Free Republic

OTTAWA (CP) - Most of the countries fighting in Afghanistan are comparing technology and ideas this week in the Nevada and California deserts in the first large-scale multinational effort to reduce friendly fire casualties. Canada's contribution to the demonstration involves three CF-18 fighter jets, a contingent of soldiers and fighting vehicles from 1st Battalion Royal Canadian Regiment, based in Petawawa, Ont. It comes just a few weeks after investigations in both Canada and the United States determined better training, equipment and co-ordination could have prevented the accidental strafing of a company of Canadian soldiers last year. The split-second mistake, by...

A banner once displayed in front of an abandoned Al-Qaeda safehouse in Iraq has found a new home at a US military museum.The three-meter-long (10-foot-long) black flag, recovered by a battalion of Marines in Fallujah in November 2004, is now on display at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia.The flag "is believed to be the same banner seen in the atrocious videos broadcast all over the world displaying the torture and executions of many innocent civilians by insurgents and terrorists," according to the text accompanying the exhibit.The flag was found, the narrative went on to say,...