last night to decide what action to take." "Removing the occupation and having locally chosen police would allow the elders to reassert control." sTEELE Like at Musa Qala? Certainly the whole exercise from a military point is absolutely futile, as was obvious would always be the case, but that is no excuse for rubbish like the above sentence. The Afghan police are ineffective, poorly equipped and completely corrupt, talk about a no hoper. What London and Washington are failing to come to terms with is that the 'War On Terror', from a millitary point of view, is lost. In order to 'win' wars like Iraq and Afganistan occupying forces must take advantage of a very, very short window in which to win over the local population. Get the job done as quickly as possible, then timetable a widthdrawl. The real nub here, is that the more organised the country was prior to the invasion (such as Iraq) the quicker the pendulum swings from the force being 'liberators' to 'occupiers'. In Afanistan, you are dealing with such a fractured country that the pendulum still swings, just more slowly. Had the USA been more focused on getting the job done in Afganistan (rather than turning it's attentions to Iraq), then the chance of success would have been greater. It's interesting as the argument of which super power was best ideological model in the cold war are resurfacing, that the only country which seen both superpowers at first hand - Afghanistan - preferred