Somehow I don't think we really need 40,000 troops in Japan, 30,000 in Korea and 60,000 in Germany. I'm guessing we could spare a few of them.

Holed up in a bunker in which he is vigilantly protected from any knowledge of reality? I've seen this movie before.

eom

I hope Mullen has his resume updated, because that's what happens to military commanders who tell Bush the truth.

I want a goddamn apology now to all the people like myself who were called traitors and cowards and weasels for suggesting that Iraq would divert resources from the now Forgotten War in Afghanistan.

But of course fascist means never having to say you're sorry, doesn't it?

Call me a nitpicker, but, that "necessarily" needs an "un" in front of it to be accurate. There is nothing about the invasion of Iraq that can be deemed necessary.

Got to love them unintended consequences...

First the Eisenhower administration wouldn't give the Afghan government military aid, so they got it from the Khrushchev administration instead.

Then the Nixon administration helped depose the hash-smoking Sufi King, who was trying to bring his 90% tribal country along a gradual path to the modern world, in favor of his puritanical Pushtun nationalist pseudo-Marxist relative Mohamed Daoud.

The collapse of Daoud's repressive regime eventually led to the Soviet invasion.

Then we allowed the Pakistani ISI to determine which mujahedin groups got how much funding, and we turned a blind eye to blatant and horrific human rights abuses committed against Red Army POWs by the guys fighting on "our side."

Then we abandoned Afghanistan almost as fast as the Red Army and left the country to a civil war between the human rights abusing mujahedin and the moderates.

The we turned a blind eye while the foreign minister for our dearest and most beloved elected ally Benazir Bhutto armed a group of extremist Islamic madrassa students who called themselves the Taliban and sent them in to settle the post-Soviet Afghan civil war.

Then Mavis Leno working for the Feminist Majority did her darndest to spread the message about the terrorism danger posed by the Taliban, but too bad the Republicans forced the whole country to focus their attention on Bill Clinton's genitals instead.

And then after 911 -- we were finally forced to go into Afghanistan itself. We put the moderate Sufis back in power like they had been back before 1973.

But we dropped the ball and got sidetracked by Saddam Hussein.

I'm afraid to see what else we do next that's going to screw that country over and finally blow up in our faces on national TV on some sunny morning in the future.

The consequences of the Bush years, such as the clusterfuckization of Afghanistan, will be felt by most of the world's inhabitants and will not end for quite some time. When it all shakes out, the US will no longer be a superpower.

I have to wonder, if we had just left the office of the presidency vacant for the past 8 years, let the bureaucracies run themselves, would we be in this bad shape? I doubt it.

after we invaded, the bushies were under orders to constantly tell the Afghanies "we will never abandon you again". They sure know how to split hairs.

won't be in that position for long!

If we play this right, we'll be rich!