A Czar for Afghanistan?

You've got to be kidding me.

From Atrios:

John McCain just said he'd appoint an Afghanistan czar who would report directly to the president. Isn't there anyone either in the military or in a civilian position who, you know, sorta has that job already without having to be named a "Czar."

The answer is yes--and his name is General David Petraeus, CENTCOM Commander.

Do you think the Media--in all of their Mancrush Glory--will deign to point out that Senator John McCain just threw General Petraeus under the bus, backed up over him, drove over him again, and then left him there in the dust? If McCain thinks Afghanistan has gotten to the point where he needs to name a "czar," then he needs to promise to find a CENTCOM Commander who can replace Petraeus.

Unbelieveable.

--WS

US Base Overrun in Afghanistan

This is a horrific example of what we face in Afghanistan. A significant body of Taliban troops has overrun a Forward Operating Base or outpost and has inflicted devastating casualties with small arms and RPGs.

Taliban insurgents killed nine US troops when they attempted to overrun an American base as bloody fighting broke out in several parts of Afghanistan today.

Nato reported that the small American Combat Outpost in Dara-I-Pech district of Kunar Province, on the border with Nuristan Province in the east of the country, came under heavy fire at around 4.30am local time. Heavy fighting continued throughout the day with US forces calling in artillery, fast jets and Apache helicopters.

Nato spokesmen warned of casualties "on both sides", and in the last few minutes it has emerged that nine American soldiers were killed, making it one of the biggest single losses in a day for the coalition since military operations began in the country.

"Insurgents have been firing at the COP with small arms, machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars using homes, shops and the mosque in the village of Wanat for cover," said a Nato statement.

All I can say after that is, holy shit. This is bad. No amount of spin can be used to mask what this means--our troops are in for a long fight in Afghanistan and the enemy are getting bolder and more dangerous.

--WS

Israel Plans to Lobby Washington For an Attack on Iran

Laura Rozen says that the hard sell will start to happen over the next two weeks:

While the Israeli government considers the Bush administration highly sympathetic and sensitive to its security concerns, there are growing signs that Washington and Jerusalem may be diverging in their analysis of the urgency of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear program and its defensive military preparations for countering a possible strike, and their subsequent prospective timelines for considering possible military action against Iran. While Israeli national security experts say that Israel would not act without coordinating with the US, and there are other significant factors weighing against prospective Israeli military action on Iran before the Bush term ends, there are also emerging differences between the US and Israel on the accepted intelligence over when Iran would be considered to have a nuclear breakthrough, as well as what would constitute a "redline" that would prompt military action, Washington analysts say. In addition, the US, unlike Israel, feels more deeply constrained by the considerable investment it has made in blood and treasure in stabilizing Iraq, which could be risked by the tumult that could follow military action on Iran.

"My sense is the Pentagon would be worried or opposed to an Israeli attack," says David Wurmser, former Middle East adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, who left the White House job late last summer. "They are afraid it would inflame the situation in Iraq, which could undermine the US position there.

It's refreshing to hear Wurmser speaking a little more sensibly these days, but let's not forget that this "genius" and this "strategist" once joined Douglas Feith, Richard Perle and others to come up with a nearly ingeniuous plan to destabilize the entire Middle East based on assumptions that were wrong and ideas that dissipated into nothing when actually put in play by the Bush Administration.

So I don't know what Wurmser adds--an attack on Iran proper would legitimize the Iranian regime and cause the price of oil to skyrocket--thanks to the fact that it's already headed that way anyway. Every time someone beats the war drums, oil goes up a notch. The oil needed by the industrialized world is now transferring unprecedented wealth to the Middle East. Pretty soon, they'll be able to buy armies and protection anyway, so maybe attacking them now isn't so crazy.

Except that it is.

--WS

The Weapons Will ALWAYS Improve in War

Better, faster, deadlier and more lethal--that's the trend in war. As we increase our ability to protect our soldiers, the weapons that our enemies use to try to kill them also increases. The trick is to anticipate changes in tactics and weapons and always give our troops what they need. A sluggish Pentagon that has a broken procurement system and a bloated bureaucracy can't do that--but who the hell expected the enemy to strap propane tanks to rockets?

