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An upshot of this is that the opposition and journalists in Canada have been reporting that U.K. and U.S. soldiers have not been forward deployed and in combat alongside the Iraqis and Kurds they are advising. The implication is that only Canadians have, with the further insinuation that the government has been acting nefariously, breaking promises and so on.

Yet more than two months ago, Britain’s Daily Mail reported that “SAS troops with sniper rifles and heavy machine-guns have killed hundreds of Islamic State extremists in a series of deadly quad-bike ambushes inside Iraq” that were taking place almost daily.

If this report is true — and given the storied history of the SAS, the Green Berets and U.S. Navy SEALs, it would be passing strange if it wasn’t — the Brits and the Yanks are deeply involved in combat missions. That is something very different than what the modest number of Canadian advisers have been up to there.

The U.S. and Britain have been conducting such “black ops” for months. Canada’s 69 special forces apparently have been involved only in far more benign “white ops.” Small numbers of Canadians — typically it would be four to eight soldiers at a time — have sometimes left the bases they are living on because that is the only way to effectively teach Iraqi and Kurdish forces how to surveil hostile terrain and to laser enemy targets for coalition aircraft flying overhead.

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Openness is not second nature for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Our allies must be wondering why his government decided to share this usually secret information now — because there is no going back. Imagine how the critics would howl if the information door were now to be slammed shut.