Last summer and last fall, Canadian aircrews learning to fly our yet-to-be delivered Boeing C-17s were "seasoned" with some missions into Iraq. That would be same war Jean Chrétien said Canada wouldn't participate in. That's our first C-17 sitting at CFB Trenton in August on the day it first landed there.

OTTAWA - Canadian Forces personnel learned to operate Canada's newest military plane, the giant Boeing C-17, by training on American jets, including flying those planes into Iraq in support of the U.S. war, according to a memo written by Canada's top general and obtained by Canwest News Service.

Gen. Rick Hillier, the chief of Canada's defence staff, wrote to Gordon O'Connor, then-minister of national defence, in May 2007 that in the summer and fall of that year, Canadian military aircrew would fly into Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. That decision was taken without informing Parliament.

"Canadians have been very clear from the beginning that they wanted no part of George Bush's war on Iraq," said NDP MP Dawn Black, her party's defence critic, "and they certainly don't want to see Canadians getting involved through a back door." [Read the rest...]