Confusion in Kandahar

Defense Minister Gordon O'Connor's admission that, "We cannot eliminate the Taliban, not militarily anyway," is quite extraordinary coming only four months after his government extended our Afghanistan mission for another two years. There are two possibilities: they knew we lacked adequate manpower or they didn't know.

If they knew, they were being grievously reckless with our soldiers' lives, the taxpayers' money and the country's reputation. If they didn't know, then the critics have been right all along, this war was ill-conceived and ill-planned. We've stumbled into it, a la Vietnam and Iraq, a government not knowing what it was getting us in for, a public deceived. O'Connor's plea for more troops is particularly reminiscent of Vietnam where, according to the American military, it was always a case of just a few more troops and the war would be won. It's called a quagmire.