Canadian Ground Forces in Desert Storm...

MacCaulay

Banned
In 1990, during the initial Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the French embassy in Kuwait City was broken into and looted. This pushed the French (who had numerous pro-Iraqi members of their government) into a position which would result in their providing more than a brigade to the ground forces in Operation Desert Storm.

One of the little known facts of the invasion of Kuwait is that the Iraqi forces also looted the Canadian embassy. The Canadian government elected to deploy two frigates and 12 CF-18 Hornets to Saudi Arabia to operate in an air interdiction role. They would eventually be used as ship killers and tank killers before the end of the war, when they accompanied the 1st Canadian Field Hospital into battle.

But what if the Canadians had taken the same approach the French had in regards to their embassy seizure in Kuwait City? The Canadian 4th Mechanized Brigade was attached to VII Corps, the core body of which would move to the desert and become the armoured fist of the Coalition. They also possessed the elite Airborne Regiment, which had seen battle in 1974 against both Greek National Guard and Turkish Army forces as it reestablished a ceasefire line on Cyprus after making a combat drop into the island to do it.

So...here's some of the variables. What's your take on it?
 
Mulroney was Prime Minister during Desert Storm, so this was before Chretien started messing over the military. IIRC, Canada was one of the first countries that got into the screaming at Iraqi invasion and agreement with joining the Coalition.

The problem with this scenario is that the Canadian public has always had a weird love/hate relationship with its military: people are really cool with the military getting involved in peacekeeping operations even if the peacekeeping operations tend to be really nasty like in Cyprus (hey--Canada did, after all, kind of invent the UN peacekeepers) but they tend to get all weird if its involved in 'offensive combat'. In fact, IIRC, Desert Storm was the first time since the Korean War that Canada was involved in 'actual' combat operations.

I was in university when Desert Storm started and I recall that even the squadron of jets and destroyers was considered a big deal.

Everything depends on how Mulroney convinces the public, basically. That's the wild card here. Mulroney could certainly have been hawkish if he wanted to--he was best buds with Reagan and would have known all the tricks of the trade. But I think you'll need something nasty to get everyone riled up -dead embassy employee, some kidnapped employees/reporters that are later found dead, something like that.
 
I think it could've been done, but what would we have deployed in the way of armour? Everyone had to contribute some IIRC. Also, keep in mind Chretien the peacenik (like Iraq when he was PM twelve years later) on the Opposition aisles in the Commons, saying Saddam should keep his stolen goods. Again, for Quebec political reasons.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
I think it could've been done, but what would we have deployed in the way of armour? Everyone had to contribute some IIRC. Also, keep in mind Chretien the peacenik (like Iraq when he was PM twelve years later) on the Opposition aisles in the Commons, saying Saddam should keep his stolen goods. Again, for Quebec political reasons.

4CMBG had the Leopard 1s, LAV-IIIs and M113s in West Germany along with the rest of VII Corps. The Royal Canadian Dragoons had the Leopard 1s, and the Vandoos, Patricias, and Royal Canadian Rifles all had some form of light armour attached to them in '91.

The task facing Canada would be the same as the task facing American VII Corps in OTL, but in miniature: The use of West German forces as prepositioned stocks and fighting forces while other troops are flown in from Canada directly to the Gulf.

The concept would probably similar to Korea and Kandahar: pick a number of battalions: 4 or 5, which is a rather large number for Canada, but still in the scheme of Desert Storm was the kind of amount that could help.
So...we'll say 3PPCLI, 2RCR, 4/22e, and 1 and 2RCD. Then they'd basically strip the men away from the other units away to take those up to full strength, do the same with the equipment in Canada in West Germany (and possibly even get more M113s from America), then deploy them to the Gulf.

They'd need to do that in the five or six month time between the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and the start of Desert Storm.

As for Chretien: to take a page from Doctor What's book: if an embassy employee stays behind and is killed, then that kind of removes alot of the argument. And the assumption is the Mulroney can outmaneuver and flagwave while Chretien's talking.
 
