I’m glad that someone is paying some attention to Afghanistan. We need to find the Taliban and kill or capture their leaders. We need to upgrade the country. Afghanistan is a country which lives without many of the things that you and I take for granted. Running clean water. Roads. Electricity. Sewage system. We need to help them get these things. Need to help them create an economy that is NOT based on heroin.
All of these things are possible if we put some money and resources into Afghanistan. Oh, and we can destroy Al Qaeda while we are over there.
Out of the thousands of terrible decisions that President George W. Bush and his administration have made, the worst has to be deciding to stop chasing the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. I guess that we can also lump in the decision not to send more troops into the Tora Bora mountains to encircle Bin Laden and kill or capture him at that time. Then there was the decision to push the Taliban and Bin Laden out of the capital city of Kabul instead of closing the city off and cornering all of Al Qaeda’s top leadership. All of these decisions were terrible. We are living with the consequences of these decisions now.
The Taliban attacked an American base in Eastern Afghanistan this week. Now, let’s ruminate over this for a second. American has the most powerful military in the world. Yet, the Taliban launched an coordinated offensive against us. They must have thought either they could win the battle and take the base or they could learn from the American response and use that knowledge in a future attack. Both scenarios are depressing. (They did overrun the base with their second attack.)
Over the last six years, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars in Afghanistan. What have we gotten for our investment? Heroin. Afghan farmers have produced more heroin under the Bush administration then they ever did under the Mullah Omar and the Taliban. Tons of this stuff have flooded the world market. Yet, the Bush administration has done next to nothing to stop it.
We are making the same mistake that former President Reagan made over 20 years ago. U.S. policy was to confront Russia everywhere, keeping the pressure on. When Russia invaded Afghanistan, we supplied weapons to the Afghan warlords and mujaheddin. Russia was pushed out. We declared victory and left. But we didn’t help rebuild the county. More fighting occurred. This time the fighting was basically a civil war. The Taliban won. We continued to ignore events until 9/11.
So, fast forward to late 2001 when we ran the Taliban out of Afghanistan. We left just enough troops to make sure that Kabul will not fall back into the hands of the Taliban as we went after those WMD’s. Afghanistan has been allowed to fester. We don’t have enough troops or money to build a society that respects the rule of law, much less a society that has telephones for commerce or roads to efficiently move produce to market. Six years after the Taliban were pushed out, they are back like Freddie Krueger.
Now the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is looking for more troops to send Freddie back to where he came from– but there aren’t any more troops. Unless Gates has the powers of Samantha Stevens, on the TV show Bewitched, twitching his nose is not going to produce any more troops. All of our combat units are either in Iraq or in Afghanistan or they have just come back from deployment. There are no good short term solutions.
I don’t think that I have said anything in this post that would be considered radical or left-wing or controversial. This should be the American stance but, as you know, it is not. Bush supporters somehow try to argue that Afghanistan really doesn’t matter. The really fight against terrorism is in Iraq.
Here’s Fred Barnes trying to make this case on Fox News Sunday:
For the last three years, I have asserted that we need to get control of Afghanistan. We need to find the Taliban leaders and kill or capture them in order to destroy the Taliban. But, the Bush administration thought that a “surge” was not needed in Afghanistan but instead in Iraq. As a result, Afghanistan has been allowed to smolder while the Taliban has become more organized.
I find it interesting that the Taliban thought that they were strong enough to test an American military outpost. This is a bad sign of things to come. We need another 20 to 30 thousand troops in Afghanistan, now.
Nine U.S. soldiers were killed in heavy fighting Sunday at a military base in eastern Afghanistan near the Pakistani border, according to a Western official. The attack was the deadliest against U.S. forces in the country since 2005.
