Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I want to thank you very much for coming, sir, and I want to thank you for your frankness and insight.
There's one area that I want to explore with you, and that is the whole area of communications in the military. Our role in Afghanistan, as you can appreciate, is a very hot topic in Canada. Every politician has an opinion, and all the NGOs have opinions. We're getting comments from George Bush. We had Pervez Musharraf yesterday, Karzai last week. I think the Canadian public genuinely has a thirst for knowledge on this issue. From my vantage point, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think it would be helpful if we had more communication from the military. I know Brigadier-General David Fraser was interviewed, but he's usually interviewed on a specific incident, usually a fatality or some specific problem in Afghanistan.
I know it's a theatre of conflict and you're not going to say what you're doing, but is there any strategy out there for the military to communicate with the Canadian public directly as to the objectives, the strategy, the challenges, how things are going? I honestly think the Canadian public has a thirst for knowledge, and the message is that the waters are muddy because there are a lot of different views and opinions. There are people talking who really don't know the issue, I don't think, and then you have these foreign leaders talking, some of whom don't have a lot of credibility.
My example is going back to the Gulf War, back when General Norman Schwarzkopf spoke every night on TV. He gave a very clear delineation as to what the American military were doing. He had so much credibility before the western people. Is there any strategy, or do you think the Canadian military should be doing more?