Taliban releases video said to be of missing soldier
The Taliban releases a video — on Christmas Day, no less — purporting to be Bowe Bergdahl, the young soldier who disappeared June 30th after wandering away from his unit. The young man in the tape is wearing a U.S. Army uniform, his face obscured by a helmet and dark glasses, and he is reading what appears to be a prepared statement denouncing the Afghan war as America’s “next Vietnam,” and comparing his treatment to the treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib. This is the kind of propaganda made possible by the way the Bush administration chose to fight its wars. It’s a shameful strategy on the part of the Taliban (and a clear violation of international law), that unfortunately, the Bush administration handed them on a silver freaking platter. Watch, and cringe:
Op-ed: No good options for Obama in Afghanistan
My latest column is up and running at the South Florida Times.
David Gregory: ‘the left’ opposes Afghan escalation … George Will: ‘I oppose Afghan escalation’
David Gregory’s Fox News audition continued this week, as he inexplicably couched opposition to the president’s Afghanistan troop increase in partisan terms:
MR. GREGORY (to Bob Woodward): All right, I’ve just got a couple minutes left. Let’s bring it back to domestic politics here. The left does not like this war, doesn’t like this strategy. How’s this going to get paid for, Bob? Is there going to have to be some kind of war tax to pay the additional $30 billion to send 30,000 more troops?
So how to explain non-left wingers like George Will, who’s been calling for an exit from Afghanistan since August, and who reiterated the point on a better rated network today? Read more
Barack Obama’s “there’s no pretty way to say this” speech
President Obama delivered a talk tonight on the grim reality of what we have to do in Afghanistan, and he did so without frills. To put it bluntly, the speech didn’t soar. There was no cinematic moment out of a Hollywood war epic. No brilliant, thrilling “yes we can.” But hell, it’s hard to soar when you’re selling a plan to endanger the lives of 30,000 young men and women, to fix a mess left to you by eight years of dithering and failure by the previous administration.
The president did what he had to do tonight, and he clearly didn’t love it. I don’t love it either, but I agree with what the plan, and with the fact that unfortunately, given what the Cheney-Bush-Rumsfeld failure squad left him (if there’s any justice in the universe, these three and their assorted henchmen will rot in hell for what they did to our country…) President Obama is doing what must be done to finally win and end this war. And by win, I mean deliver a stable enough Afghanistan for the Karzai disaster regime to govern.
The right won’t give him much support, because he set forth an exit plan. The left will still hate the escalation of the war. So the president really couldn’t win tonight. Grim topic. Grim speech. Grim reality. Read more
Go big AND go home
President Obama expected to escalate the Afghan war.
The WaPo previews President Obama’s Afghanistan speech, which will reportedly include an order for 34,000 additional troops, plus a few sign posts toward the exit door. Read more
“I basically don’t”
Draft dodging former vice president, would-be war criminal and Jon Meacham dream 2012 candidate Dick Cheney’s three-word answer to whether the Bush-Cheney failed presidency bears any responsibility for the mess in Afghanistan. The follow up question? There was none. Oh, and he accused President Obama of “projecting weakness” again. God, he misses the torture…
UPDATE: Politico’s Arena cues the backlash. Read more
Reracked: Bush/Rumsfeld could have gotten Bin Laden in 2001
… but of course, they let him get away:
A Senate Foreign Relations Committee report issued this weekend says that al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden “was within our grasp” when he was “cornered” in the forbidding mountains of Tora Bora in December, 2001 under intense U.S. bombardment.
… The Senate report says that while bin Laden was writing his last will and testament on December 14, “Fewer than 100 American commandos were on the scene with their Afghan allies and calls for reinforcements to launch an assault were rejected.” Read more
Les Gelb explains, endorses, Obama’s new Afghan strategy
Over at The Daily Beast, Foreign policy expert Lesley Gelb explains what he has learned from insiders about President Obama’s new Afghanistan strategy, and gives it the thumbs up: Read more
George Will to Dick Cheney: some ‘dithering’ before Iraq invasion would have come in handy
George Will scores the quote of the day on “This Week”:
“A bit of dithering might have been in order before we went into Iraq in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction,”
Meanwhile, the panelists must have felt somewhat diminished by having to share the table with talk radio nag Laura Ingram. Watch here.
Wackenhut meets Bush-era nude crude
Is it just me, or did way too many Bush administration-era scandals involving security or the “war on terror” involve weird, often homoerotic naked stuff? (Warning: photos after the jump)
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