The clash began when insurgents in a nearby village attacked a joint Afghan and American military outpost in Konar province early Sunday morning, NATO said in a statement. The insurgents fired on the base with machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades for several hours, injuring 19 Afghan and NATO troops. (more… )
Update: I was going to post a whole new story but this is really a continuation. The Taliban has overrun this outpost (near the eastern town of Wanat). U.S. forces pulled out. We only had 25 soldiers at this post and nine were killed a couple of days ago. Still, we need to take the fight to the Taliban. We need more troops. NATO ain’t it. At least not right now. NATO, like the rest of the world, looks to us to lead. Once, we wake up and truly engage the Taliban then NATO forces will also wake up.
The Bush administration should be ashamed that we have 25 soldiers on an island. That just isn’t right.
I have a couple of computers in my home office. One is primarily for blogging and the other is for everything else. Well, the ‘everything else’ computer had a power supply/motherboard problem. Once I fixed those, it seemed had a hard drive issue also. Reloading everything that I had on that computer is taking some time. Some programs just are not working well for me. So, I’m reloading Windows.
I’m saying all of this as an excuse for not blogging as much as usual.
I will add one bit of news. The New York Times is reporting a new poll which shows that blacks, whites and Latinos perceive American race relations differently. No duh!!!
Oh, I have to add this interrogation video. It speaks for itself. I’ll look for other versions without a commentator yacking over it.
Here’s that interrogation video. This kid was reportedly 15 or 16 years old at the time of his video. He is a Canadian citizen.
I have endlessly discussed the problems that Senator John McCain seems to have with his past. There seems to be no topic that McCain can’t distance himself from, well, himself. I’m not going to use the tired phrase “flip-flop.” Instead, I’ll say that in the year 2000, McCain really positioned himself as a maverick by taking positions that were not popular with the Right. It seems that he has changed his mind on most of those positions.
Rachael Maddow reviews how McCain loves being on the same page with President Bush on Iraq.
Great OpEd in the New York Times on Senator Barack Obama. It clearly needs to be read -
We have to have a talk about Barack Obama.
I know, I know. You’re upset. You think the guy you fell in love with last spring is spending the summer flip-flopping his way to the right. Drifting to the center. Going all moderate on you. So you’re withholding the love. Also possibly the money.
I feel your pain. I just don’t know what candidate you’re talking about.
Think back. Why, exactly, did you prefer Obama over Hillary Clinton in the first place? Their policies were almost identical — except his health care proposal was more conservative. You liked Barack because you thought he could get us past the old brain-dead politics, right? He talked — and talked and talked — about how there were going to be no more red states and blue states, how he was going to bring Americans together, including Republicans and Democrats.
Exactly where did everybody think this gathering was going to take place? Left field? (more… )
More later… I have a couple of trauma patients to take care of.
Senator Barack Obama has taken some heat from the left over the last two to three weeks. Well, on Thursday of last week, Obama seemed to leave the door open to changing his Iraq policy. The media went crazy over the weekend. It is was flip-flop-a-thon. “There appears to be no issue that Barack Obama is not willing to reverse himself on for the sake of political expedience,” said Alex Conant, a Republican National Committee spokesman.
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama waded into controversy on Thursday over his plans to withdraw U.S. combat troops from Iraq, first saying he might “refine” his views but later declaring his stance had remained unchanged for more than a year.
Obama was forced to call reporters back for a second news conference in Fargo, North Dakota, after he initially left open the possibility of revising his 16-month timetable for pulling U.S. combat forces from Iraq.
“Let me be as clear as I can be. I intend to end this war. My first day in office I will bring the joint chiefs of staff in and I will give them a new mission and that is to end this war,” Obama told reporters in his second news conference.
But he added: “I would be a poor commander in chief if I didn’t take facts on the ground into account.” (more… )
The 464th Armored are spending their 3rd Independence Day in Iraq. They were a part of the Thunder Run which was one of the important maneuvers used to take Baghdad. It is sad that they are back in Iraq. If we are going to fight prolonged wars then we need to have enough troops to give guys like these the rest that they need.
After 6 years, the Columbian government rescued 15 hostages. This rescue amazes me because perhaps it is a sign that the Columbian government is taking back their country.
