Interesting that the supposed “scandal” surrounding Canadian troops under US command turning over Taliban captives to the US hinges on a critical photo of troops that were originally identified as US Special Forces but eventually turned out to be Canadian Special Forces.
What? Canada has special forces?
Yep. They’re called the JTF2, or Joint Task Force Two and were created in 1993 after the RCMP asserted that it couldn’t handle the conflict of interest between counter-terrorism and the mandate to “protect and serve”. Probably more realistically, the public relations nightmare from RCMP counter terrorist operations such as Oka was more than they, as a publicly reporting organization, could handle.
As it is, the JTF2 was born and the torch passed from the RCMP.
If you’re not proud of the born-again-hard Canadian hockey team, maybe you should be proud that Canada can stand among the world’s most elite commando forces. Or something like that.
If Canada’s Defense Minister Art Eggleton were a smarter individual, he could have dodged the entire controversy by simply stating that he didn’t share information about JTF2’s participation with the US because to do so would have compromised their operational safety. This is a standard practise with other Special Forces units.
I compiled a bunch of research: