The memory of the twin towers attack is vivid and has for understandable reasons

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The memory of the twin towers attack is vivid and has, for understandable reasons, created an environment in which no significant figure in the US has the courage to question the prosecution of the war. Not yet.Things are much less sure for the British Government. The mass of people do want the Taliban and al-Qa'ida destroyed, but they want to know how it's going to be done and need to be kept informed. Waking up and hearing on the radio that 1,700 Royal Marines are on their way to Afghanistan is too much of a surprise, even for those who support the aims of the war.We are told, rightly, that Afghanistan is a dangerous environment in which Britain can expect casualties. But it is time the Allied leadership looked at the objective factors operating against them in Afghanistan and then spelt these out to the public.

There is the potential for a long and bloody conflict, and if our leaders know this, they must pass on the news. Support for the war remains relatively strong, and there is no mass movement against our deepening involvement Yet.The writer is a BBC Special Correspondent. So, the trout season has reopened and spring is here. Maybe you're feeling a bit out of shape and want to blow some cobwebs away? I have just the thing So, the trout season has reopened and spring is here. Really loyal readers (and I know you're out there) may remember that four summers ago I went fishing with my "man on the moor", Brian Easterbrook of Dartmoor (I'm sure he gets mail addressed to him, just like that). It was the hardest fishing I'd ever done but I had one of the best days ever. Last year, back for my annual fling with Dartmoor, I spotted an impossibly tall man in the Yelverton Co-op It was Brian I had forgotten how tall he was.

No wonder he had been able to leap from rock to rock while I had to do that girl thing of sitting, sliding down, and scrambling back up again The shame's still with me. The moor had been closed most of the year due to pied et bouche. So this man who thinks 10-mile fishing hikes across Dartmoor terrain are "leisurely walks" was, well, fidgety.But then, if I'd been born on the moor and had spent the last 65 years on it, like Brian has, I'd probably be more gung-ho now (in some respects Brian reminds me of my father, who was born in the hills in northern Italy and despite being 71 is never happier than when he's up a tree).Brian was taken fishing by his father at so young an age, he doesn't remember He took to fishing immediately. Once, as a small boy in the 1940s, he was so engrossed in fishing for trout on the moor – he'd caught 40 – that he clean forgot the time and his mother had to call the police out to search for him. After leaving school, and national service in Germany (where yes, he still fished), Brian worked as a lumberjack. But the "fishing always came first" so let's just say he had a high turnover of jobs. Eventually, like his dad before him, Brian ended up as a prison officer at HMP Dartmoor, which is where he stayed for 30 years.