"Does Gates accuse us Brits and US NATO allies of incompetence because we refuse to bomb Afghanistan to kingdom just like what the CIA proposed to do to Pakistan and what Bush wants to do to Iran?"

Actually, quite the opposite. He accuses his allies of relying to much on heavy artilley and aerial bombing and says they "were trained for the Fulda Gap", meaning the area in Germany were the Soviets were expected to attack.

But it gets funnier. Since his comments, I have seen Canadian news papers saying that Gates has since said that he didn't mean Canada, but NATO in general. Also British papers saying that Gates called Britain to say this doesn't apply to Britain but to NATO in general, while the Dutch papers say the American ambassador claims the comments were taken out of context ( the LA Times denies this).

But in the end I don't really see the problem. If the Americans want to do all the work in Afghanistan, I doubt any of the other countries would object...