Suspected Shiite militiamen have begun using powerful rocket-propelled bombs to attack U.S. military outposts in recent months, broadening the array of weapons used against American troops.

U.S. military officials call the devices Improvised Rocket Assisted Munitions, or IRAMs. They are propane tanks packed with hundreds of pounds of explosives and powered by 107mm rockets. They are often fired by remote control from the backs of trucks, sometimes in close succession. Rocket-propelled bombs have killed at least 21 people, including at least three U.S. soldiers, this year.

The latest reported rocket-propelled bomb attack occurred Tuesday at Joint Security Station Ur, a base in northeastern Baghdad shared by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers. One U.S. soldier and an interpreter were wounded in the attack.

U.S. military officials say IRAM attacks, unlike roadside bombings and conventional mortar or rocket attacks, have the potential to kill scores of soldiers at once. IRAMs are fired at close range, unlike most rockets, and create much larger explosions. Most such attacks have occurred in the capital, Baghdad.

First of all, saying that they have "begun" to use these weapons is a misnomer--just by doing some quick research, I've found people talking about these incidents as far back as October, 2007.

Rockets fired at COP Cashe; 1 rocket seized (1)
A robot controlled by Soldiers from the 789th Ordnance Company, from Fort Benning, Ga., currently attached to the 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, investigates an Iranian 107mm rocket at a launch site Oct. 23 [2007]. Five rockets were fired at Combat Outpost Cashe from the site, but no soldiers were injured. Only one rocket managed to land inside the outpost perimeter. Date: 10/30/07

You can see that a weapon like that is relatively easy to transport, aim and fire at our troops and that it could easily be smuggled in a car. Add some propane tanks, and you're in business.

The question I always as, is this really a brand new phenomenon?

A June report on the Web site Long War Journal called the explosives-filled propane tanks "flying IEDs."

Militia members and insurgents have at times increased the sophistication of their weapons, but the rocket-propelled bombs are makeshift devices that also have been used in recent years by insurgents in Colombia. Propane tanks are ubiquitous in Iraq, where the fuel is widely used for cooking, making it hard for security forces to stop production of the bombs.

We always seem to be repeating our mistakes--here's a photo from the Vietnam War of a US soldier holding the remains of a 107mm rocket:



And much about what we learned about IEDs in the Vietnam War could have been applied to what we face today in Iraq. The difference is a technological one, not a philosophical one. Granted, adding propane tanks seems to be all the rage in Iraq since that's what the general population uses. I just hate to see us repeating our mistakes and failing to anticipate what's around the corner.

Winning With Body Counts

It sounds like an impressive number, but boasting about how many insurgents you've killed isn't an ideal way to practice Counterinsurgency (COIN) tactics.

A U.S. Marines commander said Wednesday his troops have killed 400 insurgents in southern Afghanistan since late April.

Col. Peter Petronzio, the commander of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, said the figure came from the governor of the southern Helmand province, where his troops have been deployed since late April.

Some 2,200 U.S. Marines moved into the town of Garmser in Helmand province to clean the area of insurgents.

Helmand province is the world's largest opium poppy growing region, the main ingredient in heroin. It is also the area with the highest level of insurgent activity in the country.

After months of fighting around Garmser, Petronzio said the area is not yet secure but is more stable.

"The Taliban proved they wanted to fight for Garmser and we took the fight to them," he told a news conference in Kabul.

Really, do we have to keep hearing about airstrikes, body counts and "last throes?"

...a body count tells you little, because you usually can’t know how many insurgents there were to start with, how many moved into the area, how many transferred from supporter to combatant status, or how many new fighters the conflict has created.

Wearing Out the Troops, Bush Administration Style

This is sickening to have to find out on the Thursday afternoon before a long holiday weekend--thanks for the News Dump, there, Pentagon Office of Public Affairs or whatever. These guys are NOT intended for long deployments and this is an ABUSE of the US Marine Corps.

The Pentagon has extended the tour of 2,200 Marines in Afghanistan, after insisting for months the unit would come home on time.

Marine Col. David Lapan confirmed Thursday that the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is doing combat operations in the volatile south, will stay an extra 30 days and come home in early November rather than October.

Military leaders as recently as Wednesday stressed the need for additional troops in Afghanistan. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has repeatedly praised the work of the 24th MEU in fighting Taliban militants in Helmand Province.

