One gets exceedingly weary of the hole-in-the-corner way the MoD is "playing" the war in Afghanistan. Its strategy is to keep us largely uninformed as to what is really going on, while devoting its resources to a steady trickle of propaganda which serves to obscure rather than reveal the truth. It played exactly the same game in Iraq, feeding us with glowing "puffs" about the "derring do" of "Our Boys", and happy little "touchy-feely" pieces about how our caring-sharing troops were engaging with those nice Iraqis and how things were getting better all the time – when the whole campaign was going down the pan.

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One increasingly serious social problem in Afghanistan is the growing domestic market in heroin. The brotherhood is quite happy to sell to its own.

Here in the US: while it is completely understandable that the domestic situation takes the front seat, and while I do not listen attentively to the news on tv anymore, I note with some interest the lack of articles on Iraq and Afghanistan online. The rather tired point of this being that if George Bush were in the White House, each and every troop injured or killed would be used as yet further proof of both his idiocy, greed, and anti-constitutional malice regarding this war. With Obama in the White House, not only is Iraq pacified, but the conflict in Afghanistan is also largely forgotten. So is Gitmo after the "closing" announcement. In fact, except for the economy, every abuse heaped upon George Bush over the years, although particularly in his final days as president, has been laid to rest now that Obama is the CIC. Yet nothing much has really changed with the reality on the ground. There are, to be sure, good things and bad things. Yet I cannot remember last when I heard in-depth reporting on it. It is, without doubt, an exceptionally sad state of affairs.

Newsweak has an interesting piece ...

http://www.newsweek.com/id/184376

You have written a number of times about the availability of helicopters for hire - Mi-8 and Mi-26s in particular. Are we any closer to using them? They could fill the airborne ambulance role and leave the Merlins and Chinooks to be used offensively.

We really do not have this problem in American. M$M, the propaganda organ of the democrats, hates the military almost as much as the democrats.. Mr. Tambourine Man is going to follow our other great liberal leaders by making defense the bill payer for the transfer of wealth from those who create it to those who do not. Therefore those who do actually pay for government will no longer be protected by that government.

Richard

I am not in disagreement over the thrust of your article(s) but it pains me when your high standards dip down to those of the journalistic tribe that you do not hesitate to disparage.

It is indeed a stretch to suggest that Peter Mckay said " British forces in Afghanistan could "learn lessons" on how to properly equip troops on the front line."

The headline writers interpretation notwithstanding, what he actualy said was that neighbours can always learn from each other.

GRU

You caught me out in a sense - I did not read the article fully ... I had discussed it with the author a couple of days before and contributed some details to it. From that, I gained the view that the headline writer accurately conveyed the sense of what McKay said - it is what had been conveyed to me earlier. His words were diplomatic, but his meaning was not that precisely conveyed by his words in the article.