Ireland's win accolade of "coolest Army Logo"

by armchair newspaper reader Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:43

......The EU mission to Chad will resume deployment today following delays due to fighting between rebels and government forces, with Irish troops scheduled to depart for the central African country next week, writes Mary Fitzgerald , Foreign Affairs Correspondent. French cargo aircraft transporting logistical material for the force were due to leave for the Chadian capital N'Djamena today, a spokesman for the EU mission known as EUfor said. Actual troop deployment is expected to follow soon afterwards, with advance units of Irish military personnel due to fly to Chad between February 21st and 25th, Comdt Dan Harvey told The Irish Times last night. Minister for Defence Willie O'Dea will meet Lt Gen Pat Nash, the Irish general with overall command of the mission, in Paris on Wednesday for a briefing on the deployment.........

.....At the weekend, EUfor commander on the ground, French general Jean-Philippe Ganascia, said his troops will keep their distance from French forces already stationed in the country under a Franco-Chadian defence accord. "There is not a single common point between [the French troops] mission and ours," he said. Gen Ganascia, who reports to Lt Gen Pat Nash at EUfor's main headquarters in Paris, insisted the EU force would avoid taking sides in Chad's internal affairs.......

"If I have all the intelligence needed to know that those people I am now facing are going to attack somebody else, I will attack them too. I won't wait for them to attack if I can attack first," Gen Ganascia said..........

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/frontpage/2008/0211/12....html

meanwhile.......

"....Some 30,000 Chadians fled across the border into neighbouring Cameroon after rebels attacked N'Djamena last weekend....... The United Nations in Geneva says worsening security in Chad has also resulted in serious shortages of supplies for Sudanese refugees in eastern Chad.
A series of deadly attacks on Darfur villages has also prompted another 12,000 people to flee western Sudan, according to the UN. An estimated 240,000 Darfur refugees are already living in camps in eastern Chad and another 180,000 Chadians have been internally displaced........

In a statement quoted by the Reuters news agency the rebels said: "The alliance of the armed opposition no longer believes in the neutrality of a force essentially composed of French troops and whose operational direction is carried out by France."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7238298.stm

in a nutshell - Chad is a mess stretched to breaking point by scared, needy refugees of all types & many nationalities now numbered in easy round figures with four or five zeroes on the end. There is a rebel force which has decided any EUfor force is not neutral. Big job. Won't be pleasant.

by arm chair drone operator Sat Feb 09, 2008 20:55

I'm sure someone in the department of defense reads French & quite a few of Liet-Gen ruddy faced Nash's men do too. As would a few of the citizens in whose name 9mm Willy O Dea gets to invest in, & direct the activities of our professional army.
this is the "secret defense" blog from the French left-wing daily "liberation" newspaper. It tells you how things are going in a way which we consider "reported" & official, if not a substitute for EU, UN or NATO press statements it is certainly complementary material. In the safety of your home you read how Mirage jets located the rebels. Easy stuff, rebels give off heat, a Mirage jet can spot & target a half-boiled egg at 32 kilometres. It can get to that half-boiled egg before it goes hard & you have time to read this sentance...........................................................Now that's playing soldiers.

http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/defense/2008/0....html
http://secretdefense.blogs.liberation.fr/

Or if you just do british english news - here's stuff from the BBC.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7233377.stm
:- "
The Chad government has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in much of the country after rebels attacked the capital, N'Djamena, last weekend.....At least 100 civilians were killed in the fighting, aid workers say......Meanwhile, President Idriss Deby asked the European Union to deploy peacekeepers to the country "as quickly as possible".......One rebel spokesman told Reuters news agency they were being bombed by French planes and helicopters. Former colonial power France has a military base in Chad but has denied that its forces have intervened on behalf of the government. But it has warned the rebels not to attack the capital again and has helped with logistics and intelligence. [ I'd interpolate the ordinance survey map there. we're not quite talking the dakur rally & it's much easier by air than in a pick-up with some rocket launchers on the back. they would have been better keeping them hidden longer. "I'm making a solemn appeal to the European Union and the initiator of this idea, France, to make sure that this force is installed as swiftly as possible to ease the burden we have to bear today," Mr [Chadian President] Deby told French radio Europe 1.

by Private Spud Wed Feb 06, 2008 14:55

There's French politics involved in this Chad rebellion business. It sort of overrides the UN-mandated EU force about to be airlifted to Chad. Us poor one-stripe Privates just hang around barracks waiting for orders. Betcha Willie has problems trying to make a phone call to the French foreign minister these days.

