(Cameron and Obama - meanwhile, back in the UK . . . .)

Seems there is an air of confusion everywhere as to just what our Afghanistan withdrawal policy is going to be. As Prime Minister David Cameron was meeting with Pres. Obama two weeks ago, back home Deputy Minister Nick Clegg was hemming and hawing with Parliament as to just what was supposed to happen.

Nick Clegg: “No timetable can be chiseled in stone, but we are absolutely determined, given how long we’ve been in Afghanistan, given that we are six months into an eighteen month military strategy embarking on a new political strategy that we must be out, in a combat role, by 2015.”

And after some howls he backtracked a few minutes later and it came out like this:

Nick Clegg: “First, lest there’s any confusion on the vital issue of Afghanistan, which I hope well continue to enjoy cross-party support, let me be absolutely clear that we will see our troops withdrawn from Afghanistan from a combat role by 2015, that is what we are determined to see happen.”

As this episode from the BBC Radio program Politics UK from July 23rd points out, the relationship is a long and sometimes confused one, certainly not helped by a muddled policy towards Afghanistan laid out by the Bush Administration.

It is a very tangled web. One with no easy solutions.

Newstalgia Note: We've put Newstalgia World Week on hiatus for a bit, at least until the new site debuts. In the interim, I will be putting these overseas news pieces, hopefully on a daily basis and see how that goes.

News on this May 7th in 1945 was confusing at best. In what began at 9:45 EWT (Eastern War Time) on Monday May 7th as flashed bulletins that Germany had unconditionally surrendered sent a wave of excitement throughout Europe and the U.S., was reversed less than an hour later with reports from Allied Headquarters that no "Official" surrender announcement had been made. And there would be no more news regarding the surrender until further notice (which turned out to be the next day).

The culprit, it was later learned, was someone at Associated Press who had witnessed the surrender signing, got the scoop on the rest of the world and, as you would say if it happened today, the whole thing went viral.

This broadcast, part of those first few hours of May 7th 1945, starts at 11:00 am in New York. Roughly twenty minutes in comes (during a Jimmy Fidler's Hollywood Program) a bulletin cautioning people getting ready to celebrate that it wasn't quite a done-deal yet and the brakes were quickly put on declaring it VE Day.

Listening back to this broadcast, it's clear something was potentially amiss, as there was no word from The White House regarding the surrender and there was a wait for confirmation from Supreme Allied Headquarters which, as it came to pass, hadn't come yet.

But everyone was still excited, and this half-hour glimpse into that May 7th from 1945, via WOR in New York, gives some indication.