Blame Canada!

As usual the neocons and repuglicans found a scapegoat for their doomed policies. But the world is waking up to the horrors of what we have done to Afghanistan in our murderous drive for world domination.

Rice heads for London as Afghan crisis looms

· Row escalates over Nato troop reinforcements

· Canada may withdraw unless others do more

Ian Black and Patrick Wintour, Saturday February 2, 2008

The Guardian

Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, is to fly to London next week to tackle an escalating row over Nato troop reinforcements for Afghanistan, amid worries that the entire international stabilisation strategy is in danger of failing.

[...] Alliance divisions burst into the open earlier yesterday with a US demand that Germany, whose forces are in the relatively stable north, send combat troops and helicopters to the volatile south.

[...] German chancellor Angela Merkel made clear that the limited mandate was "not up for discussion".

On Thursday [Robert] Gates met similar opposition from his French counterpart, Hervé Morin, in talks in

Washington. The mood in Paris and Berlin threatens a damaging replay of the transatlantic spats in the run up to the Iraq war five years ago.

[...] But the immediate crisis has been triggered by Canada, which has threatened to bring home its 2,500 troops from Kandahar, next to Helmand province where British forces are fighting the resurgent Taliban insurgency, unless other allies send reinforcements.

[...] Wrangling over the number of boots on the ground coincides with a flurry of warnings that the entire effort to stabilise Afghanistan could fail because of resurgent Taliban violence and a looming humanitarian crisis. On Wednesday the former US Nato commander, General James Jones, suggested Afghanistan was in danger of becoming a "failed state" because there were "too few military forces and insufficient economic aid". Oxfam separately urged troop and aid-contributing countries to undertake "a major change in direction".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,2251139,00.html