Can Gates Turn It Around?

If President CHENEY had stayed outta Iraq, we would not be in this position. You Neo-cons have ruined this military, overstretching it and numerous deployments. Not to mention it was all based on LIES. Thanx Dubya, for NOTHING. Dumsfeld too. The ultimate REMF. See ya in hell, jo's.

"Bush has never gotten due credit for the sheer nerve of this unprecedented purge." Why would he get "credit" for this, it would make more sense for him to get the blame of putting the wrong people in those jobs in the first place, especially Rumsfeld.

NOW THIS IS GETTING A LITTLE FRIGHTENING. WE ALL KNOW THE G.O.P. DIED IN NOVEMBER 2007, BUT THERE ARE PERSONS HERE WHO SOUND LIKE REPUBLICANS. ARE THEY ZOMBIE REPUBLICANS? SINCE WHEN DO DEAD REPUBLICANS HAVE A SAY?

Gee what a surprise - more Liberal revisionist history. We're going to lose in Afghanistan for one simple reason - the Terrorists know that OBie will Cut-n-Run eventually.

Secretary Gates appears to have become real desperate in wanting to win the Afghan conflict ??? by deploying more troops, changing the US commander, and what not.

Not long ago, an Afghan school-boy was asked, ???Which do you prefer, the Americans or the Taliban???? Despite having been given pens and notebooks by an Afghan army officer via the US aid, his cohorts answered, ???The Taliban.???

Does the above anecdote not reveal the underlying resentment of foreign forces even by the young Afghan children? Have this not spoken volume for most of the natives of the Korengal Valley in the eastern province bordering Pakistan? Their seemingly undivided support for the insurgence could prove to be the biggest stumbling block for the allies to defeat and eradicate the Taliban.

Why keep fighting the futile war then, where the only consequence would be the ever increasing loss of irreplaceable precious human lives?
(Tan Boon Tee)

The history of US military command in Afghanistan is an odd and discouraging one. Tommy Franks left with the job half- or less-done, and then damaged the services he had left beind by picking out the best officers and units to follow him into Iraq -- which, also, he left early but after ensureing that insutrgents would have a plentiful supply of materials for amking IEDs to kill the Americans staying behind.

At one point, the chief of ground operations in Afghanistan was an air force general (!) who didn't like hearing from army officers who claimed to know something about it -- as Army Times reporter Sean Naylor has reported at length. .

Pataeus's achievements in an Iraqi city are considerably misunderstood. They were based on bribery. When he left, the bribes slowed or ended, and the "peace" in that neighborhood ended. But he wound up regardless as military chief of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Jimmy Breslin used to call this process "failure upwards" -- an often-noted characteristic of embedded bureaucracies. This month, Petraeus told the world through the columns of The Wall Street Journal that the US is in effect failing against the Taliban. Nobody seems to have noticed -- which is very odd indeed.

This Newsweek article's passing claim about peace and victory in Iraq are also easily questioned, but this isn't the place for that. We'll know just how successful US aims have been when the Americanforces get out, clearing the ground for more community action. No other test can mean much.