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[igotthisguitar]

Army to Occupy Downtown Winnipeg
Spring "exercise" to turn city into 'battleground'

Tue Dec 27 2005
By David O'Brien

MORE than 500 army troops, backed by helicopters, armoured vehicles and artillery, will turn downtown Winnipeg into an armed camp as part of a military exercise to train soldiers for the modern battlefield.

Exercise Charging Bison will unfold for seven days and nights beginning April 30 next year in what is believed to be the largest urban warfare training exercise of its kind ever held in Canada.

There won't be live ammunition, but there will be laser weapons and a variety of blanks and 'simunition' -- or simulated munitions -- that make noise and smoke or discharge harmless projectiles.

The drill is designed to simulate the kind of complex conditions soldiers would encounter in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq, where conventional warfare is conducted simultaneously with humanitarian relief operations and nation-building, said Col. Kelly Woiden, commander of 38 Brigade.

Urban battlefields are sometimes known as "three-block wars" because troops could help people on one block, fight insurgents on another, and guard convoys on another, Woiden explained.

The mission

What: Operation Charging Bison will involve 500 troops training in downtown Winnipeg.

Who: The operation is run by 38 Brigade.
Why: It's designed to train troops in urban warfare
Where: A base camp will be set up on the western edge of the city, but most of the exercises will take place in the downtown.
When: Day and night between April 30 and May 6.

"We're going to create a realistic environment of the situation that individual soldiers can face today," he said. "You could be doing humanitarian relief one moment and then fighting a war the next. It is the most complicated terrain for a soldier."

The operation is also part of a long-term plan to prepare 200 of the brigade's soldiers to support a 1,000-person task force in 2008, if necessary, he said.

The 38 Brigade is a reserve unit responsible for a dozen formations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northwestern Ontario.

It will provide most of the personnel for the exercise, although some will come from British Columbia and Alberta, and possibly from the United States, Woiden said, adding 17 Wing will also provide logistics support.

About 100 police officers and civilians will be given a role in the exercise, either as opposing forces or relief organizations.

The military may also recruit drama students from the University of Manitoba to play the roles of demonstrators or insurgents.

"The purpose is to learn and we may rerun the same scenario several times," Woiden said.

The operation will occupy a large swath of downtown Winnipeg from Balmoral Street on the west, south to the Assiniboine River, north to the CP Rail tracks and east into The Forks and St. Boniface.

Woiden said the exercise is still in the planning stages and the boundaries could change. A base camp will be established on the western edge of the city, but there will be smaller camps downtown, he said.

The exercise will continue night and day, but Woiden said he did not anticipate any significant disruption of traffic or commercial operations

Military observers will keep score and determine who was killed and who was wounded during the exercise.

"This is different than traditional training when the infantry were facing open ground in front of them, with soldiers in a different uniform," Woiden said. "This is much more complex because we don't know who the enemy is or where the threats are."

Reserve units have been used in the past to fill out the ranks of the regular force, but Woiden said the military now wants the militia trained to higher level of combat readiness.

dave.o'[email protected]

http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/subscriber/local/story/3235743p-3746238c.html

[igotthisguitar]

Harper pledges military for cities
Up to 500 troops in major centres
Force could help with disasters
Dec. 28, 2005. 12:56 PM
LES WHITTINGTON AND GRAHAM FRASER
OTTAWA BUREAU

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper wants to beef up military detachments in the GTA and other major metropolitan areas to help deal with emergencies.

"Obviously, we would anticipate that its domestic need would be in case of disaster," Harper said during a federal election campaign stop late yesterday on Vancouver Island.

But he said the "territorial defence units" — 100 regular troops and 400 or more reservists each — would help protect Canada's sovereignty and provide the military with handy jumping-off points if Canadian forces are needed to help out in conflicts in other countries.

Although he didn't make a direct connection, Harper's pledge to deploy regular army troops in Canada's major cities came as the GTA was reeling from the shock of the latest gun violence in downtown Toronto on Monday.

Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, the Toronto area and other major metropolitan areas would be in line for the territorial defence units, Harper said, according to Canadian Press.

"A large number of our cities have no military presence," Harper said.

Initial reaction was skeptical. Military historian Jack Granatstein called Harper's plan of having 100 regular soldiers stationed with 400 or more reservists in major cities across Canada "silly."

"This is nuts, dispersing penny-packets of troops in major cities," he told the Toronto Star. "It makes more sense to build up the reserves."

Harper revealed the idea of the new units as part of an announcement on strengthening the military presence in western Canada.

"This is a full military presence," he told reporters in Courtenay, B.C.

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1135723814108

[Bulsajo]

And once again, a histrionically misleading subject line coupled with uninteresting stories punctuated by superfluous italics, boldings and underlinings.

10/10 for consistency.

Bravo.

[Newbie]

Yeah,

No offence guitar, but you're style is quite annoying.

I always get pulled in by your headlines but then lose interest quickly.

I particularly don't like how much you use Bold-type and change the size of your fonts. It is rather distracting and quite a turn off

(that's just my humble opinion, don't mean any harm by it )

[endo]

Ahh I wish I was back home to see this. Thanks for the link.

[Grotto]

They did it in Edmonton a few years back...it was kind of neat to go downtown and see all our tincans sitting on streetcorners.

[Hollywoodaction]

[Bulsajo]

Where will they find 500? Maybe we'll need to pull some back from Afghanistan...
And what happens when they're outnumbered by the drunks on Friday night?

[mindmetoo]

Isn't it obvious to anyone? America's war in Iraq has let its guard down. You know, leading the charge in the middle east is the infamous 10th mountain division. That's the division America always maintained near the Canadian border. Conspiracy theorists argued its mission was, in a time of crisis, to seize Ottawa in a mini blitz, and basically severe Canada in half.

But now that the 10th mountain division is no longer a threat or even there in flesh, Canada could seize the initiative, dust off the old "burn the White House down" plan our British forefathers carried off rather deftly back in 1812ish!

We'll make America our biatch and take their XBoxes! (They don't have much oil anymore.)

[Pligganease]

[mindmetoo]

[laogaiguk]

[Pligganease]

[Gopher]

...and, to clarify one unspoken point here, I have seen no evidence to suggest that those fighting in what became Canada were fighting for some reason independent of the U.S.-British conflict.

What's sometimes missing in these discussions is an accounting of the politics of this war: from start to finish it was a conflict between the U.S. and Britain in the overall context of the Napoleonic Wars. British-held North America was exactly that, British-held North America.

The U.S.-Canadian "conflict" is the Candadian nationalists' invention -- and I strongly suspect it might even be a twentieth-century historiographical invention.

Going back to 1776, this was certainly a rebellion, from the British perspective. It was an independence war from the nascent U.S. perspective, however, which did claim to be a viable separate govt, although Laogaiguk is still correct in reminding us that it was also a geopolitical opportunity for the French, and the event has also been enhanced a bit in U.S. history texts for the sake of nation-building and patriotism, but this is hardly unique in the U.S.

[Pligganease]