So, all of this talk about war with Iran--is it a pipe dream? Because there are no troops left. The cupboard is bare and we've exhausted our military.

When Bush leaves office, there won't be a single US combat division--Army, Marines, or Reserve/National Guard component--available for combat at 100% strength. That's the worst shape our military has been in since the start of the Korean War. Even during and after Vietnam, we had divisions sitting in Germany that were ready to fight. And in all of their infinite wisdom, they knew this was going to happen and they're deliberately leaving the next President without ANY military forces available to him. NONE.

It's a disgrace unparalleled in our history. A disgrace.

--WS

Are We Going to Find Out What Was There?

It would be a pretty shocking revelation if we find out anything dramatic about what was going on in Syria at the Al-Kibar site:

A delegation of the International Atomic Energy Agency arrived in Syria on Sunday, hoping to get to the bottom of the mystery of the Syrian remote building which was destroyed by the Israelis last September on suspicion it was a plutonium-producing reactor.

Led by IAEA chief inspector Olli Heinonen, the inspectors will stay until Tuesday.

Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian president, has recently told an Indian newspaper that the allegations were "fabricated 100 percent."

He said his country would welcome the visit but insisted the mission would be limited to the Al-Kibar site in the Syrian eastern desert, 90 miles north of the Iraqi border.

Syria's ambassador to the U.N. Ibraheem Jaafari denied late last month that the site was a nuclear installation, saying it only contained a disused military building.

The Israeli airstrike inside Syria on Sept. 6, 2007, reignited international debate over whether the Syrians are trying to overcome past obstacles by starting their own small nuclear program, or by trying to buy nuclear components from an outside supplier. Washington believes it is North Korea.

Well, the last person I would ever believe would be al-Assad, right after Bush. Isn't it sad when the credibility of the leader of the free world is about that as the idiot son of a Syrian dictator?

Arms Control Wonk has more info--including an interesting comparison of the site to some old ruined Byzantine fortresses and to the North Korean site at Yongbyong...

The facility at Al-Kibar:



A composite of ruined Byzantine fortresses, compiled by Arms Control Wonk:

Despite early press reports that the fuel channels atop the Al Kibar reactor core were identical to Yongbyon, I and others — including Geoff Forden, Cheryl Rofer and Richard Wendland — see some pretty significant differences that suggest Al Kibar might have been quite a bit smaller than its North Korean cousin.

To be clear, I don’t doubt that Al Kibar was a reactor and, although I think the evidence of North Korean involvement is less impressive than early press reports suggested, that’s my working hypothesis too.

But I don’t understand the claim that Al Kibar is a copy of Yongbyon in the strict sense — in particular, I don’t understand how the IC concluded that Al Kibar is the same size as Yongbyon.

Maybe--just maybe--we'll get some answers...

"What I am About to Tell You is Controlled Unclassified Information..."

Walter Pincus writes:

Sometime in the next few years, if a memorandum signed by President Bush this month ever goes into effect, one government official talking to another about information on terrorists will have to begin by saying: "What I am about to tell you is controlled unclassified information enhanced with specified dissemination."

That would mean, according to the memo, that the information requires safeguarding because "the inadvertent or unauthorized disclosure would create risk of substantial harm."

Bush's memorandum, signed on the eve of his daughter Jenna's wedding, introduced "Controlled Unclassified Information" as a new government category that will replace "Sensitive but Unclassified."

Such information -- though it does not merit the well-known national security classifications "confidential," "secret" or "top secret" -- is nonetheless "pertinent" to U.S. "national interests" or to "important interests of entities outside the federal government," the memo says.

What that means is this--the information is unclassified. Just because someone designates it "controlled" doesn't change the inherent fact that the information was once considered "unclassified."

It could be the contents of a phone book. It could be the location on a map of a building. It could be the menu at McDonald's. It could be the price of Air Jordans at Footlocker. It could be anything. And when you can classify "anything" you've effectively lost the game of keeping government secrets. You've now entered the silly season of limitless ridiculousness. You might as well hide in a hole and pray to God no one sees your ass sticking up into the air.

