Brits and Yanks Having A Fallout In Afghanistan

It would appear that the US policy of bombing the shit out of everything and it's eagerness to spray the country with defoliants isn't going down too well with the Brits. Not unsurprisingly.

Britain is risking a new foreign policy rift with the US after bluntly telling the Bush Administration that it is “winning the battles but losing the war” in Afghanistan.

Gordon Brown and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, fear that the US remains “fixated” by Iraq and is failing to address what they regard as the real front line in the war on terrorism.

Disagreement has surfaced already over the US military’s desire to spray opium poppy fields from the air with herbicide, as well as to continue its bombing strikes on Afghan villages, which Britain complains undermines its strategy of “winning hearts and minds”.

The paragraph below really caught my eye, do they (US officials) think the Brits are as dumb as that?
The said officials either hold us in such contempt as to think we might be influenced by the WhitehousePetraeus report or they have lost all touch with reality and are believing in their own spin.

Some US officials suspect that Mr Brown intends to slide out of the “bad war” in Iraq by concentrating on the “good war” in Afghanistan. They acknowledge that the Basra pullout was based on military advice but had still hoped that Britain would wait for General David Petraeus’s crucial progress report to Congress next week. more