Suchergebnisse

This book, first published in 1955, collects together accounts of some of the men and women who served as members of the remarkable S.O.E. This organisation was set up by Britain to encourage, help and organise resistance movements in occupied countries, and this book provides a valuable record of the types of people involved, and the work that they undertook.

The current Canadian special operations capability resides in JTF 2, a unit established within the Canadian Forces in 1992 to take over the domestic counter-terrorism task from the RCMP. The government's recent International Policy Statement (IPS) called for a significant enhancement of this capability. It is, however, difficult to determine precisely what tasks this new Special Operations Group will perform, how large it will be, how much of our defence treasure it will consume in even rough terms, or who will command it. Much of this data is necessarily imprecise because the process of transformation announced in the IPS has only just begun. There is also a certain secrecy attached to special force developments, much of which I will argue is overdone. Finally, the development of this capability is not assisted by a small but strident amount of special forces advertising or boosterism verging on hype. This paper will, therefore, examine the tasks, size, cost, and leadership of our Canadian special forces with a critical eye and offer as concrete a set of recommendations as is possible.