Thank you, Chair.
Thank you, General King, Ms. Sinclair, and Madam Bernatchez.
You used the phrase that it's like moving a small city halfway around the world. I think I could add to that: “while they're shooting at you”. I appreciate that it's a very difficult environment.
I don't know whether you read The Globe and Mail this morning, particularly the editorial. It's a sentiment expressed in The Globe and Mail with which I largely agree. One of the paragraphs says it was Mr. Karzai who put Mr. Rabbani in harm's way by giving him an extraordinarily dangerous mission. As you know, he's been assassinated. The person who's trying to negotiate the peace with the Taliban has been assassinated.
The president seems to be preparing for the day when NATO and ISAF have left, when the Afghan war will once again be a civil war, rather than a civil war with a huge international component.
You say in your presentation that you can report that you don't perceive any outstanding issues that will affect the mission transition task force's ability to meet the timelines. Isn't the assassination of critical figures in Karzai's government a pretty important aspect to whether in fact your mission succeeds? If in fact the leadership is being systematically destroyed by the Taliban, that seems to be a rather significant component of whether your mission will succeed.
Notwithstanding all of your good efforts to train the police and the military up to some level of capability, if the leadership is not there, if the core elements of the government have been destroyed, isn't that probably the most serious threat to the success of your mission?