The Controlled Unclassified Information designation was the product of a year-long government study of how to replace the "sensitive but unclassified" category. "Among the 20 departments and agencies . . . surveyed, there are at least 107 unique markings and more than 131 different labeling or handling processes and procedures for SBU information," Ted McNamara of the office of the director of national intelligence told the House Homeland Security Committee in April 2007.

In other words, we have a considerable mess on our hands, and we are so terrified of our own shadow, we're just going to classify everything in order to save us from ourselves.

Welcome to the new America. Gone are the days of kicking ass and taking names. Gone are the people who could raise a nation out of the wilderness with their bare hands. Here are the days of hysterical screaming and bloody-eyeball fear.

UPDATE: Soldier who shot Koran removed from Iraq

Probably a good idea--although I hope they don't come down too hard on the soldier:

An American sniper was removed from Iraq after he used a copy of the Quran for target practice, the military said Sunday, a day after a U.S. commander held a formal ceremony apologizing to Sunni tribal leaders.

The elaborate ceremony _ in which one U.S. officer kissed a new copy of Islam's holy book before giving it to the tribal leaders _ reflected the military's eagerness to stave off anger among Sunni Arabs it has been cultivating as allies.

The tribesmen have become key in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq militants, who depict the American forces as anti-Islamic occupiers. One anti-U.S. Iraqi Sunni group condemned the Quran shooting, calling it "a hideous act." Similar perceived insults to Islam have triggered protests throughout the Muslim world.

Iraqi police found the bullet-riddled Quran with graffiti inside the cover on a firing range near a police station in Radwaniyah, a former insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said.

American commanders launched an inquiry that led to disciplinary action against the unidentified soldier, who has been removed from Iraq, Buckner said.

Members of the local U.S.-allied group said the Quran was found with 14 bullet holes in a field after U.S. troops withdrew from a base in the area.

Sheik Ahmed Khudayer al-Janabi, a local tribal leader, said the group had planned a protest march last Thursday but called it off under pressure from U.S. forces and to prevent any insurgent violence as retaliation.

The incident, which occurred on May 9 and was discovered two days later, was first reported by CNN, which broadcast a ceremony at which the top American commander in Baghdad apologized to tribal leaders Saturday in Radwaniyah. The military confirmed the details Sunday in an e-mailed response to a query.

"I come before you here seeking your forgiveness," Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond was quoted as saying at the ceremony. "In the most humble manner I look in your eyes today and I say please forgive me and my soldiers."

"The actions of one soldier were nothing more than criminal behavior," he added. "I've come to this land to protect you, to support you _ not to harm you _ and the behavior of this soldier was nothing short of wrong and unacceptable."

The problem with coming down hard on the soldier is this--it will drive the "conservative" American electorate crazy and will lead to outrage in communities that will then stage their own "shooting" of the Koran in order to support the soldier. The soldier should be disciplined and the matter should be dropped immediately. Making a "martyr" out of someone who did something stupid and immature accomplishes nothing. The apology has been delivered, and that should be enough. Kudos to the US Army for at least recognizing that they had to do something. Now is not the time to hand radical elements fodder for controversy, be they the radicals in the Middle East who hide behind Islam or the radicals in this country who hide behind Christianity and the Republican Party to further their own agendas.

Shooting the Koran was offensive because it wasted a perfectly good book and it was offensive to the sensibilities of the people who revere that book. When you are sent into a country to try and win the hearts and minds of the people over to a more peaceful way of settling their political differences, shooting their holy book is a frustratingly immature and stupid thing to do. It teaches no one about free speech to use the opportunity of making a statement to ruin a book with bullets and to write profanity in that book. It is just as wrong to shoot a Torah, a Bible, or any other book. It is a symbolic thing that wallows in the stupidity of the act. No one's mind is changed from shooting a book. Reading a book, on the other hand, is something this soldier should be asked to do, as in, reading the COIN manual, reading a book about basic tolerance for other religions, and reading a book about how to express oneself in a more mature and thoughtful manner. This is the kind of thing that sets small minds to twittering, and we need much less of that.

So, Who's Really in Charge?

The US regularly holds detainees that were freed by Iraqi courts.

In the eyes of Iraqi justice, Yahya Ali Humadi is a free man.

To the U.S. military, he's another of the detainees in yellow jumpsuits held at the sprawling Camp Bucca in southern Iraq.

