success in detection of ieds
Would that be the monkeys that Morrocco offered as part of its contribution to the Multinational force?

As far as Afghanistan, Canadians are still getting killed there quite frequently, (in fact much more than the US casualties in IRaq - in proportional terms to the number of troops committed)

(basically after trying to fight in the open the Taliban failed and have now adopted the Iraqi IED tactics, even a slow rate of attrition results in growing opposition back home. And while I actually support the action in Afghanistan, counter-insurgency warfare takes years, and right now in Canada there is definitely no political will to continue past the current commitment to 2009. ANd no other Nato countries are willing to put their troops in the trouble areas of Afghanistan. So we'll see indeed what happens.

on another note; we get very little reports of how effective the Canadian forces are in Afghanistan. A recent Frontline documentary
did a story on a Canadian forward base..

The Canadians tried to get on good terms with the local villagers by offering to fix their generators - but no luck after weeks of trying to fix them (no spare parts) - they set out to a nearby town to obtain parts but its not like Canada - theres no Canadian Tire Store around the corner.. the expedition ended up a waste of time they couldnt find parts and also shot up and killed some Afghans who happened to drive to close to the convoy (causing further local resentment)

It would have been way cheaper in my opinion to just bring over some new generators but all of this made more difficult by the fact that Canada doesnt have any helicopters over there..(which is another story)

Then, as a friendly gesture they offered free medical services to the local village. And quite a few of them came to take advantage of this
(despite being threatened by Taliban if they did) So how did that pan out? Well after seeing about half the villagers, the Canadian Doctors
called it off as they ran out of supplies.

A couple of weeks later the Canadians pulled out of that base.
It really makes me wonder how effective they whole thing is..

The Taliban can them come in and behead any village leader that sympathizes with the coalition troops..

Never mind the coalitions failure to do anything about the opium crop..