"Crooks, gangsters and people getting rich out of the opium trade"
More British fatalities in Afghanistan this morning: in an explosion in southern Afghanistan yesterday, the Ministry of Defence said. Next of kin have been informed.
So this morning, we're going to put the economy on the backburner for the day (though shows that we'll be coming back to it very soon and that there is now a daily drumbeat of grim economic news) and turn our attention to Afghanistan, where 8,000 British troops make up a key fighting part of the Nato deployment to defeat the Taliban and al-Qaeda and to give the country some semblance of peace and normality.
Unlike the invasion of Iraq, all three major British parties share and support that objective. But the British public is not part of the Westminster consensus. As Afghan President Hamid Karzai holds talks with Gordon Brown, . The poll shows little appetite for a war that few think that we can win (though nobody should seriously think we could lose: indefinite bloody stalemate is the feared outcome).
Last month, the departing commander of British troops in Afghanistan said that a purely military victory was not possible - though nobody who matters has ever thought it was - and that there would have to be a negotiated end to the conflict. There is a growing view that while Nato keeps up the military pressure, it should begin talks with the supposedly more moderate elements of the Taliban. 
Senior Indian sources tell me that no such thing exists; even so, there is not much difference in practice between some of the Taliban and the Afghan warlords we've been dealing with for some time. To that end, we'll be asking: should we be talking to the Taliban? Secret talks are said to have been held, though Britain maintains a public posture of no negotiation (shades of how we handled the IRA there).
While in the USA last week, I was given a gloomy assessment of Afghanistan by a senior US spook. He said that the fundamental problem is that the Karzai government is riven with corruption and incompetence to its very core (which makes for a fertile breeding ground for the Taliban) and that Karzai was a decent enough character himself but that he was surrounded by "crooks, gangsters and people getting rich out of the opium trade."
He said that America and its allies had no Plan B to Karzai, that President-elect Obama's promise to send another 8,000 troops would make very little difference and that until the Taliban/al-Qaeda safe havens in Pakistan were destroyed, there was no chance of progress - but that if Nato attempted that with cross-border raids, the new, shaky government in Pakistan would tumble. He used a well-known Americanism: "we are between a rock and a hard place."
On today's programme, we'll be talking to the Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch Brown, about all this. 
But we shall not be forgetting , which has shocked the nation and raises some profound questions about the state of our country. We'll be asking to what extent are we indeed "a broken society" with the former Conservative leader and head of the Centre of Social Justice, Iain Duncan Smith, .
Our Guest of the Day is the comedian and GP, Dr Phil Hammond. We'll be looking at all of the above and at health service reform with him as Ross Hawkins looks at the NHS and talks to cancer specialist Prof Karol Sikora.
Join us at noon on ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Two or this website and do leave your comments using the box below.
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