No military problem with extending Kandahar mission/MND stands firm

So says the CDS about the mission(treading on some fine political ground, I'd say):

Canada’s top soldier says the country’s military is more than capable of handling an extension of its mission in Afghanistan.

Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier says that critics and observers who say the Canadian military will be out of breath when the mission is scheduled to end in 2009 are wrong.

In an interview with Montreal Le Devoir, Hillier recalled that Canada has had at least 2,500 of its soldiers overseas for the past 15 years and he says there is no reason to believe that can’t continue.

Canada currently has 2,500 troops on the ground in Afghanistan...

The full, and very good, le Devoir story is here. Gen. Hillier does a very good job explaining the mission and the importance of training Afghan government forces. Pity the English media have ignored it except for the brief CP report. A key point, for which I blame the government and then our media:

Les Québécois, comme beaucoup de Canadiens, sont mal informés à propos du conflit en Afghanistan, croit Rick Hillier. «Il y a un travail d’éducation à faire, c’est certain.»

Meanwhile, MND O'Connor bravely stands his ground (he is brave but really is terrible political liability):

A defiant Gordon O'Connor said yesterday [June 27] he has no intention of quitting as Defence Minister, and warned his critics not to assume he is about to turfed from the portfolio in a widely expected cabinet shuffle.

"I can assure you of one thing: I'm not retiring and I'm not resigning," Mr. O'Connor told reporters at a military conference in Kingston. "And if you want to run a pool, go ahead. You're going to lose."

The minister told the conference he expects to deliver the government's long-awaited policy paper, which will include elements of the government's current policy in support of the Afghanistan mission, by the end of the summer...

Mr. O'Connor came to the defence of the Afghan mission in his speech yesterday to the conference on "stability operations," insisting the Afghan army was making such great strides that he could foresee the day when it could take over much [emphasis added] of the combat mission now being handled by Canada's 2,500 troops based in Kandahar.

Yet at the same time, Mr. O'Connor was blunt in his assessment of the long-term prospects for Afghanistan, using the kind of unsubtle language that has got him into political hot water before. "Afghanistan has always been a land of instability," he said in response to a conference questioner, adding later, that "I think the area is always going to be unstable."

He said the security situation along the border with Pakistan remains difficult to police, in part because there are millions of ethnic Pashtuns in both countries. "There is a steady stream of insurgents coming across the border," he said.

Later, he tried to temper those comments when asked about them by reporters. "What I'm saying is that Afghanistan is in an unstable region and there will always be challenges to Afghanistan. Our job and NATO's job is to try and create a state that is stable enough to handle its own affairs [emphasis added] so it can govern efficiently."..

I do not understand why ministers generally do not hammer home much more forcefully the real "exit strategy" in the bolded bits. Certainly the media do not seem to understand or analyze it.