Colombian commandos disguised as rebels spirited 15 hostages to freedom on Wednesday, including Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian politician held for six years, and three American military contractors, according to the hostages and the Colombian authorities.
“I never expected to get out of there alive,” said Ms. Betancourt, 46, her voice sounding frail but charged with excitement, in comments broadcast on the radio.
On Colombian television, Ms. Betancourt wept and smiled as she recounted a chain of events that seemed scripted for film, complete with Colombian agents infiltrating guerrilla camps and borrowing Israeli tracking technology to zero in on their target. (more… )
It is very hard as a freshman Senator to get anything of substance done in Congress but Senator Jim Webb of Virginia has done exactly that. He pushed the GI Bill through both houses of Congress. He attached the bill to other legislation and dared the President to veto it. Senator Jim Webb may be that rarest of politicians. One who has principles and sticks by them. He is someone who said that he supports the troops and then proved to EVERYONE that he, in fact, supports the troops.
POLITICAL PROMISES are easy to make, harder to keep. So it is a testament to the tenacity of Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) and the justice of his cause that Congress has enacted a new GI Bill for war veterans. The freshman senator’s ability to work across party lines means that the men and women who risk their lives for America’s well-being will, in return, get expanded education benefits, along with opportunities for better futures.
The expansion of education benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans is part of the $257.5 billion emergency spending bill that passed the Senate on Thursday. The House gave its approval earlier, and President Bush is expected to sign it this week. The timing is fitting, considering that 64 years ago last Sunday, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed into law the original GI Bill, which made a college education affordable for millions of World War II veterans. Today’s warriors are equally deserving, but the system, designed for a peacetime military, has not kept pace with the costs of college. Mr. Webb’s bill — The Post-9/11 Veterans Educational Assistance Act — is true to the original in providing full tuition, housing and living costs. (more…)
There are very few politicians that I admire. As I read more and more about these guys and gals, they really don’t resemble anything that I’m familiar with. Senator Jim Webb maybe that rare guy who promises that he will be over on Tuesday to help you built that back deck and on Tuesday he shows up to help.
I congratulate Senator Webb and Senator Hagel for getting this bill through. I also congratulate our troops for a job well done. Here’s their reward.
North Korea dynamited the dirty gray cooling tower at its deactivated Yongbyon nuclear facility on Friday, a made-for-TV event intended to show the United States and the world that it is serious about abandoning its nuclear weapons program.
After a loud explosive charge, the 60-foot tower imploded within seconds, melting into a thick white cloud of smoke and dust. The late afternoon demolition was filmed by television news crews invited from the five countries that for years have been pressing Kim Jong Il’s totalitarian state to back away from nuclear confrontation. (more…)
Threatening North Korea for 5 years didn’t do anything except allow North Korea to build several nuclear weapons. Suddenly, the Bush administration tried diplomacy. They kicked John Bolton and Donald Rumsfeld to the curb and started talking. Now, North Korea is dismantling their nuclear facility. (The Bush administration has pieced together exactly what Bill Clinton had done nearly 7 - 8 years ago.)
President Bush today lifted some trade sanctions against North Korea and acted to remove the country from a list of states that sponsor terrorism, after the isolated Stalinist regime turned over a key document detailing its rogue nuclear program.
Nearly seven years after Bush described North Korea as part of “an axis of evil” and less than two years after Pyongyang stunned the world by exploding a small nuclear device, Bush said the receipt of the nuclear disclosure marked the start of an “action for action” process meant to end with the full dismantling of the country’s nuclear facilities and weapons. (more…)
I’ll repeat my top story - George Carlin died last night of heart failure.
The Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs who runs their Fact Checker blog has given Barack Obama three Pinocchio’s for his “reversal” on campaign finance. I don’t know. I guess if I was a McCain supporter I would be furious over this. Obama has made the right decision. It will allow him to compete in all 50 states.
