The following story from today's Hill Times is reproduced under the Fair Comment provisions of the Copyright Act.
Feds should push U.S. to investigate military log in secret military Afghan doc leaks
Canada should ask the U.S. government to conduct its own investigation into report at odds with the Canadian version of deaths.
By TIM NAUMETZ
Published August 2, 2010
The Canadian government has a duty to ask the U.S. to investigate and reveal the origins of a military log that reopened wounds from the 2006 combat deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan with its claim they were killed by a U.S. bomb instead of enemy fire, says a Liberal MP and a former Canadian army officer.
Retired Col. Michel Drapeau and Liberal MP Ujjal Dosanjh (Vancouver South, B.C.) told The Hill Times that despite an internal inquiry at the time by the Canadian Forces, which included a review of Canada's own combat reports on the deaths and the subsequent investigation by Military Police, Canada should ask the U.S. government to conduct its own investigation and explain how it is the U.S. forces in Afghanistan produced a combat report that was completely at odds with the Canadian version of the Sept. 3, 2006, battle in which the Canadians died.
They said that would be the only way to ease the anguish that was caused last week, to the families of the four soldiers who were killed, after the CBC and other media reported the U.S. log was among more than 90,000 U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan war that were sent anonymously to Wikileaks.
Mr. Drapeau also criticized the way in which the Canadian Forces reacted to the leaked document last Monday, with an initial statement only from a spokesman for Defence Minister Peter MacKay (Central Nova, N.S.) denying that the U.S. military log was an accurate account of what transpired during the battle—Canada's first large-scale engagement with Taliban insurgents—and at least a day's delay releasing further information.
In another tragic and odd twist to the story, a Canadian soldier was confirmed killed by friendly fire on Sept. 4 when a U.S. aircraft mistakenly strafed the same company of troops who had lost the four soldiers the previous day. The new suggestion that the four were killed by a U.S. bomb was eerily reminiscent of friendly-fire death in Afghanistan in 2002, when the Liberal government of the day ended Canada's initial combat participation in the war soon after a U.S. pilot killed four Canadian soldiers when he mistook them for enemy forces during a nighttime bombing mission.
Mr. Drapeau said the Canadian government must ask Washington to investigate the friendly-fire report and explain its origin, followed by a Canadian report to the families involved and the public.
"As long as the department, particularly the leaders of the department, either the political or military leaders of the department, as long as they themselves don't seem to act in a very public way and a very reassuring way and look the camera straight in the eye and make those statements, a doubt will persist in the minds of some people," Mr. Drapeau said.
Mr. Dosanjh agreed that, as painful a reminder the leaked document has become for the families of the four soldiers, the government has an obligation to uncover all the facts.
"If the Canadian Forces have determined their own version is correct, I think the Canadian governments has to ask the American government what conclusions they have reached [about the U.S. report], that would clear the air," Mr. Dosanjh said.
Initially, a spokesman for the Canadian Forces said Canada would not ask the U.S. to investigate the origin of its casualty report, a dry but detailed account of the bomb one of its high-altitude aircraft dropped that day in support of the Canadian troops.
"The fact is there is no doubt the Wikileaks log is wrong," Lt.-Col. Norbert Cyr said when The Hill Times first asked him about the report. "How they made that mistake, how the U.S. made that mistake, who logged it, we have no idea and we're not asking them, we don't care, the fact is it does not reflect what actually happened."
But on Thursday, Lt.-Col. Cyr told The Hill Times Canada would ask Washington for an explanation as part of a wider joint review of the material given to Wikileaks. He also confirmed the Canadian troops had called in U.S. air bombing support after the infantry company had been ambushed and pinned down by Taliban soldiers, but said one of the two bombs the Americans dropped in response did not explode and the other did not injure or kill Canadians.
Lt.-Col. Cyr said the reports and investigation results produced internally by the Canadian military in the wake of the casualties would not be made public.
"There are reports on that day," he said. "Unfortunately, they are all classified because there are lessons learned, and there are after-action reports that are classified. They detail tactics and procedures, and they review them. And I can tell you in this case, there were a lot of lessons learned, because it was a bad situation, a classic ambush. I'm not suggesting they made a mistake, but they wandered into a textbook scenario. There's a lot of stuff in there that cannot be made public, and we've never made public any after-action reports of any incident or death in Afghanistan."
Even stories of the deaths from comrades who were in the battle differ in accounts that were based on their statements.
Author Christie Blatchford, who covered Canadian troops in Afghanistan and interviewed members of the same company for her account, quoted an officer as saying one of the men who was killed, Sgt. Shane Stachnik, was walking when the enemy soldiers opened fire. Another account by Legion Magazine writer Adam Day says Mr. Stachnik was standing in an armoured vehicle's sentry hatch.
The accounts, including the Canadian Forces account based on witness statements, say Sgt. Stachnik and Warrant Officer Richard Nolan were killed when the shooting began soon after the company, along with hundreds of other troops in the Canadian battle group, crossed a river toward their target village early in the morning that day. The accounts say the other two who died, Pte. William Cushley and Warrant Officer Frank Mellish, were killed later in the battle, after they sought cover with other soldiers at an armoured bulldozer the Canadians had brought along to breach Taliban defences. The Canadians had been ordered to withdraw, the accounts say, but Pte. Cushley and Warrant Officer Mellish were pinned down with others after their armoured vehicle crashed into a ditch.
Pte. Cushley and Warrant Officer Mellish were killed when the bulldozer was struck by an armour-piercing shell from a shoulder-fired 82-millimetre recoilless rifle, according to soldier accounts of the battle.
The Russian-made weapon reportedly became a favourite of Taliban and other Afghan forces as they fought the Soviet Union occupation of the country in the 1980s.
"We are 100 per cent sure that the events unfolded as they were reported at the time, and not as suggested in the Wikileaks log, which says that the cause of death, or the injuries, were caused by the dropping of a bomb," said Lt.-Col. Cyr.
"What we do know about bombs at this particular engagement is two bombs were dropped," he added. "These are all danger-close bombs, in other words, they're being dropped at the minimum safe distance. The first bomb went down, it went thump, and did not detonate. They then had a second bomb released and it did detonate, and that was hitting the intended target. I believe it was a building. The intended target was struck and there were no, and I underline none, no injuries or deaths related to the release or firing of that second bomb. As they were trying to disengage from that firefight and break contact, they had that bomb dropped so they could move safely without being under fire."
The U.S. log, coded "blue-on-blue" to signify an attack against "friendly" forces, uses military shorthand to describe how troops were receiving small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades from a "sawtooth building." The log says one guided bomb dropped.
"Sawtooth building is hit," the log says. "No activity observed. Casualties 4x CDN KIA. 4x CDN WIA." Four Canadians killed, four wounded. It includes a following sentence, apparently amended, to say seven Canadians were wounded along with an Afghan interpreter. The log was later updated and reviewed, apparently in 2007.
Only four Canadian soldiers were killed in Afghanistan that day, and Lt.-Col. Cyr says the Canadian Forces simply "don't know" where the U.S. unit that prepared the log obtained the information behind it. "They are the ones who generated the input into that database. Below them, we don't know, or where did they get that from, we don't know."
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