I don't myself know what the Polish troops will be doing. But let me say this: first of all, I think we forget that at the moment the fighting that ISAF is involved in is especially concentrated around the Kandahar region. We have to remember that ISAF was only recently extended to that area. When ISAF was started it was a purely UN mission with a mandate to operate only in the Kabul region and primarily as a bodyguard, as it were, for President Karzai.
We have to remember that other countries have been involved in combat or have taken casualties. I can't remember the exact figure for the Germans or for the Spanish, but in both cases I know more than a dozen have been killed in action from those two countries. I think NATO must step up to the plate, as you put it, this time.
I will be extremely disappointed in NATO and I will question the future of NATO as it is at the moment--not its future existence but its future governance--and the way it organizes its military forces, and whether or not it's transforming fast enough to meet these new missions it has taken on itself to do, if we don't see significant contributions of troops from other NATO countries, especially to these areas in the south.
This is the first out-of-theatre mission that NATO has done, its first mission in which it has been involved directly in ground combat, and I think NATO is learning its way and learning how to do things here, as we all are. Canadians, too, are also learning how to get back and focus and function in a war situation. I think it's a challenge to NATO. There is absolutely no question about it.