Atlanta Magazine is completely dedicated to the water shortage in Atlanta in specific and Georgia in general. They even delve into the good intentions and bad ideas of the Georgia Legislature. If you live anywhere which has the potential of being water starved this is clearly worth a read. By the way, could conservatism be to blame for the current water shortage?
The rival faction in Zimbabwe has pulled out of the election runoff because of the violence against his supporters. I continue to be amazed at the lack of coverage that this is getting in the major news papers and newscasts.
Frank Rich has a fabulous op-ed on the forgotten war — Iraq. Although I mention the 51 deaths in a recent car bombing here on my blog, most major newscasts did not cover it. Most Americans agree that we need to get out of a rack. Therefore, we’re just waiting to sign the final papers.
Over 800 people are missing from a capsized ferry in the Philippines. A major typhoon hit the island on Saturday. Maybe it’s just me but it appears that the Philippines may have the worst natural disasters in the world.
Do you remember Boone Pickens? Don’t vomit. He was a billionaire who funded The Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. He offered $1 million to anyone who could prove that their allegations were wrong. 10 of John Kerry’s mates have written a 13 page report refuting The Swift Boat Veterans. I wonder if Mr. Pickens will keep his word.
In spite of the criticism and outright bashing that comes from bloggers and politicians about the mainstream media, in general, and the New York Times, in specific, there are a few things in the New York Times (and papers like it) do better than anyone else. Scott Shane has a fabulous article on Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind 9/11. The article takes us inside the interrogation. He shows us the good and the bad inside the CIA. This is a must read article!
Did you miss this article? 1200 prisoners escaped from a prison in Afghanistan. 350 of them were Taliban fighters. What is this a Hollywood movie? Oh yeah, we have Afghanistan under control.
Oil producing and Oil consuming counties are meeting in Saudi Arabia. With $140 per barrel oil, it seems that the oil-producing countries are somewhat worried about oil prices. I guarantee they do not have our best interests at heart.
The banking industry has yet another reason to worry. It appears that Americans are cash-strapped. Therefore late payments are at an all-time high for car loans, small business loans, construction loans — everything.
Barack Obama and John McCain see the government’s role in flood protection a little differently. The levee system is a mess and only the government can coordinate and fix them. Regional and not local plans are needed.
I’m sorry. I paid too little attention to Zimbabwe. The situation in this African country has been deteriorating for a while. National election results have been ignored. Robert Mugabe is enacting an all too familiar story. The one-time liberator has now become the oppressor. Government assassins are roaming the countryside gunning down opposition leaders.
CBS’ Lara Logan reports from Afghanistan. She interviews an Afghan warlord who has been killing American soldiers and evading American capture. Once again, this report shows us that Afghanistan isn’t fixed. We have a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. We need to build roads. We need to stop the exporting of poppy. We must extend the reach of the government beyond Kandahar.
Brian Katulis from the Center for American Progress is my guest. We discuss his new book, Afghanistan, his recent trip to Pakistan and, of course, Iraq. We also begin our $75 give away. We figure that it is expensive out there with food and gas prices. We want to help, at least a little bit. We will give away $75 each week for the next 4 weeks. For most cars, $75 should get you a tank of gas and a soft drink. Enjoy!!
Who would prejudge a beautiful well dressed blonde? Well, I would for one. I try not to prejudge any one but it happens. Lara Logan is a beautiful woman who has been in Iraq for over 5 years. I just didn’t think that she would bring it. I thought she would sugar coat what’s going on. NOT!! In your face!! She doesn’t pull any punches. When was the last time that the American people has seen a dead American soldier. That was one of her rhetorical questions. Jon Stewart was blown away by her frankness.
Basically, I’m a happy guy. I love to laugh. I’m married to beautiful, thoughtful, supportive wife. I’m living my childhood dream. I’m a doctor. A friend of mine sent me an e-mail that touched a nerve. It was about happiness. The first paragraph reported that polls show that vast majority of Americans are unhappy with the direction of our country and our President’s leadership. The e-mail went on to berate Americans for being unhappy. We have a great economy, it said. We have jobs and a roof over our heads. It went on and on then ended with the question - what is there to be unhappy about? I thought about this e-mail for a little while then I wrote the following -
Our unhappiness is clear. We should be unhappy. When we are lied to by you’re your parents you’re unhappy. When people you trusted, people you poured your heart, soul and dreams into turn out to be con-men, you’re unhappy. Vice President Cheney stated, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors — confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.” None of this was true.