As for Chretien: to take a page from Doctor What's book: if an embassy employee stays behind and is killed, then that kind of removes alot of the argument. And the assumption is the Mulroney can outmaneuver and flagwave while Chretien's talking.

Now we need a plausiable reason why an embassy employee stays behind to get himself killed.
 
About those Canadian warships. Can things be altered so that Canada remains a carrier nation and deploys a carrier (or two, if it suits you) for operations in the Persian Gulf?
 
That would require a POD of 1968 to prevent PET from ever entering 24 Sussex. We've done many Canadian CV threads before, BTW.
 
About those Canadian warships. Can things be altered so that Canada remains a carrier nation and deploys a carrier (or two, if it suits you) for operations in the Persian Gulf?

You're going to need a POD from ~1970 or so for that to happen.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Now we need a plausiable reason why an embassy employee stays behind to get himself killed.

The X-Files part of me says that he's there to burn documents that they wouldn't want to have discovered by the Iraqis. According to Spyworld by Snow, Canada was using alot of it's embassies in the late 80s/early 90s for the Pilgrim program which was a signals intelligence operation in conjunction with the CIA.

But that seems a little...I don't know. Crazy to come out of my head.
 
The X-Files part of me says that he's there to burn documents that they wouldn't want to have discovered by the Iraqis. According to Spyworld by Snow, Canada was using alot of it's embassies in the late 80s/early 90s for the Pilgrim program which was a signals intelligence operation in conjunction with the CIA.

But that seems a little...I don't know. Crazy to come out of my head.

Some CSIS agent stays behind to shred some documents and burn some hard drives and while waiting for his ride out gets popped by some Iraqi recon unit/advance scout?

Edit: Not that impossible apparently. According to wikipedia: Security Liaison Officers (SLOs) of CSIS are posted at Canadian embassies and consulates to gather security-related intelligence from other nations. This information may be gathered from other national intelligence agencies, law enforcement services and other sources. SLOs also assess potential immigrants to Canada for security issues.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
Some CSIS agent stays behind to shred some documents and burn some hard drives and while waiting for his ride out gets popped by some Iraqi recon unit/advance scout?

Edit: Not that impossible apparently. According to wikipedia: Security Liaison Officers (SLOs) of CSIS are posted at Canadian embassies and consulates to gather security-related intelligence from other nations. This information may be gathered from other national intelligence agencies, law enforcement services and other sources. SLOs also assess potential immigrants to Canada for security issues.

Okay, so you've got an Intelligence officer in the embassy shredding documents waiting for the Brit with the car to come by and the street fight outside gets out of hand. He's calling back to Ottawa or Riyadh on a secure line, and a BMP sends a shell through the window while he's talking and womps him on live audio.
No way the Iraqis can deny it because the Canadians have it on tape and there's probably CNN or Al Jazeera footage of the embassy with a freaking hole in it's wall.
 
Okay, so you've got an Intelligence officer in the embassy shredding documents waiting for the Brit with the car to come by and the street fight outside gets out of hand. He's calling back to Ottawa or Riyadh on a secure line, and a BMP sends a shell through the window while he's talking and womps him on live audio.
No way the Iraqis can deny it because the Canadians have it on tape and there's probably CNN or Al Jazeera footage of the embassy with a freaking hole in it's wall.


How crazy was the evac out of Kuwait? Did they have a lot of time to do some stuff/pull people out or was it 'Oh shit--they're right outside the capitol!' kind of thing?

If the latter, then the timing issue isn't a problem.
 

MacCaulay

Banned
How crazy was the evac out of Kuwait? Did they have a lot of time to do some stuff/pull people out or was it 'Oh shit--they're right outside the capitol!' kind of thing?

If the latter, then the timing issue isn't a problem.

I think it was basically: "They're not going to invade, they- Oh, JESUS! THEY DID!"

And then there's Kuwaiti Chieftains running across the Saudi border and Iraqi tanks in Kuwait City.
 
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