We did recommend a specific date for the conditions we set. We did say we should get this support in terms of troops and new equipment for the Canadian Forces by February 2009. Otherwise, Canada should serve notice of its intent to transfer responsibility for security in Kandahar to somebody else.
We're not in a position to know whether those conditions are being met. That's not our responsibility. But we did set a precise date for the conditions to be met.
It's a very different issue to talk about when the mission is going to be completed. You can either assume that you can put an arbitrary timeline on a mission as complicated as this.... As the chairman said, we spent a lot of time debating this, to see. We knew Canadians would have loved to have heard from the panel, you know, that by December 31 in such-and-such a year, our mission would be accomplished. We found no operational logic that would lead us to a time certain for the completion of the mission. We saw the mission being performance-based, not time-based.
We fully expect that the Afghan security forces will be taking the lead responsibility for security to some extent in the coming year and in the coming two to three years. But when the point will be that they will be able to take full charge for security in Kandahar, there's nobody who could give a guarantee about that today, as far as we can see from an operational standpoint. Politically, that's a different matter. We were not making a political recommendation.