NATO approve new Irish Army Commander

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday May 07, 2003 09:16 by James McKenna jimmymac61 at hotmail dot com

Canada to control Irish in Kabul

The International Security Assistance Force which was intially set up under a UN resolution but has since become the servant of US Central Command and more recently NATO is now to be commanded on the ground by Canada. Thought you might like to know !

Why should this concern Ireland who has no connection with NATO or USCENTCOM? We don't have anything to do with them ,do we? Of course not, if we did it would be mentioned on the Defence Forces website

www.military.ie

Unfortunately we do have soldiers serving under NATO in Afghanistan, since it unilaterally decided it was taking over control from US Central Command a couple of weeks ago. For some reason the US did not oppose the takeover and perhaps a clue is to be found in Romano Prodys comment last week that "NATO is the arch the joins the US and the EU."

The Irish Government and Defence Forces have at every stage prevented the distribution of information regarding our soldiers in Afghanistan. If forced to make a statement on their ISAF involvement they refer to the original UN approval for the operation but never mention US Central Command control or more recently NATO control of our Irish soldiers and resources.

The army officers must surely hope for nice jobs in exotic locations if the imperial colonisation of Afghanistan is successful. Not to mention the legions of private corporate "oppertunities" for the "right" people.

The fact that they are providing static security for the US picked government in Kabul and it's proposed oil and gas pipelines while the people and culture of Afghanistan are wiped out to be replaced by "Democracy" weighs little on their ignorant souls. What price our participation in this crime?

20,000 innocent people were bombed to death in the "Liberation" of Afghanistan. Today it is run by warlords . Some heroin kings and others former Taliban. Nothing has changed except it is more lawless and the US is now about to get access to the massive Caspian Seas oil and gas reserves. And Irish army officers want to prance around with NATO or ride in their US friends Humvees in and out of Bhagram torture base! Of course they are only following Government orders but why do they defend the secrecy of the operation by not making one single mention of it on their website?

I guess they want them thinking of firing the guns and driving the tanks, not the possibility of being gutted somewhere up the Khyber Pass.