Prime Minister Gordon Brown's speech on Friday morning was intended to make the case for a continued British combat role in Afghanistan after another grim week of casualties.

But although he did lay out some new ideas, such as setting five benchmarks for improved performance by the Afghan government, the prime minister was limited to spinning the rhetorical rotors without actually taking flight.

The thing that has grounded him and other Nato leaders is the continued absence of a clear line from Washington.

How could Mr Brown have been more adamant about the current counter-insurgency strategy or the need for more troops to execute it, if he knows that at any time the White House might change its mind?

President Barack Obama received the McChrystal report calling for a troop surge on 30 August, and with each week that passes without a decision the political difficulties of his allies across Nato multiply.

When Britain announced in mid-October that it would, if certain conditions were met, send another 500 troops to Afghanistan, Whitehall felt it was on a promise from the Obama team.

As Newsnight reported at the time, one top insider suggested not just that Britain had been promised there would be a substantial US reinforcement, but that it would be General Stanley McChrystal's option of around 45,000 troops, and that its announcement was imminent.

So what does he say now? When asked recently, my contact characterised the continued lack of a clear statement of the way ahead from Mr Obama as, "disgraceful".

These views, given non-attributably, are simpler a stronger version of what one can see in the public domain.

Back in October Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, Britain's senior serviceman, insisted that the Allies were still all committed to the counter-insurgency strategy and that he was, "confident" he knew which way the US would go on the troop increase question.

In the absence of an announcement, confidence in ministries from Ottawa to Berlin is faltering.

"What is the goal? What is the road? and in the name of what?" asked French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner earlier this week, adding menacingly, "Where are the Americans? It begins to be a problem".

Field Marshal Lord Inge, speaking in a defence debate in the House of Lords earlier on Friday said the US' delay sent, "a very bad message".

Talking to Nick Horne earlier this week, home after several years working as an official for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) in Kabul, he reckoned the Obama administration had carried out seven different reviews of Afghan policy.

From their electoral victory one year ago to the present, Afghan policy has been in a state of flux.

The criticism is not simply code for "Why doesn't Obama just get on with the troop increase"?

There are plenty in European governments who would be delighted if the president announced that the US intends to withdraw from Afghanistan as quickly as possible.

What people want is a decision.

Now the White House is suggesting that there could be an announcement in a fortnight's time. So the present limbo is set to continue.

It is all the stranger because Mr Obama has not yet endorsed the strategy set out in the McChrystal report, something Nato defence ministers did at a meeting two weeks ago.

The US' own defence secretary, Robert Gates, has called publicly for the matter to be resolved swiftly.

Some Obama supporters have stressed the importance of measuring such vital life and death decisions carefully.

Gen McChrystal himself has been loyal enough to his commander in chief to echo them, remarking that it is better it be done properly than rapidly.

The shambolic outcome of the Afghan presidential elections has complicated matters politically, but it hardly de-railed some great policy juggernaut that had been careering along smoothly until then.

Looking though at the succession of reviews and the tangled logic in the one definitive presidential statement on "Af-Pak strategy" given back at the end of March, it is evident that the administration has had great difficulty deciding what it thinks about the Afghan conflict.

Instead we have witnessed what people in Whitehall describe with increasing frankness as a failure of leadership.

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The death of Staff Sergeant Olaf Schmid underlines how critical bomb disposal operators have come to the Nato campaign in Afghanistan.

The numbers involved give some idea of how making Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs has become a major industry on Helmand Province.

During the first nine months of this year, British forces dealt with more than 4,000 IED incidents.

Thousands more bombs were either dealt with by other Nato forces, or blew up those planting them or locals and livestock.

As for those that remain undiscovered, it is anyone's guess how many there might be.

The next wave

Staff Sgt Schmid had defused 64 IEDs during the first five months of his tour.

Bomb disposal operators (that term covers officers and NCOs, men and women) are working flat out, more intensively even than at the height of the Northern Ireland Troubles.

Recently, Newsnight filmed with the next wave of bomb disposal people bound for Afghanistan.

They were training at the Felix Centre at Kineton in Warwickshire.

Unusual people

Talking to instructors who had returned recently from Afghanistan, such as Staff Sergeant Stu Dixon who won the George Medal there, it is the rudimentary nature of so many of the Afghan devices that makes them so difficult to deal with.

Sometimes the pressure pads or trip devices made with bare bits of wire, and old lumps of wood will result in the slightest movement making an electrical contact, leading to the explosion.

Dealing with this threat on an almost daily basis requires a very unusual type of person as we discovered during our filming.

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The leading contenders in Afghanistan's presidential election certainly have shown cunning.

Unfortunately their skills have helped their country little and brought the elections into disrepute.

President Hamid Karzai has been re-elected after his leading challenger, Dr Abdullah Abdullah, pulled out.

Mr Karzai thereby did what the international community asked for - conceding the need for a second round of voting after claims of widespread vote rigging in the first - without having actually to fight it.

Dr Abdullah meanwhile has managed to tarnish his rival's victory by making a hue and cry about voting fraud in the first place.

When sufficient Karzai votes were disallowed to make a second round necessary, and the president had conceded that, Dr Abdullah withdrew.

Abdullah 'tarnished too'

The challenger himself had 300,000 votes disallowed so he was hardly blameless in first round rigging.

What is more few experts think that he would have won, even if the second round had been staged to the best international standards.

So rather than enhancing the sitting president's credibility by losing against him, Dr Abdullah has withdrawn, claiming fair elections were impossible.

Both men have displayed the Afghans' remarkable talent for nihilism.

Many foreign models have been trashed in Afghanistan, but their own governance only ever produced one of the world's poorest, and in recent decades, most war torn countries.

Strategic options

So where now? Mr Karzai has been congratulated on his re-election and the international community must now get along with him.

There will be some ideas about making further aid conditional on his rooting out corruption and getting the government to function better, but it will be very hard to compel him to do so.

Threats of withdrawing foreign forces are not credible - not yet anyway. In fact the logic of the strategic options now being considered suggests committing more troops and aid.

Since the president knows this, he will make the right sort of noises towards the Western powers, and maybe accept a national unity government or some constitutional reform.

But will he really follow through?

The Americans will have to work Mr Karzai hard, but carefully, during the coming weeks in order to get the best looking result they can.

But even if his government is no more than the vehicle for raising much larger security forces in order to make Nato's withdrawal from combat possible, Mr Karzai knows he is indispensible once more.

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