The silent U.S. hand guiding Canada's F-35 debateScott Taylor, Embassy: Although no actual contract has been signed, the Harper Tories remain adamant that they will proceed with the purchase of the stealth aircraft... the largest military project expenditure in Canada's history...
Thanks to recent revelations made public via WikiLeaks, it is safe to surmise that the U.S. State Department is the unseen puppeteer making Harper do the F-35 dance. The embarrassing documents contain American diplomatic correspondence detailing how they used a public 'carrot' and a private 'stick' approach to convince Norway to buy the F-35.
A 'lessons learned' cable from the U.S. embassy to Oslo reads: "We needed to avoid any appearance of undue pressuring... We opted for 'choosing the JSF will maximize the relationship' [between the U.S. and Norway] as our main public line. In private we were much more forceful."... The American Embassy subsequently reported to Washington, "The tide has turned in Norway... The media have recently run a number of articles from active duty and retired officers extolling the strengths of the F-35."...
Fast-forward to the Jan.24 edition of the Ottawa Citizen, wherein former Canadian air force generals Angus Watt and Paul Manson penned a joint editorial entitled 'The truth about those jets'... the gist of which was to extol the strengths of the F-35...
While he was indeed once the chief of the defence staff for the Canadian Forces and a top project officer on the acquisition of the air force's current fleet of CF-18 fighter aircraft, Manson forgot to mention his post-military sting as the president of Lockheed Martin Canada... Lockheed Martin is the main manufacturer of the F-35.
