Rummy's read too many Tom Clancy novels and thinks that's REALLY the way things ought to work. (And he's fired everyone who disagreed with him.)

And I'm still pissed that we didn't do the right thing in Afghanistan. We had a chance to actually do them some good, with roads and schools and stuff, and Shrub got distracted by - ooh, shiny! - Iraq and blew it.

Shrub: failed businessman, failed governor, failed president, successful front man for PNAC.

Right there we see the genesis of what we are going through today. These folks believed and perhaps they still believe that they can stop and/or manage all economic and social change that might diminish American wealth and power. On a worldwide basis.

In a pig's eye they can.

I can just picture these lines being used in the promo spots for the TV movie, "How The Hell Did That Happen?," about the time the nation teetered on the brink of a dark age.

(The one with Frankie Muniz as Bush the Lesser, and an Japanese animatronic as Cheney, because no actor could be found who could do the Sneer convincingly.)

The fact that the US has withdrawn a large part of its own forces from Afghanistan and left things under NATO command suggests that Rummy has developed a strategy for dealing with Afghanistan -- cut and run.

I have always been extremely antagonistic to the ongoing endeavours and ambition of the military industrial complex, but I have generally supported the military intervention in Afghanistan. The Taliban made cruel rulers of that nation, and it was definitely a reasonable decision to end their control of the nation. It is just criminal that the American administration walked away from Afghanistan to pursue the agenda of madness in Iraq.

For all the shit that Canada has taken for being a so-called weak partner in the "War Against Terror" - in our refusal to attack Iraq - we are sure paying a bloody price for actually sticking with the original mission. It is galling that we are dealing with the mess left behind when Bush & Co. realised the opportunity to use the anger of a victimised America to justify a full scale war in Iraq, instead of actually doing what the administration always loves to say it is doing, "staying the course".

We signed on for this mission, but I can tell you I certainly feel a great sense of personal outrage at the American military adventure in Iraq, how it has cost the Afghanistan mission, and how this has only further destabilised the region, and ultimately the world.

Actually the current evidence is that Osama Bin Laden was in Pakistan at the time of the attacks. The 9/11 terrorists were mostly Saudi Arabian. None were agents of the Afghanistan government, so to say the Taliban attacked us doesn't fly.

As I recall, the Taliban offered to hand over Bin Laden, but we turned them down because they wanted to see the evidence of Bin Laden's responsibility. Hardly a great reason to go to war:

US: "Give us Bin Laden!"
Afghan: "Okay, but first prove he's the one that attacked you."
US: "Scr*w you, buddy, I don't need evidence. I'm angry and want to bomb someone."
Afghan: "But--"
US: "Too late."
*explosions, sound of villages burning*

I Hate the way this administration makes me into a nutbar conspiracy theorist

It really wasn't enough for ABC to try to present a work of right wing fiction as fact. Now, Bush wants to interrupt it for a speech.

The mind reels. There was a time, really there was, when I found it easy to believe in coincidence.

Actually, Stefan, Richard Dreyfus is looking more and more like Dick.

The US military is in shreds, the economy is teetering, the dollar is shaky, the import/export balance is a complete imbalance -- a few things could, no doubt, be worse; but George has made a shambles of the country he elbowed his way into running.

...I'm sure the several ranking Afghani officials who stopped by my office for coffee this summer would be thrilled to hear that. They seem to be under the impression that the Bush Administration's complete bungling of Afghani reconstruction is leaving the door wide open for the Taliban's return and leaving local law enforcement in the hands of drug lords.

The Taliban is the most vital nonexistant organization I've ever seen, considering they recently won a vote for a 'Ministry of Decency' --I'm sure the 'liberated women' of Afghanistan were thrilled about that one.

They said that if the US really wants to help them get on their feet, they need equipment and training for their police, not their military.

As someone who spent her formative years in a bedroom community of CFB Edmonton... there really aren't words for the rage I'm feeling right now. I don't even blink anymore when local businesses have their flags at half-mast, because it's always for someone who died.

People coming back from missions say that Afghanistan's a war we're never going to win so long as it stays a War on Drugs; the peacekeepers won't succeed so long as "progress" means "stop growing your opium, which makes all your money; grow this wheat instead. So what if you won't be able to feed your family? At least it's ethical!"

