took place and quickly turned into violent enforcement missions. There are also many cases in which we could have put our peacekeeping powers to use, and simply turned our backs, such as the genocide in Rwanda. Some say that it is the fault of the head of the organization or the Government, due to unfairness in placing men into situations they are unprepared for, such as the mission in Afghanistan. Either way, our reputation is slowly deteriorating. The recent Iraq scandal is perfect in proving this fact. Canada is known as being the "push-over" country, with manners and politeness to back up this accusation. In 1888 the Canadian troops were awarded the Nobel Prize for peacekeeping. This tells us that countries all around us appreciated our operation and clearly respected us for it: therefore, giving us a new branch to our identity. Has this been lost?
             The Government of Canada and the Department of National Defence had announced that Canada was sending troops to support the war in Afghanistan (Operation Apollo), without expecting Canadians to see the obvious campaigning with the US. Campaigning at the potential cost of our soldier's lives. The February 2003 announcement that Canada will send 3,000 troops (in two six month rotations consisting of 1,500 personnel) later in the year as part of the UN mandated International Security Assistance Force.
             The ability to fight a war of these men had been slowly running down since previous missions that had been peacekeeping of one sort or another. The military estimates that after one six month peacekeeping mission, it takes at least a minimum of six months to bring a combat unit back to full war-fighting capability. Our units barely had six months back in Canada (after being sent on a previous peace keeping mission) before they were rotated back to the Balkans or were sen
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