by arm chair drone operator Wed Feb 06, 2008 14:37

The news release then from the department of defense told us :-

......"The Minister for Defence Willie O’Dea, T.D., has secured Cabinet approval for the deployment of 400 Irish troops for the UN mandated EU military operation in the Republic of Chad. Minister O’Dea will now proceed to seek Dáil approval for the mission. This will complete the Triple Lock mechanism of UN, Government and Dáil approval before deploying members of the Defence Forces overseas. Ireland will play a significant and substantive role in this mission as the second largest contributor and provider of the overall Operation Commander: Lt. Gen Pat Nash. “Our contribution represents the Defence Forces’ most ambitious and challenging overseas deployment to date. Our role is threefold: to help establish a safe and secure environment for refugees, to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian aid to the refugees and to protect UN and humanitarian personnel. The carnage in Darfur coupled with the multiple conflicts in the border areas between Darfur, Chad and the Central African Republic has scarred the lives of countless thousands of innocent men, women and children. It will be our job to help and protect them and today the Government accepted my recommendation to deploy to the region,” stated Minister O’Dea. “Yesterday in Brussels, I met with Lt General Pat Nash who briefed Ministers on the mission’s current state of preparedness, particularly on the emerging gaps in transport resources, especially the heavy airlift and helicopter assets. On foot of that briefing I urged my EU colleagues at the joint meeting of EU Defence and Foreign Ministers to move quickly to address these shortfalls in the force structure. I am confident they will be addressed satisfactorily as gaps of this nature are not unusual during the planning phase of any overseas operation. A Force Generation conference is taking place tomorrow (Wednesday November 21st) in Brussels to specifically address these key issues and I will then discuss the outcome of this meeting with military officials,” added Minister O’Dea........"

http://www.military.ie/dfhq/pubrel/news/2007/november/n...v.htm

Now you'll note they don't call him 9mm Willy in the official documentation. I also hope you enjoy this ping to afford yourself an opportunity to examine for yourself the logos of various state's military wings & appreciate why the Irish one was described as the coolest. To save you the trouble of just being patriotic & only interested in the Irish logo which I with usual celerity of mind & brilliant sardonic wit described as "a swishy sort of harp thing meets a pregnant lady holding a spear" I've attached that as an illustration.

Now a lot of pregnant ladies have walked around Chad since that decision to send Irish troops was made. There have been quite a few spears, machetes, AK's & trucks with short range artillery on board as well. But not much in a decent selection of rebel held ordinance survey maps. & of course the pride with which you looked at the ruddy face of Lt General Pat Nash in the knowledge that he was to lead this deployment has just about avoided the nasty realisation of hubris.

Chad is a French mission.

I suggest this little other press article, one of the many which are designed to be quickly overlooked as mere froth or human interest might now provide a suitable starting point to a thread treating on the wisdom & desirability of Irish military deployment in the Chad theatre. For as the Irish Times reported last weekend "......The deployment of 54 Irish peacekeepers for Chad appears threatened by further heavy fighting around the capital N'Djamena today with the European Union now monitoring the situation hour by hour. A spokesman for the Irish Defence Forces said the decision will be decided on the basis of events over the coming 72 hours. The postponement was due to fighting around the capital, N'Djamena. He told ireland.com the deployment of the troops is being discussed between EU Operational HQ in Paris, Abeche (Chad) and Dublin, but with the closure of the airport and the fighting around the capital, the situation is now "acute". Events to date will not require any delay in our main deployment in the coming months. The eight Defence Forces personnel deployed in N'Djamena and Abeche are said to be "safe and well". The 54 Irish troops were to make up the first batch of 450 Irish military personnel embarking on peacekeeping and refugee-protection duties in Chad. The troops were diverted back to McKee Barracks yesterday while they were en route to Dublin airport. They were to be stationed at Abeche as part of the UN-mandated, Eufor Chad/CAR, the European Union military mission to Chad and the Central African Republic, headed by Ireland's Lieut-Gen Pat Nash.
"Events to date will not require any delay in our main deployment in the coming months," the army spokesman said............" http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0201/bre...6.htm


Those 72 hours have now passed. One thing the military really do is punctual decision making. Yet no news from 9mm Willy on behalf of Liet-Gen Pat Nash & company.

During the last 120 hours the French have really it appears used their mirage jets. I don't know if you've ever seen a mirage jet, I live in Barcelona & two days a year the King of Spain sends us a bunch of them to do an airshow. Those two days a year are ones in which from my roof top home I really feel the limitations of a bow & arrow & look dumstruck as those craft travelling at Mach 2 (or thereabouts) manouvre in the air in a way one really only expects on a video game console. When at last they go home I always cast a thought to those who find themselves on the opposing side of that weaponry. The western news agencies have reported how the French defence ministry have drawn the line at fullscale military intervention "in a sovreign state" outside of their mandate - but someone in Paris has found a few agreements which allows them do fullscale military assistance. Nobody in international media is publishing Liet-Gen Nash's photo anymore or even mentioning the pride of our humanitarian assistance. 2 of those strategic thinktanks people generally never hear about have already ruled out our role.

So what we are we going to ask our professional soldiers to do?

"a swishy sort of harp thing meets a pregnant lady holding a spear"