I'm not an expert, but they're the only ones giving evidence that's more compelling than "they hate us and our democracy." But then, nobody else knows what the problem is, because nobody even cares.

Actually, I've found that the U.S. Press does mention them, just as it mentions many other horrifying things (most of which happen in the Congress & speeches by High Administration Officials). The problem I see is that the press then never does anything with this, like linking things together and suggesting what they might signify.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400126.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090500166.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/03/AR2006090300203.html

There's pictures, too.

I know the terror of living. I still remember getting together with my friends the morning after thr friendly fire incident in 2002, trying to figure out who wasn't there and whose father might have died. I still stop to listen every time they announce another death (every week, every two weeks, every month; each one is reported individually, nationwide). In the town I lived in, it was taken for granted that some people would not walk or drive across grass, and you just didn't force them. We are used to living with our scars, here.

But right now I don't know that I'm qualified to talk about the dead. I never knew them.

The British Army is running at its limit, and using ammunition faster than since Korea--one report said WW2.

The news has shown video footage; soldiers in action, shot with the cameras in mobile phones.

Here's a BBC page with the video.

This isn't patrols coming under fire, it's attacks on the small posts, platoon strength, that in the past have given us the hearts and minds opportunities to win such wars. But the Taliban have the manpower to make resupply difficult and make frequent attacks, both infantry and mortars.

They seem to be depending on airstrikes to survive. Watching the video, I see napalm being used.

Now, if things go pear-shaped in Iraq, is the USAF going to maintain force levels in Afghanistan?

I have a bad feeling about this.

Generally Canada's dead are only mentioned in American media if at least four die at once, or they are killed by American fire. Or if it is a really slow news day. Grim, but true. In a sense this is ok, this is a fight we chose to engage in, wise or not, and we see to our own. The sacrifices don't need to be validated in the American media.

What I do struggle with, as I am sure many here do, is the lack of attention span American media has for the big picture stories. Between the intentional campaigns of misinformation from the government, and the media habit of jumping in attention-deficit fashion to the next-shiny-story, with no narrative threads, it is very difficult for the dazzled masses to get their heads wrapped around what is really going on.

I am glad you made this post tonight, it frames and brings together well the broader picture on this story. When you start hearing NATO's Supreme Allied Commander saying they have been surprised by "level of intensity" of Taliban attacks, and more troops are needed immediately, and when flagged draped coffins are coming home in bunches every week, there is a story that needs to be talked about here, and this story can only be properly understood in the full context of all that has unfolded in the past five years. There are few news organisations doing their job to properly put this all in perspective.

Bombing and than invading Afghanistan has not lead to improvements for its inhabitants, a fact that was clear at the time as well.

And it hasn't even achieved its supposed goal, getting the people behind the September 11 attacks!

What spoilt the thing was a two-fold failure. First, the diversion of attention to Iraq. Second, the failure to switch from an occupation to the maintenance of a strike force at safe bases outside Afghanistan.

The epic takes of courage and disaster come from the attempts of occupying forces to escape Afghanistan, and from the actions of powerful mobile forces attempting their relief.

See, as a warning, the events of July to September, 1879. And that was a war we eventually "won".

But the aim was different. It wasn't a war on terrorism, but an attempt to safeguard British India, and maintain a buffer against the Russian Empire. It's the world of the Great Game and Kim, and a time when service on the North West Frontier, that violent and debatable land, was a way for young British officers to display military virtue.

But Arithmetic on the Frontier still holds true.

Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.

And there's a lot of things in the Barrackroom Ballads and Departmental Ditties that still look true today. A General Summary is just as true today.

The goal for invading afghanistan wasn't to get the people behind the 9/11 attacks. It was to satisfy the american public. The public was solidly behind invading somebody immediately, and afghanistan was the only country that appeared to have something to do with it that we could attack on short notice.

It was just a few years ago but it seems like forever. I remember it. My own father is usually pretty sensible but he said we had to have a war with somebody. I was saying for 9/11 we needed to improve our police methods and get a lot of international cooperation for that, and we needed to ask muslim religious authorities when the religion says it's OK to kill civilians in sneak attacks, and we didn't need a war. He told me I was crazy. They hit us and we had to hit them back.

