In a way, it was surprising they went that far, considering all the butt-face posturing that's been coming from that part of the world over the past week.

These jerks throw fatwahs around like high school girls making telephone calls and all you have to do to get one aimed at you is have a couple of beers on their side of the border. Which is the one thing you'd need if you did find yourself there.

Given how whacked out they are about their cause, something must have got to them. Maybe it was something as in, "Whoops, we didn't know they'd take it THIS seriously." (Note the timing of their decision coincided with the early stages of the launch of a military force with enough firepower to turn the region into a parking lot. Maybe, maybe not. It's hard to tell who's afraid of what in that neck of the woods.)

Or maybe they just decided that bin Laden, Fonzie fundamentalist kind of guy that he is, was just getting to be a little too much trouble to keep around. He's giving religious fanaticism a bad name, and even though they never want to admit it, these fruit bags like a little good PR every now and then, just like everybody else.

But they recommended to the Taliban that bin Laden be allowed to leave voluntarily and at a time of his own choosing, which is no deal. If there's one thing both sides in this need to do, it's come up with some type of code so they know what they're talking about, because the Afghans have lost the program on this one. Maybe something along the lines of Code Blue ("Just some BS for local consumption"), then Code Green ("Watch your back") and Code Red ("Don't mess with us on this one" - and insert your own favourite substitute for "mess" in there).

George Dubya's speech on Friday was one giant Code Red to Afghanistan, telling them to hand over all terrorist leaders, close their camps and release all foreign nationals.

It's not, he said, "open to negotiation or discussion".

You can kind of see why. Once those idiots start talking, you can't shut them up with a shoe and by the time they're finished, they've got themselves about five levels further removed from reality. Plus, who wants to talk to them anyway?

Back to bin Laden. It's unlikely he's going to be gracing the federal pen at San Quentin anytime soon because the Afghans aren't going to hand him over to the US.

But the problem for the Afghans is, nobody else wants the guy. They were the only ones crazy enough to take him in, and if there's any fun in this, it's going to be in watching them toss him around like a live grenade for a while.

Implicit in the Bush speech, and in the 72-hour deadline for handing bin Laden over, was the threat that something will happen if the Afghans don't act. No-one in the administration has said what it will be, and just as importantly, they haven't said when.

The one thing this war, if you want to call it that, apparently won't have is a timetable.

The quid pro quos will probably involve a fair amount of military activity, although everybody's been cautioning against that because the Afghans are supposed to be bad-ass fighters who defeated the Soviet Army.

That army consisted of many troops who were under-trained, underpaid and quick to lose morale.

In other words, everything the force that's headed there now isn't. Not to mention technological stuff people only dreamed about in the Soviet days.

There's also a tendency occasionally to over-estimate the other side.

Remember the "elite" Republican Guards who were supposed to be such a big deal in the Gulf War? When it hit the fan they were so elite you couldn't find them.

This isn't to say the Afghan fighters aren't big-time tough, but like everybody else in this mess, they don't quite know what they're up against, either.

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