Playing politics with the dead

It's an old politician's trick, but the Associated Press has the story of Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France (shown here shaking hands with Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president), traveling to Kabul to visit his troops, including the dead ones:

Sarkozy spoke to French troops from units who lost some of the ten soldiers killed in a fierce Taliban ambush and firefight in the mountains about thirty miles east of Kabul on Monday. He also visited some of the twenty-one soldiers wounded in the battle. He told a group of soldiers, some 200 strong, that France must learn lessons from the attack and change its procedures... Karzai attributed the recent rise in violence in his country to the lack of attention that NATO and Afghanistan have paid to militant sanctuaries and training grounds, a clear reference to Pakistan's tribal area. The French soldiers were on a reconnaissance mission when they were ambushed by a force of about 100 militants in the mountains of Surobi. France's top military official, General Jean-Louis Georgelin, said most of the French casualties came in the minutes after the soldiers ascended a mountain pass. French Defense Minister Herve Morin said about thirty militants were killed and thirty wounded. Taliban fighters and militants allied to renegade warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar operate in Surobi... The French president boarded a plane for Afghanistan shortly after the news was announced, breaking away from his vacation in the south of France... Meanwhile, some nineteen Taliban fighters were killed in two separate clashes Wednesday in the eastern provinces of Khost and Paktia, and a soldier from the U.S.-led coalition was killed by militants while on patrol in the west of the country. Ten militants were killed in Alisher district of Khost province early Wednesday after they attacked a construction company, said provincial police chief Esmatullah Alizai. He said Afghan police and coalition troops responded, killing the militants.

Rico says we took our eye off the ball in Afghanistan in order to deal with Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and now we're paying for it...