Every day that went by without a war the public got more impatient. The bushies haven't been very good at much else, but they've been real good at influencing public opinion, and they've been real good at placating public opinion when there was opinion that needed placating.

They gave us just enough afghan war to get the public off their backs and then they went back to doing what they wanted.

It's like some sort of obscene global slapstick act.

So one (presumably inadvertent) consequence of the war in Afghanistan is more and cheaper heroin in Europe and the U.S., allowing Bush to maintain or increase the troop levels in the War on Drugs.

I was politically active during the Vietnam war. I loathed LBJ's choices, and despised the man. But even then I could see -- it was obvious every time he appeared on television -- that the choices he was making were killing him. Biographies have since told me that indeed, the Vietnam war haunted Johnson's sleep, destroyed his health, and as we all know, he chose not to run -- the burden the war placed on him was so great. I wish I could see some indication in George Bush's demeanor or speech that he understands the gravity of his actions. I wish I could believe that knowledge of what he has done to us, to the Iraqis, (even if he still thinks he was right to do it) keeps him awake at night.

I don't see any sign of it.

I think that's one of the reasons the left hates him so much. He's just smirking all the damn time. There's no evidence of sincerity or caring. Even after Katrina, and the tragedy his administration caused and continues to cause by gutting FEMA, he's just having a grand old time.

Sometime I suspect he really is getting hammered all the time. God know he acts as if he were juiced.

Perhaps he's some breed of sociopoath, unable to feel guilt or remorse. It'd explain a lot.

Seriously. Any time the US a western power invades another nation under a right wing establishment, we should just expect some sort of massive surge in drug sales worldwide. The two are clearly related throughout history.

It's the opium wars all over again. Why the hell don't people see it?

How did it come to this? They aren't defeating their 'enemies' but they are certainly alienating your friends.

The really appalling fact is that Bush & Co obviously don't give a flying fuck about it.

Josh Jasper, Sometime I suspect he really is getting hammered all the time: a good friend of mine who has struggled with substance abuse all her life says that she is sure Bush is a dry drunk, which means that he probably isn't drinking, but all the demons that led to his being a drunk (as we know he was) are still twisting his psyche into knots.

When I look back to some of what I thought and believed about the man in my youth, I am quite ashamed of my ignorance.

I'm not going to tell you that Johnson was the best resident of the Oval Office of the modern era: hell no. I will confidently predict that George W. Bush has never been seen in a similar situation.

I think the biography I read about was about LBJ's early years. I understand that he was a teacher in remote parts of Texas where he became quite closely acquainted with poverty.

This is where one of his best speeches came from. Can't remember the exact details, but it was when he and Humphrey were ramming the Civil Rights Act through. He talked about how when he'd been a school principal he'd seen "rich folks" in convertables drive along the road by the school and toss orange peels (or was it sections? things blur) to the poor Hispanic kids who'd fight over 'em like candy. He then said "I swore that if I ever had the power I'd do something about it, and now that I can I will.

I've seen the news stories that report that a threshhold number of Canadian soldiers have been killed. Unless we killed them, their deaths are mentioned halfway through the story, with no pictures or conversations.

The stories themselves don't go into the larger context. They're nearly as unvarying as bus plunge stories. Most U.S. readers wouldn't notice if you plugged in a completely different set of placenames: Somebody's fighting somewhere. Some people got killed. And that's all.

We're supposed to bloody know better, having invaded Afghanistan two or three times before. (For a real horror story, a look at General Elphinstone's Expedition is always a hair-raiser.)

I blame Teflon Tony for not reading his history books properly. (New Labour is seemingly immune to history -- if it wasn't, it would be unelectable.)

There is a growing call in Canada to pull our troops out of Afghanistan, particularly from voices on the left. Though I normally pitch my tent there, I am not yet convinced that withdrawing is the correct course. As it begins to resemble Iraq more with each passing week, I am not entirely convinced it is the wrong course either.