Humadi — ordered released nine months ago after an Iraqi judge dropped all charges — now spends his days in a legal limbo. It's one that has confronted and confounded thousands of other Iraqis since 2003 who have been freed by their nation's courts but remained in U.S. custody.

"I don't know why the U.S. army brought him to an Iraqi court, if they intend to keep him for an unlimited time," said Humadi's lawyer, Samiya al-Baghdadi.

The American military, however, sees no contradiction.

Commanders say the current international mandate in Iraq, as well as general codes of war, allow them to hold any prisoner until the detainee is no longer considered a threat to U.S. forces. Local law and court rulings do not apply, they add.

The lack of a legal framework--an operative Status of Forces Agreement or SOFA that has been ratified and approved by Congress and not secretly negotiated between the Bush Administration and al-Maliki's government--would fundamentally alter what rules the US would have to abide by. Without that framework, anything goes:

These dual realities — freedom granted by Iraqi courts but continued detention by the Americans — have been faced by about 3,000 Iraqis since 2003 and stand as a sharp contrast between U.S. policies on the battlefield and Washington's appeals for Iraqis to build credible civic institutions.

The differences could grow even more pronounced as Iraqi authorities move ahead with an amnesty program that was strongly supported by the White House as a step to reconcile Iraq's rival factions.

The amnesty rulings could offer an early exit for many of the 27,000 prisoners in Iraqi hands. They also could wipe the slate for hundreds of the roughly 22,000 detainees held by the U.S. military — which then must decide whether to abide by the decisions or ignore a formula that Washington applauded.

"the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life..."

Photo: Travis and Willard Twiggs

Marine with PTSD kills brother, self:

Last month, Marine Staff Sgt. Travis N. "T-Bo" Twiggs went to the White House with a group of Iraq war veterans called the Wounded Warriors Regiment and met President George W. Bush. Twiggs had been through four tours in Iraq, one in Afghanistan and months of therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder in which he said he was on up to 12 different medications.

"He said, `Sir, I've served over there many times, and I would serve for you any time,' and he grabbed the president and gave him a big hug," said Kellee Twiggs, his widow. About two weeks later, Travis Twiggs went absent without leave from his job in Quantico, Virginia. He and his brother drove to the Grand Canyon, where their car was found hanging in a tree in what appeared to be a failed attempt to drive into the chasm. The brothers carjacked a vehicle at the park Monday.

Two days later they were at a southwestern Arizona border checkpoint, and took off when they were asked to pull into a secondary inspection area, Border Patrol spokesman Michael Bernacke said. Eighty miles (130 kilometers) later, the car was on the Tohono O'odham reservation, its tires wrecked by spike strips.

As tribal police and Border Patrol agents closed in, Twiggs, 36, apparently fatally shot his 38-year-old brother, Willard J. "Will" Twiggs, then killed himself. Pinal County Sheriff's spokesman Mike Minter said no motive has been established. But Kellee Twiggs said the decorated Marine would still be alive if the military had given him enough help.

[SNIP]

Travis Twiggs, who enlisted in the Marine Corps in 1993 and held the combat action ribbon, wrote about his efforts to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder in the January issue of the Marine Corps Gazette.

The symptoms would disappear when he began each tour, he said, but came back stronger than ever when he came home.

He wrote that his life began to "spiral downward" after the tour in which two Marines from his platoon died.

"I cannot describe what a leader feels when he does not bring everyone home," he wrote. "To make matters even worse, I arrived at the welcome home site only to find that those two Marines' families were waiting to greet me as well. I remember thinking, 'Why are they here?"'

Weeks later, Twiggs "saw a physician's assistant who said that was the severest case of PTSD she'd seen in her life," his widow said.

He began receiving treatment, but the Marine wrote that he mixed his medications with alcohol and that his symptoms did not go away until he started his final tour in Iraq.

When he came home, "All of my symptoms were back, and now I was in the process of destroying my family," he wrote. "My only regrets are how I let my command down after they had put so much trust in me and how I let my family down by pushing them away."

Kellee Twiggs said her husband was "very, very different, angry, agitated, isolated and so forth," upon his return. "He was just doing crazy things."

She said her husband was treated in the psychiatric ward of Bethesda Naval Medical Center and then sent to a Veterans Administration facility for four months.

