MAIL COMMENT: Mission impossible in Afghanistan?

Another day, another four brave British soldiers killed in Afghanistan, sacrificing their young lives... for what?

If only our politicians could find convincing words to explain.

According to Gordon Brown, they died fighting for 'the noblest of causes'.

But he doesn't spell out exactly what that is.

Still less does he hold out any believable hope of achieving our war aims, whatever they may be.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband is hardly more persuasive.

He assures us our troops have a 'very clear mission' to ensure that Afghanistan has its own institutions and security forces, so that 'never again does it become a base for Al Qaeda'.

A thoroughly desirable aim. But is it remotely realistic?

Does he honestly believe that fewer than 8,000 men and women  -  heroic though they are  -  have a chance of making a lasting difference in this vast and inhospitable land, whose government's writ runs scarcely beyond the presidential palace?

If so, he betrays a shocking ignorance of centuries of failed attempts by foreign armies to subdue the Afghan warlords.

No. The growing suspicion must be that we are keeping troops in the field simply to please the U.S., so as to encourage them to keep up their support for Nato.

If this is true, ministers should spell it out, so that at least we know the real reason why our exhausted and under-equipped troops are having to lay down their lives.

With nine dead in ten days  -  and another 230 troops bound for Afghanistan by the spring  -  how much longer can we keep up an open-ended commitment to a war with no clear purpose and no realistic hope of victory in sight?

Terrorists' charter

Uunder any sane system, Abu Qatada would have been booted out of Britain the moment he arrived 14 years ago, waving a forged passport and demanding asylum.

But as we all know, this country has gone barking mad.

First we lavished benefits on him and his family, while he was convicted abroad of a string of terrorist offences.

Now a judge has ruled that not only are we forbidden by our human rights laws from deporting this ranting ogre, known as 'Osama Bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe', who preaches the destruction of our way of life.

Unbelievably, we are not even allowed to lock him up.

Instead, taxpayers will be expected to spend some £500,000 a year keeping him in an MI5 safe house.

Oh, and in a final touch of sheer, bonkers surrealism, a condition of his bail is that he is not allowed to receive visits from Bin Laden!

An 'extremely disappointed' Home Secretary Jacqui Smith declares: 'The Government's priority is to protect public safety and national security and we will take all steps necessary to do so.'

Really, Miss Smith? Does that include repealing the asinine human rights laws that put us all at the mercy of terrorists?

Them and us

Imagine that a couple of civil servants had been caught breaking the rules on expenses to channel £66,000 of public money into a family trust fund.

At the very least, even if they had done it 'unwittingly', they would be forced to return the money.

More likely, they would be fired on the spot.

What, then, is so different about Sir Nicholas Winterton and his wife Ann, who are keeping their jobs and the taxpayers' money they took 'inappropriately'?

The difference, of course, is that the Wintertons are MPs.

So the ordinary rules of decency don't apply.