By Steve Hynd
It's been brewing for some time now but yesterday in a Daily Mail op-ed the British Shadow Foreign Secretary, William Hague, prepared the ground for the UK Conservative Party to head for theAfghanistan exit, just as a new poll shows only a bare quarter of the British electorate still supports the occupation. Hague writes that British troops must not pay 'a price in blood' to allow the country's government to hold power in a 'corrupt' election.
We may fatally undermine our standing in the eyes of the Afghans if we are seen to rubber stamp disputed election results which disenfranchise sections of the population.
This, in turn, could have implications for our military efforts.
There have already been threats of violence from supporters of other candidates who feel they have been cheated.
Hague's op-ed follows an overheard conversation between himself and Tory leader David Cameron, widely expected to be the next British PM. In that conversation, Cameron spoke of �naked� irregularities in the Afghan election, blowing wide open the West's deliberate public soft-pedalling of the stolen poll.
With his op-ed, which obviously has Cameron's approval, Hague has left the Conservative Party's neocon element high and dry. One wonders what Shadow Defense Secretary Liam Fox, slated to talk about the need to stay the course and escalate at the Heritage Foundation today, will say now.
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