think that the massive amount of money spent
> annually in this country is for nice things like water purification and
> handing out blankets (though how a CF-18 bomber is helpful in either is
> beyond comprehension), it is at least an acknowledgment of what the army
IS
> for. Indeed, few blinked a few years ago when former Canadian general
Lewis
> Mackenzie wrote in the Globe and Mail:
>
> "As much as Canadians would like to ignore the fact, the role of a
> soldier is to kill as efficiently as possible with the resources available
> once he is ordered to do so by his government. There are many sidelines to
> his profession that make us all feel warm and fuzzy...But they are all
> subordinate to one overriding responsibility, and that is to kill on
> demand."
>
> So what are we as Canadians to do after our summer of preparations
> to kill? Perhaps we once again need to look long and hard at our wartime
> economy. We continue to suffer from a crisis in homelessness (the homeless
> memorial in downtown Toronto has gone over the 400 mark), a crisis in
> poverty across the nation, especially on First Nations reserves,
> environmental pollution (5,800 premature deaths in Ontario each year from
> poisons in the air), long lists for childcare spaces, long health care
> waits, student debt, the list goes on.
>
> And yet, billions continue to go down the rathole of Canadian
> militarism. Excluding money spent on the hyper-paranoid souls at Emergency
> Preparedness Canada, excluding the paramilitary organizations like the
RCMP
> and major urban police forces, and excluding government subsidies through
> agencies such as Industry Canada, Canadians are currently forking out, on
> average, $47 million DAILY for the Canadian war machine.
>
> Perhaps it's time all of us, in all of our communities, tried to
> imagine a day without the War Dept. What would YOUR community be able to
do
> with $47 million? Imagine it, then make it happen. It seems it truly is
> time to look towards the kind of campaign that would demilitarize Canada.
> Imagine the signs that we could put at the border: "Welcome to Canada: One
> less place training and preparing for war. Have a peaceful trip."
>
> (report from Matthew Behrens of Homes not Bombs--Because Canada should
> build homes, not blow them up.)