Talking Heads Talking Arms : Volume 2: Whistling Past the Graveyard

The fifty conversations that appear in Talking Heads Talking Armsrecorded periodically between 1994 and the end of 2001, focus on the state of the Canadian Armed Forces and their relationship with the people and the government of Canada as we move into the troubled world of the 21st century.

Volume 2, Whistling Past the Graveyard, deals primarily with the activities of the Canadian Forces in Somalia and Rwanda during the 1990s, from the perspective of the government officials, military personnel, and aid workers who were involved in the conflicts. For many Canadians, the Somalia and Rwanda missions represent the lowest point in the history of the Armed Forces. In Somalia our soldiers were accused of murder and torture, and the ensuing scandal ultimately led to the disbanding of the Airborne Regiment; the Rwanda mission in 1996 was plagued by problems from its very inception, and eventually became known as the "Bungle in the Jungle." The essays in Whistling Past the Graveyard candidly reveal how and why the Somalia and Rwanda missions went so far astray, exposing the root causes of these disastrous incidents.