OUR................................... AFGHANISTAN

(July 3rd 2006) UK commander admits Afghan mission is 'changing' ...but denies mission creep and 'stressed that there had not been a request for extra troops.'

The next day Colonel Tony repeated the denial but admitted that the UK's
Afghanistan troops may need more resources and talked about sending 'engineers' and 'enablers' in the first instance, to make it clear that he hadn't earlier misled parliament,
among other things....

The defence minister (yet another unrelated brown Scot rather inappropriately called Des, which I'm pretty sure is neither an abbreviation completed by 'ert Fox' nor by 'ert Orchid') admitted that the Taliban had been "energised" by the British troops arrival in southern Afghanistan...

US Analysts and military officials, including the commander of NATO's Afghan force, 'merely' said that the international community's attention was diverted by Iraq, allowing power vacuums in Afghanistan that the Taliban have filled.

On Monday 10th July (Des) Browne announced 900 more troops for Afghanistan ...and some big helicopters...

Talking of helicopters in Afghanistan, these were, incidentally, recently described, with no hint of irony whatever, as 'lifesavers' by the Telegraph : "After years of suffering derision for being over budget and late into service, the Apache attack helicopter has become a vital asset on the Afghan battlefield as a life-saver for paratroopers on the ground.

For the first time the sleek gunships have been tested in a hostile environment and have performed beyond expectation, said the Army Air Corps pilots who fly it."

'Sleek gun ships', eh? ...remember those?