Most recently, Travis Twiggs was assigned to the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory at Quantico, a job he said helped him "get my life back on track."

"Every day is a better day now," he wrote in the Marine Corps Gazette. "... Looking back, I don't believe anyone is to blame for my craziness, but I do think we can do better."

Twiggs urged others suffering from similar problems to seek help. "PTSD is not a weakness. It is a normal reaction to a very violent situation," he wrote.

Kellee Twiggs said she cannot understand why her husband was not sent to a specialized PTSD clinic in New Jersey.

"They let him out. He was OK for a while and then it all started over again," she said.

"Skillful Humanitarian Workers Are Not Necessary"

The US government moves to show the ruling military junta of Myanmar that it is serious about providing aid to the cyclone victims:

Admiral Timothy J. Keating flew in a U.S. Air Force C-130 from an air base in Thailand that is turning into a staging area for Burma relief. Accompanying him was Henrietta H. Fore, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development. At the airport in Rangoon, Burma's largest city, they conferred with Burma's top naval officer in the highest-level military contact between the two countries in decades.

Keating and Fore did not go beyond the airport before flying back to Thailand. Fore said she believed that "our discussions were a good first step" toward broader U.S. help.

Hours later, a second U.S. flight left Thailand with relief supplies. Lt. Col. Douglas Powell said the Marine C-130 cargo plane left for Yangon Tuesday carrying 19,900 pounds of water, blankets and mosquito nets. He said a third flight carrying more supplies would leave later in the day.

The United States has troops in the area that could assist in the humanitarian mission, but, so far, they have been told not to help:

The United States has offered to deploy as many as 4,000 Marines, six C-130 planes and a large number of heavy-lift helicopters in what would be its largest disaster relief effort since the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. It will also have three naval ships, with helicopters on board, positioned off Burma's southwest coast within 48 hours.

"We have a broad array of personnel and equipment, and we are ready to respond as soon as the Burmese give us permission," Keating said.

The cargo plane on which Keating and Fore traveled delivered bottled water, blankets and mosquito nets. U.S. and Burmese military personnel jointly unloaded the supplies, which the Burmese promised to send quickly to the disaster zone by helicopter.

In another sign of gradual cooperation, U.N. officials said that the Burmese had now approved visas for 34 aid workers.

The U.S. government, meanwhile, moved Monday to allow individuals to send unlimited amounts of money to people in Burma.

Myanmar stopped short, again, of allowing meaningful assistance:

Myanmar told the United States on Monday that basic needs of the storm victims are being fulfilled and that "skillful humanitarian workers are not necessary."

UPDATE I / WS 8:40AM

Anne Applebaum has more on this story:

But in one very narrow sense, the cruel, power-hungry, violent and xenophobic generals who run Burma are not irrational at all: Given their most urgent goal -- to maintain power at all costs -- their reluctance to accept international aid in the wake of a devastating cyclone makes perfect sense. It's straightforward: The junta cares about its own survival, not the survival of its people. Thus the death toll is thought to have reached 100,000, a further 1.5 million Burmese are at risk of epidemics and starvation, parts of the country are still underwater, hundreds of thousands of people are camped in the open without food or clean water -- and, yes, if foreigners come to distribute aid, the legitimacy of the regime might be threatened.

Especially foreigners in large numbers, using high-tech vehicles that don't exist in Burma, distributing cartons of rice marked "Made in the USA" or even "UNDP," of course. All natural disasters -- from the Armenian earthquake that helped bring down the Soviet Union to Hurricane Katrina, which damaged the Bush administration -- have profound political implications, as do the aid efforts that follow them. The Burmese generals clearly know this.

Hence the "logic" of the regime's behavior in the days since the cyclone: the impounding of airplanes full of food; the initial refusal to grant visas to relief workers or landing rights to foreign aircraft; the initial refusal to allow American (or, indeed, any) military forces to supply the ships, planes and helicopters necessary for the mass distribution of food and supplies that Burma needs. Nor is this simply anti-Western paranoia: The foreign minister of Thailand has been kept out, too. Even Burmese citizens have been prevented from taking food to the flood-damaged regions, on the grounds that "all assistance must be channeled through the military." The result: Aid organizations that have workers on the ground are talking about the hundreds of thousands of homeless Burmese who may soon begin dying of cholera, diarrhea and other diseases. This isn't logic by our standards, but it is logic by the standards of Burma's leaders. Which is why we have to assume that the regime's fear of foreign relief workers could even increase as the crisis grows, threatening the regime further.

