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Soldiers to be limited to one combat tour in Afghanistan: minister
MURRAY BREWSTER



OTTAWA (CP) - To avoid wearing out his troops, Canada's defence minister is proposing to limit combat troops to one deployment in war-torn Afghanistan, if possible.

Gordon O'Connor told the Commons defence committee Wednesday that with a little luck and good planning, the army won't have to ask soldiers to return again and again to battle Taliban insurgents.

"There are exceptions in some support trades, but we should have enough people, if we do our recruiting right, to get us through to the end of February '09 without committing large numbers of troops back there again," he said.

"I don't anticipate anybody being there five or six times."

Most soldiers on coming deployments will hopefully be going to Afghanistan for the first time, said Gen. Rick Hillier, chief of defence staff .

"We aim as much towards that as we can," he said.

Both O'Connor and Hillier were responding to questions and concerns from the all-party committee about how the army will deal with the extended, often dangerous mission and the rising casualty rate.

Since 2002, 42 Canadian soldiers have died and more than 168 have been wounded in the bloody struggle to wrestle Afghanistan from Taliban control.

Typically, Canadian battle groups - roughly 2,300 front-line soldiers and support elements - are deployed for six-month rotations.

In order to keep fresh troops headed toward the battlefield, defence planners are working on a series of options, including a process called re-rolling.

When someone signs up for one particular branch of the military, the enrolment can be made conditional on them serving time in the infantry.

It's not new concept. In the 1990s, armoured soldiers were retrained to fight as infantry in Bosnia.

The Conservative government is hoping its plan to recruit 13,000 new members of the regular forces will also help swell the ranks.

There will be some exceptions to the one-deployment rule, most notably for command assignments, Hillier said.

"You can't have a rapidly changing face if you're going to develop a relationship with the governor of Kandahar, the governor of Helmand," he said.

Several times during the session, O'Connor was called upon to defend the mission in Afghanistan from opposition attacks.

Liberal and Bloc Quebecois MPs accused him of keeping Canadians in the dark about the progress of the mission by denying the committee's request for regular briefings.

O'Connor said he wasn't about to endanger troops by discussing plans for operations in southern Afghanistan.

But committee members insisted they were not interested in asking questions coming missions, but rather what has already taken place.

O'Connor said he'd reconsider whether to sanction the briefings.

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To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

Officer of Engineers

I've heard this before and O'Connor should know better.

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Chimo

lemontree

One combat tour of 2 years would be better.

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Cheers!...on the rocks!!

Canmoore

I think that this is just a vote getter, I think that the PM is behind this, O'Conner is probably just the mouth peice. Kinda sad really if that is what it really is, but in a Minority government, the government is always walking on a line as thin as a mosquitos pecker.

Officer of Engineers

Do the math. 12 manouver battalions and you can flush out 3-4 more battle groups from the gunners and engineers supported by the res. That is a maximum of 8 rotations based upon a combat brigade strength. That's a 6 year committement. And we've been in Afghanistan since 2001. No way we can do this without resending guys back over there.

And we want to send guys back over there. We need veteran eyes alot more than rookie mistakes.

Ray

No chance!

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"Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

HAKUNA MATATA

ChrisF202

I was just going to say something all those lines. We have 450,000 troops in the US Army and some are on their 3rd or 4th tour in Iraq and or Afghanistan.

As with all politicans im betting its just a vote getter and will turn out to not be true.