If you're going to send people to fight, you have the obligation of outfit, train and support them as best you can. No expense is too great. You should give them the same things you yourselve would want.

It's been known for years that synthetic fibers are a disaster in burns. To use them in general-issue combat clothing simply to save money borders on the criminal.

Brucie, I doubt that you'll hear back. Politicians have too much else to do to listen to constituents.

I can understand why Canada might need submarines; I'd suggest four in the west, four in the east, and two in the north. I could even see deploying one of the eastern boats in the Great Lakes, but other than that I can't see deploying any others in the south. But again, to supply anything but the best is...well....

Years back I read in The Toronto Star an editorial piece about an invasion of the US by USSR special forces troops. Part of the response by the US was to send a force to Canada to "mop up" the parachutists who'd landed there because the Canadian forces couldn't do the job. I remember the line "The US says that its forces will be withdrawn when the danger of invasion is past."

I have also been in Quebec during one of its secessionsist spasms and discussing it with a Quebecois. He had never considered that neither US nor the rest of Canada would never permit the St. Lawrence Seaway to be under any control other than theirs and that they would send troops to insure such control. (He also had never considered that the Western Provinces would no longer have to subsidize oil products for Quebec, but that's another story.)

Big Brother Britain? Do you seriously believe that if the US invaded Canada that Britain would come to Canada's aid? I don't, not with Blair and Bush joined at the hip.