And now - your late night mid-holiday spectacularly unpopular Afghanistan news dump

Defence Minister Peter MacKay announced today in Afghanistan that "Canada may well stay in Afghanistan beyond its 2011 military mandate" blah blah blah "subject to the will of the people" blah blah.
By "people" I presume he is referring to Steve, Iggy, and Obama.
You're shocked, I'm sure.

The G&M reports that "Defence Construction Canada wants to buy 400 more beds at the Kandahar Air Field by next year, at a cost of $5-million, with an option to build 400 more."

I guess we're intending to open the world's largest B&B over there after 2011.

MacKay also announced that we're giving up that whole taking and holding territory thing in favour of closing down outposts and redeploying inside Kandahar City. Likewise in Kabul, foreign embassies are being relocated to a diplomatic quarter to be built next to Kabul airport. With Afghan authorities claiming that 140 civilians were killed by U.S fighter planes this month in southwest Afghanistan, bunkering down inside Baghdad-style Green Zones is probably a good idea.
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Say, I'll bet now that Obama has put Cheney's torturer in charge of Afghanistan, things will brighten right up over there.

Btw, if you've ever wanted a job that entails driving around drunk with your buddies and some loaded weapons, crashing your vehicle, and then firing on oncoming cars and killing people allegedly, you could do no better than to forward your resumé to Blackwater/Xe/Paravant/Whatever in Afghanistan.
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