I think this is just new today, a massive banner hanging from the South wing of the Defence Department Headquarters building in downtown Ottawa (YOW).
I wonder how the expenditure on this will be allocated in Ricky Hillier's budget. All in a "good" cause, right?
If Ricky, his NATO buddies and their spinmeisters, could get maybe a little focused - I do know they are burning up grey matter like crazy trying to actually get a PLAN for adventure Afghanistan - they might even have figured out that some are starting to call the ribbon thing-me-bob something else.
Ah, Mr. Fish not exactly the coffee shop type of peccadillo being offered up by the "support the troops" gang here in YOW. But, we up here, as compared to you down there in the "states", are sort of new to the rally round the troops gig, unless there has actually been an "official" declaration of war. And we haven't had one of those since 1939.
Besides we are a little light on casualties - the fatal type - just now.
To date we have had 56 killed in Afghanistan, that's about 1.7 deaths per million of Canadian population. Pretty small when you consider that traffic accidents kill about 90 of us per million a year.
But we do have you, in the "states" beat on the per death ratio in Afghanistan. You only have 1.3 dead per million of US population in that place.
Now, however, if we add in those killed in Iraq you guys beat us.
You have combined Iraq and Afghanistan deaths today of 3,872, that's about 12.9 deaths per million. You do have a long way to go to get to the Vietnam numbers though. In that adventure you had about 287 deaths per million but you beat us right now.
For us to get to your 12.9 deaths per million rate we need another 365 fatal casualties.
Boy, if we got 421 deaths (56 right now + 365 extra to be equivalent to the US death rate per million) those little yellow ribbons would be cock rings here to but they'd be around the current Prime Minister's pudgy neck and Ricky Hillier would likely be discovering the joy of a hockey stick but it would be virtually certain it would be in a place that the sun has never shone.
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