Flit

'BLAME CANADA' CONTINUES The Canadians’

'BLAME CANADA' CONTINUES

The Canadians’ commander, Capt. Joseph Jasper, agreed that the troops had not fired their weapons for several minutes before he heard the blast of the 500-pound bomb. But he admitted under cross-examination Tuesday that his forces ignored regulations to put a flashing red light on the practice range so pilots flying overhead could know they had encountered friendly forces.
Jasper testified that more than half of his men had also covered up blinking red lights on their helmets, which they normally used for safety reasons during live-ammunition exercises, because the blinking sometimes bothered helicopter pilots landing at an airfield about three miles away.

-MS-NBC story today. While hidden in there is the beginnings of an explanation why putting red lights on the range was not the Kandahar standard procedure, the gist is another smear on the unfortunate Capt. Jasper. If his quotes in other accounts of this testimony are accurate, he never admitted to ignoring anything... in fact he specifically said he followed every regulation he was aware of (a point on which the official inquiries back him up on). (Note the article's layout, btw... two pictures of the American pilots with their pretty wives, and none of the eight injured Canadian soldiers, some of whom limped into the same courtroom today.)