Earlier:

Guess who looks like staying on in Afstan?/Danish Update

Now, more news you won’t see in our major media (via Moby Media Updates):

France to keep Afghan mission despite defense cuts

France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy (R) salutes French Legion soldiers wounded in combat in Afghanistan during the annual Bastille Day military parade in Paris on July 14, 2010.
Credit: Reuters/Eric Feferberg/Pool
…
“The French army must stay because there is no other solution,” the centrist politician [defence minister Hervé Morin] said.

“If we weren’t there, Afghanistan would collapse,” he said, referring to the NATO-led international mission. “It’s difficult to make people understand this, but what’s at stake in Afghanistan is the stability of the region.”..

Stephen Harper sure ain’t no Nicolas Sarkozy. And one simply cannot imagine a member of our government speaking thus:

French premier says country ‘at war with Al Qaeda’

Meanwhile our media continue to hype suicidally stupid Talibs:

KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, Afghanistan — Almost a dozen Taliban insurgents launched a brazen daylight ground attack on the largest military base in southern Afghanistan Tuesday, but they were immediately repelled by coalition soldiers including a group of Canadian engineers performing training exercises near the base perimeter…

…eight to 10 insurgents were killed by coalition forces who responded to the ground assault with 25 millimetre cannon fire. There were no coalition casualties…

More previously on our brazen media from Adrian, and Matthew Fisher of (now) Postmedia News:

The Taliban Can’t Buy Propaganda This Effective

Update: I was rather unfair in my critque of the story on the latest KAF attack, which is in fact overall a good piece of straight reporting.  I apologize for my over-sensitivity.  The “hype” I meant is the use of “brazen”, as with stories on the May attack.  The Canadian public, by the use of such words, has come to believe that the Taliban are much more militarily dangerous than they are in many actual firefights and that the ISAF forces are in a hopeless situation.

The story then does immediately point out the suicidal and futile nature of the attack.  I’m obviously not a professional journalist but I would have started the story thus:

Almost a dozen Taliban insurgents launched a very rare daylight ground attack on the largest military base in southern Afghanistan Tuesday, but they were immediately repelled by coalition soldiers including a group of Canadian engineers performing training exercises near the base perimeter.  Maj. Josh Major, a Canadian officer based at KAF, said that eight to 10 insurgents were killed. There were no coalition casualties.

The assault was launched at 11:18 Tuesday morning, local time, on a northern boundary at Kandahar Air Field. A lone insurgent ran up to the base perimeter and blew himself up, creating a small breach in a chain-link fence.   According to Maj. Taylor coalition forces including the Canadian engineers then engaged more insurgents, who arrived on foot, with 25 millimetre cannon fire…

Upperdate: More on Talibprop:

ISAF Briefs Media on Taliban Propaganda

It’ll be interesting to see how much we see in MSM on this briefing…

Mark
Ottawa