"This war is the war I'm concerned about..."

Posting will be light over the next few days as Abu Muqawama attends a conference on -- what else? -- counterinsurgency. This report, from another conference held earlier this week, went up on the Reuters wire late yesterday.

STOCKHOLM, March 12 (Reuters) - The tide of the war in Afghanistan is running against the United States and its allies, in contrast to an improving trend in Iraq, a U.S. military official and counter-insurgency expert said on Wednesday. "Afghanistan (is) in my eyes an under-resourced war, a war that needs a whole lot more advisers, a whole lot more economic aid," Lieutenant Colonel John Nagl told a security conference in Stockholm.

"This war is the war I'm concerned about, a war in which the United States very much needs the help of our friends."