I would simply say that there is a military logic to that kind of question and answer, but we ought not overplay it. I think the Taliban in the region we're in are attacking Canadians because we're the closest target, so they're shooting at us because we're there. But certainly their leaders, if they are rational people, would see some connection between worrying us...it's a matter of will.
If I could, Mr. Chairman, I'd like to say something about a curiosity. When a member of the Canadian Forces is killed, you can see the results four or five or six times on television as the body in the casket is coming home. Has anybody here seen pictures of great heaps of dead Taliban on the field, or of blown up vehicles, or Taliban prisoners or anything? We don't see those on television, and the irony is that our law won't let us do that. It's against the law, international laws of conflict, to humiliate the enemy by showing his body, or showing them captured, or tied up or anything else, but we can show our own casualties, and that has an effect on people. And it's just an odd irony of our legitimate liberal system.