Thank you once again for being with us. That was a very good presentation.
I'm going to ask you a question that doesn't really relate to the presentation, but perhaps you can shed some light on it. If you can or if you can't, that's fine.
An article in Saturday's Globe and Mail compares our approach in Kandahar to the Dutch approach in Uruzgan, and it talks about the Dutch going in, expecting the same kind of violence in Uruzgan we are now experiencing in Kandahar, but it didn't happen. There was violence, but on a much smaller scale.
The article states the difference was that when we went in, we sent patrols to assert Canadian presence far and wide and immediately came up against some resistance and had gun battles. But when the Dutch went in, they sent messages saying they were coming in without fighting and they wanted to talk. So the rumours spread that those guys were different from the U.S., and they wanted to talk and not fight. And in fact they engaged the Taliban. They now have, as security guards in their operations, some of the people who fought on the side of the Taliban.
I don't say this critically. Our own journalist is doing the comparative analysis. I'm wondering if you could shed some light on what you know about Uruzgan, if anything, and what you think of the observations made in that article.