US & UK Afghanistan Adventure : Latest On Escalating NATO Rift ...

Today we read that United States secretary of state Condi Rice and Britain's foreign secretary David Milliband have hot-footed it straight from Downing Street to Afghanistan, and that ...

... the brief unannounced visit was not an attempt to show up European nations that have refused to send fighting troops to Kandahar and other southern regions.

The European nations mentioned obviously being several members of N.A.T.O. who appear to already have had enough of the American and British led (and ever increasingly accident prone), bloody Afghanistan 'adventure'.

See the full story here.



On the self same day, we read another report , regarding US defence secretary Robert Gates speaking on the same subject.

Disagreements over Nato's mission in Afghanistan intensified today as the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, criticised some countries for not providing troops that were prepared to "fight and die" against the Taliban.

Speaking before leaving the US for a two-day Nato summit in Lithuania, Gates said: "I think that it puts a cloud over the future of the alliance if this is to endure and perhaps even get worse."

Britain and America have called on countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain to redeploy troops to southern Afghanistan, where there have been fierce clashes with a resurgent Taliban.

Gates said he had written to every alliance defence minister asking them to contribute more troops and equipment, and had received no replies.

Good grief, Gatsey, matey.

No replies?!

No, as in none at all?!

See the second story here.

As for our (cynical) selves and the way we see it ... well ... The (London)Times' clever cartoonist bloke called Peter Brookes seems to sum up our own views in a couple of pictures, far better than we ever could -- even in several paragraphs.

Witness what follows.





Get the picture(s)?

Got the general gist of what we're saying?

*(Cross posted at Appletree)