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Troops deserve more than red-shirted Fridays By Scott Taylor May 7, 2008 ________________________________ In my column last week, I noted that with the announcement of Chief of Defence Staff Gen. Rick Hillier's retirement in July, the race had begun in earnest to choose his successor. One of those candidates I touted for a shot at the top post was Army commander Lt.-Gen. Andrew Leslie. Among the other attributes that Leslie includes in his impressive resumé, I apparently overstated things a little by stating that the army commander had just completed his PhD in Afghan studies. Shortly after publication, I was called by a public affairs officer at National Defence Headquarters who wished to set the record straight. Apparently Leslie is still working on finishing that doctorate and his subject of study is "history with a focus on Afghanistan." While my mistake was not of a stop-the-presses magnitude, I did understand that, in view of some recent developments regarding Leslie, his people were keen to make sure the record would be corrected. The previous week, Leslie had taken the witness stand at the Hague Tribunal to testify against a Croatian general accused of war crimes. The incident to which Leslie was an eyewitness occurred in August 1995 during the most violent episode of ethnic cleansing during the civil wars that heralded the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia. At that juncture, a Canadian battalion and a large number of Canadian UN observers were located in the Krajina, an ethnic Serbian enclave in the newly-declared independent republic of Croatia. When the Croats had seceded from Yugoslavia, the Krajina Serbs had declared their own independence from Croatia. An armed standoff over this territory had existed from 1991 until the summer of 1995. When Croatian forces launched a major offensive to eliminate the Krajina pocket, the Canadian peacekeepers did not resist the Croatian attack and the tiny Serbian army in the Krajina fled without much of a fight. Having already experienced the Croatian brand of ethnic cleansingin particular the infamous massacre and rape of innocent Serbs in the Medak Pocket in 1993the Serb civilians also fled the advancing Croats. As the Serb soldiers fled into Bosnia, hundreds of thousands of Serbian refugees streamed into the Krajina capital of Knin. It was here that then-colonel Leslie was based with the UN mission... ________________________________ To read the rest of this article go to http://www.espritdecorps.ca/Ontarget%20080507.htm ________________________________ __________________________________________________________________ Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail. Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ =============== Group Moderator: [Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА] page at http://magazine.sorabia.net for more informations about current situation in Serbia http://www.sorabia.net Slusajte GLAS SORABIJE nas talk internet-radio (Serbian Only) http://radio.sorabia.net Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sorabia/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА] mailto:[Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [Е-ПОШТА ЗАШТИЋЕНА] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
