Globe and Mail round-up of Afstan security situation

Miracle of miracles! A good, balanced major piece by Graeme Smith--with excellent maps and charts. Do give it a look, it's too lengthy to excerpt fairly.

Plus a front page headline today that actually targets, as it were, the Taliban:

How Taliban exploit civilian casualties
Armed militants are quick to offer rudimentary care in hopes of winning support

Update: Why we quit: sixty CF members have been killed, it's a long slog, the Karzai government isn't great, Canadians don't like this kind of combat stuff, we're involved in a civil war, blah, blah, blah...Scott Taylor and a columnist in the Victoria Times Colonist give typical summaries of the "give up" position. The wrong stuff, indeed. Visceral pacifism I would say.

Some "context": in the first sixth months of 2007 191 people were killed on highways patrolled by the Ontario Provincial Police--that does not include deaths on roadways patrolled by municipal forces or the RCMP (or, presumably, Native police forces).