I'm in some agreement with Professor Bercuson. This is the point I was really making in response to the earlier question. It's a caricature to say we should talk to the Taliban and negotiate going back to the.... There's a broad range of dissidents, and as Professor Bercuson has put it, splitting some of those out from the Taliban is the point. That is the point I was making earlier as well.
On the business of the assessment from the minister and the Chief of the Defence Staff, I don't know if I'm the only one who finds the tenor of their description of the situation in Afghanistan to be fully in accord with what is coming from a lot of other sources. I made the point that to have a serious and informed debate on the likelihood with which we can achieve that military objective that Professor Bercuson is talking about, of militarily defeating determined insurgents, we need to have a frank recognition of the nature of the situation. I think some of the reports from independent groups such as the International Crisis Group, including the Secretary-General's report, paints rather a more pessimistic picture than I took from the minister and the CDS.