That is the only Spanish holiday that the Irish celebrate, Lost San Patricios. But then again, the Irish will celebrate at any time, so given their pliability and general piety towards other people's cultures perhaps someone should introduce a few more holidays to them, for good measure. Albeit normally abstemious souls, given their reverence to noble causes, it would be wonder that anyone of them ever leaves a public house. Mention that the birthday of a saint in any religion draws nigh and the conscientious Irishman can do nothing else but sadly beckon the barmaid to bring another round of refreshment as necessary acknowledgement and tribute to the soldiers of faith.
When all is said and done in recrimination and outrage in Alberta we will have to visit the sad fact that when one mounts an operation with risk, the risks have to be fully evaluated and experience, wisdom and caution are the first three recruits to employ. It would appear that given the subjects notorious propensities, obvious paranoid preparedness, and a farmer's well known tendency to early rising, that moving across several acres of open land towards what had to be well defended area was not well thought out. The what-ifs, in this case, were show stoppers, so it had to be a thorny problem. Frankly there are only 3 ways to approach that situation, and that is disguised intentions, which are moot to a paranoid, armoured assault from multi directions, or absolute stealth under weather cover. The only other way to deal is to wait until the subject is somewhere else. It is 20-20 hind-sight to say mistakes were made, but they were, so next time they have to be more careful. It is all situational, so I don't think it justifies any sort of paranoia or elevated response to normal situations. It is just the roulette of the job, and perhaps it points to a need for better training in situations, evaluation of subjects/targets and tactics.
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