Soldier suicides and the lying liars who send them to war

Canada has only recently, and only dimly, become aware of the terrible toll that our ill-informed participation in the Afghanistan war has taken on the service personnel who risked their lives over there.

Look at the asinine statements coming from the top brass and the Minister of Defense, who offers his "hopes and prayers."

Hopes and prayers are not enough.

Contrary to what the Minister and the top brass claim, there is an abundance of evidence pointing to the fact that those veterans who admit to suffering PTSD are cashiered out of the Canadian Forces ASAP.

You wouldn't want a few bad apples spoiling the whole bushel, now would you?

The problem is not unique to Canadian veterans. Soldier suicides have long made headlines in the UK.

In the US, suicides among servicemen and women have been acknowledged as a veritable epidemic.

There was one sure-fire way we could have avoided these suicides; we could have chosen not to participate in the Afghan war in the first place.

It's obviously too late to do that, but we can still do the right thing by the men and women who were sent over there so that Ottawa's leadership class could score brownie points in Washington, and every sentient Canadian knows that was all Afghanistan was ever about.

Defense Minister Rob Nicholson needs to resign. The brass who are hassling PTSD vets out of the service need to be fired. The veterans themselves need to have every resource made available to make their lives livable again.

Anything less is shameful.

Canada crucifies pot-smoking Mountie

Ron Francis is a veteran RCMP officer who happens to have a medical marijuana prescription.

According to Francis, and obviously the prescribing physician agrees, he needs the pot to treat his post traumatic stress.

No less an authority than Justice Minister Peter MacKay has chimed in to denounce Cpl. Francis. MacKay has just recently taken over the Justice file, having spent many years as Canada's Minister of Defence. Ironically, the recent suicides of three Canadian Forces members has pushed PTSD into the Canadian news pages as never before.

The latter story points out that the last 70 suicides in the Canadian Forces, most of which occurred on the watch of Peter MacKay, have never been adequately investigated.

Is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder responsible for this wave of suicides?

Mr. MacKay obviously doesn't think so.

The official line of the law-and-order fetishists in Ottawa is this; suicides of servicemen and cops are a regrettable inevitability.

Smoking a legal physician-prescribed marijuana cigarette to manage your PTSD will not be tolerated.