When a Black man who is running for president of the United States in the 2007 is called a “Halfican” by several leading right wing commentators and there is no action taken against them, I’m unhappy. When those same commentators play a song called, “Puff the Magic Negro” sung in Al Sharpton’s voice and it’s about Barack Obama and these commentators are still on the air, I’m unhappy.
When politicians stand up and say that we need to end this war like John Warner (Republican Senator from Virginia) and then vote against timetables, troop withdrawal and giving troops some time away from the front, yep, I’m unhappy.
When the average family has 2 incomes and still can’t make ends meet, I’m unhappy. The average income for the top 20 Hedge Fund managers was $654 million last year. Average! WE have a system in place where if you are born rich you can’t lose. If you are born poor, good luck! [Read more →]
I’m sorry but it has been awhile since I’ve done my news Roundup. Work has been extremely busy.
Let’s start in Iraq when the US government is negotiating with the Iraqi government over our terms for stay in Iraq. First of all, I find this relatively funny. Iraqis really didn’t ask us to come invade their country. The majority of Iraqis have ordered us to leave for some time. But yet we’re negotiating to stay. Iraqi officials are calling for a significant reduction in our scope and the number of troops that we have in Iraq. The Bush administration, of course, wants us to stay and do whatever we want for as long as we want.
Car bomb in Baghdad kills 50. Again, it seems like we don’t have enough troops to do the job adequately. We can clearly control the battleground. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough troops to cover the whole country. Just yesterday, four civilians were killed in a suicide attack in northern Baghdad.
The underbelly of the Republican Party continues to raise its ugly head. A campaign button has shown up at the Texas Republican convention which asked the question — if Obama is president will we still call it the White House. Now, tell me racism does not run rampant in the Republican Party.
On the campaign trail, John McCain’s delegation has labeled Barack Obama’s approach to foreign affairs in terrorism as they “September 10 mindset.” The Barack Obama campaign has responded by sending Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar for Clinton and Bush. Richard Clarke does not seem to back down from anyone. Clark, again, restated Obama’s comprehensive antiterrorism plan which states that he is willing to act on actionable intelligence and even to pursue Al Qaeda into Pakistan. Remember that the Republicans recoiled when Obama said that more than six months ago.
For reasons that are unclear, at least there are unclear to me, our veterans can’t get a break. It seems that our veterans are being asked to enroll in pharmaceutical drug trials but are not being told of all of the potential side effects of those drugs. First, let me say that actual patient trials, are extremely important in developing new drugs and testing old drugs. Secondly, patients should be and must be informed of all the known potential side effects. Then, let me go one step further, every side effect is not have equal risk. The wrists or the potential of a side effect actually happening to that person needs to be related. I understand the difficulty of informed consent. It is hard to inform a patient or a patient’s family when a patient is psychotic. Yet, every effort must be made.
DNC continues to push for John McCain’s campaign to obey the campaign laws. They are pushing for an official investigation.
Errington C. Thompson, MD, is a surgeon, scholar, fulltime sports fan and part-time political activist. He is active in a number of community projects and initiatives. Through medicine, he strives to improve the physical health of all he treats...
Out of the thousands of terrible decisions that President George W. Bush and his administration have made, the worst has to be deciding to stop chasing the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden. I guess that we can also lump in the decision not to send more troops into the Tora Bora mountains to encircle Bin Laden and kill or capture him at that time. Then there was the decision to push the Taliban and Bin Laden out of the capital city of Kabul instead of closing the city off and cornering all of Al Qaeda’s top leadership. All of these decisions were terrible. We are living with the consequences of these decisions now.