Another Reason To Leave Iraq

When you think about it, shouldn't we just pick one side and get it over with? I mean, if we're going to be in Iraq, why not reject the side where all of the untrained, ill-equipped troops are and take up with the heavily armed, motivated and disciplined troops? Sure, they hate us. No, I don't think this is a serious option. But I'm just a little sick and tired of having to prop up a failed Army full of corrupt Iraqi officers who don't take care of their men.

BAGHDAD — A company of Iraqi soldiers abandoned their positions on Tuesday night in Sadr City, defying American soldiers who implored them to hold the line against Shiite militias.

The retreat left a crucial stretch of road on the front lines undefended for hours and led to a tense series of exchanges between American soldiers and about 50 Iraqi troops who were fleeing.

Capt. Logan Veath, a company commander in the 25th Infantry Division, pleaded with the Iraqi major who was leading his troops away from the Sadr City fight, urging him to return to the front.

“If you turn around and go back up the street those soldiers will follow you,” Captain Veath said. “If you tuck tail and cowardly run away they will follow up that way, too.”

Captain Veath’s pleas failed, and senior American and Iraqi commanders mounted an urgent effort to regain the lost ground. An elite Iraqi unit was rushed in and with the support of the Americans began to fight its way north.

This episode was a blow to the American effort to push the Iraqis into the lead in the struggle to wrest control of parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army militia and what Americans and Iraqis say are Iranian-backed groups.

Yes--those are American troops having to contend with failed Iraqi leadership and failed attempts at building an Iraqi Army and Security Forces apparatus that will stand and fight. Those are American troops put in danger of being attacked or flanked or ambushed because Iraqi troops wouldn't man-up and fight. This is yet another example as to why you can't force people to build their own country. They have to want it for themselves. You cannot hand it to them. Nation building is a failed, broken, discredited idea as it applies to people who don't want the nation built in the first place.

And we're supposed to like having these clowns on our side?

Violence in Afghanistan--the UN Weighs In

Photo: Panjshir, Afghanistan


No matter how hard they want us to stop paying attention to the failure of this administration to finish the job it started in Afghanistan, we're still going to keep a watchful eye on what's going on. When you outsource your responsibilities to NATO and the United Nations and hope a few thousand British, French and German troops can make up for all of those brigades that are tied down in Iraq, you're just asking for more scrutiny:

(AP) Insurgent and terrorist violence in Afghanistan increased sharply in 2007, with over 8,000 conflict-related deaths and an average of 566 incidents per month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council, Ban said the number of violent incidents rose from an average of 425 per month in 2006. The number of suicide attacks jumped to 160 attacks in 2007 from 123 in 2006 — with 68 attempts thwarted in 2007 compared with 17 in 2006, he said.

While the insurgency draws strength from some Afghans, the secretary-general said, "the support of foreign-based networks in providing leadership, planning, training, funding and equipment clearly remains crucial to its viability."

Insurgent violence in Afghanistan is at its highest level since U.S. forces invaded the country in 2001 to oust the hard-line Islamic Taliban rulers, who harbored al Qaeda leaders blamed for planning the attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The focus of the violence has been in Afghanistan's southern and eastern provinces, but the insurgents are increasingly using Iraq-style tactics, such as roadside bombs, suicide attacks and kidnappings to hit foreign and Afghan targets around the country.

"Afghanistan remains roughly divided between the generally more stable west and north, where security problems are linked to factionalism and criminality, and the south and east characterized by an increasingly coordinated insurgency," the secretary-general said.

"In fact, even within the south, conflict has been concentrated in a fairly small area: 70 percent of security incidents occurred in 10 percent (40) of Afghanistan's districts, home to 6 percent of the country's population," Ban said.

That's what is so heartbreaking about Afghanistan--forty or fifty thousand US troops could make a significant difference there. In turn, perhaps other nations would up the ante. Securing and clearing areas might work better in Afghanistan than it does in Iraq--we'll never know.

What we do know is this--the margin by which Afghanistan is slipping away from us gets thinner by the day, and we don't have the troops to make a difference.