I am also well aware that the more we bomb, the more we kill, the deeper we etch the line that defines "us" as separate from "them", Islam from Jew & Christian, East from West. Perhaps it has already gone on too long and gone too far. Perhaps there is no hope of avoiding the dehumanization of "the other" that allegedly justifies their murder. The extremists on either side of this deepening line are dictating the terms of this reality. It is extremely disturbing, and the road we are on is headed toward some very dark places indeed.

I would like to believe that our efforts in Afghanistan will lead to a stable society with less cruelty to women and less extremist violence. I am growing increasingly pessimistic about those prospects.

I live about fifty miles from Ft. Campbell, the home post of the US 101 Airborne Division, and as they are returning from Iraq (again), you can see the entire area take a deep breath and exhale in relief. Of course, there's the picking-up-the-pieces-of-people's-lives to do now, and hope that this deployment hasn't done, and the next deployment won't do, more damage than can be fixed. Last week I assisted on a PTSD claim for an Iraqi war veteran (we've also had plenty of claims on immigrant refugees from Saddam's era over the years) and I am certain there will be more to come.

For those interested in LBJ bios, here's a list from Wikipedia, which may not be complete but is detailed.
General biographies
Robert A. Caro. The Years of Lyndon Johnson. 3 volumes as of 2006]]: The Path to Power (1982); Means of Ascent (1990); Master of the Senate (2002). The most detailed biography, extends to 1960.
Dallek, Robert. Lone Star Rising: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1908-1960 (1991); Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973 (1998); also: Lyndon B. Johnson: Portrait of a President (2004), 400-page abridged version of his 2 volume scholarly biography
Kearns Goodwin, Doris. Lyndon Johnson & the American Dream. (1977), a character study
Reedy, George Lyndon B. Johnson: A Memoir (1982) ISBN 0-8362-6610-2, a memoir by the press secretary
Woods, Randall. LBJ: Architect of American Ambition (2006) highly detailed scholarly biography (1000 pages)
[edit]Presidential years
Bruce E. Altschuler; LBJ and the Polls University Presses of Florida, 1990
Bernstein, Irving. Guns or Butter: The Presidency of Lyndon Johnson 1994.
Bornet, Vaughn Davis. The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. 1983
Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 1: Foreign Policy, the Great Society and the White House. 1981.
Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 2: Vietnam, the Environment, and Science. 1987.
Divine, Robert A., ed. The Johnson Years. Vol. 3: LBJ at Home and Abroad. 1994.
Firestone, Bernard J., and Robert C. Vogt, eds. Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Uses of Power. (1988), essays
Gould, Lewis L. Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment. 1988.
Lichtenstein, Nelson, ed. Political Profiles: The Johnson Years. 1976. biographies of 400+ key politicians
Mann, Robert. The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights. 1996.
Redford, Emmette S., and Marlan Blissett. Organizing the Executive Branch: The Johnson Presidency. 1981.
Shesol, Jeff. Mutual Contempt: Lyndon Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and the Feud That Shaped a Decade 1997.
White, Theodore H. The Making of the President, 1964 1965.
Zarefsky, David. President Johnson's War on Poverty 1986.

There was a complete lack of mention of "where in the world is Osama bin Laden or his head?" OBL from Public Enemey #1 has disappeared from the Schmuck's vocabulary more completely than a purged Soviet official from all May Day parade photo, replaced with images of other Soviet officials. Schmuck substituted Saddam Hussein for OBL the way the Soviet retouch specialists did replacements....

Stinking lying neo-Stalinist war criminal....

And then NBC had the temerity to have a commentator claim that Schmuck was the "healer in chief" with the speech. HORSESHIT! The commentator allowed that the Democrats "tomorrow" might be calling him "politician in chief."

No mention was made that he was LYING, that the women of Afghanistan are NOT materially better off today--there are those US-backed warlords who treat women possibly even worse than Taliban! The women of Iraq amd hugely worse off. Schmuck claiming otherwise is the biggest liar in decades on the world stage.

1984 = 2001-present....

Bush: Saddam was not responsible for 9/11

He is admitting his crimes, as if he knows he will never be prosecuted for them.

Rice: World must not abandon Afghanistan

To which all I can say is "Why not, sweetie? You did."