So, a pretentious group of musicians is upset that their music is being used to torment America’s most dangerous enemies?
And now they want the U.S. government to release an official song list?
I can’t imagine that such a document actually exists. Are we supposed to believe that CIA and Pentagon interrogators around the world were issued [...]

The war of words between former Vice President Dick Cheney and the Obama Administration over Afghanistan continues.
Responding to Cheney’s assertion that the administration is “dithering” in regards to sending more troops, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs responded today that similar requests to the Bush Administration sat on their desks “for more than 8 months“.
The [...]

It’s a little known fact that one of the big reasons Iraq turned around is we simply offered a better price than al Qaeda. Within a month the word got out that we were paying top dollar and the insurgents were turning against the terrorists and the US body count started to drop.
Will the same [...]

George Will writes today that we should pull out of Afghanistan and instead focus on Pakistan.
Even though I still think we should stay (and I’ll get into why), at this point he has my ear…
U.S. forces are being increased by 21,000, to 68,000, bringing the coalition total to 110,000. About 9,000 are from Britain, where [...]

From AP:
Gen. David Petraeus said the number of attacks in Afghanistan over the last week hit the highest level since the December 2001 fall of the Taliban.
“Some of this will go up because we are going to go after their sanctuaries and safe havens as we must,” Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said during [...]

While some have worried that the Democratic controlled Congress might strip our war efforts of funding, that wasn’t the case in the House where members passed $97 billion in war funding by a vote of 368-60 — $12 billion more than President Obama requested.
The senate is in the process of passing a similar bill, making [...]

Afghanistan’s President Hamad Karzai and Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari meet with David Gregory to talk about the problems in their countries.

Question: can the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan be solved or will this be Obama’s Iraq?
Discuss…

Since I covered the Tea Parties today, I figured I should also cover a protest that’s much more in the spirit of what the Boston Tea Party stood for.
From NY Times:
KABUL, Afghanistan — The young women stepped off the bus and moved toward the protest march just beginning on the other side of the street [...]

The phrase “war on terror” may no longer be in vogue, but the fight against terrorism remains a top priority, as confirmed by President Obama’s announcement today:
Obama warned that al-Qaida is actively planning attacks on the United States from secret havens in Pakistan. He said he was setting new benchmarks and sending in 4,000 more [...]

Looks like President Obama isn’t the reactionary pacifist some of his critics (and supporters) thought he was. Tomorrow, the administration is expected to announce a major increase in forces in Afghanistan.
Confronting an inherited and faltering war, President Barack Obama plans to dispatch thousands more military and civilian trainers to Afghanistan by the fall on top [...]

Following up on his campaign promise to have a surge-like push in Afghanistan to see if it could help the country.
From Fox News:
“This reinforcement will contribute to the security of the Afghan people and to stability in Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement. “I recognize the extraordinary strain that this deployment places on our troops [...]

A U.S. combat outpost in the endless mountains of Afghanistan
President Obama said in his campaign that he would shift U.S. attention to the war in Afghanistan and rethink American strategy there.  It’s clear he intends to do just that.  But according to a New York Times story sourced to “senior administration officials,” in a somewhat [...]

Indian Army troops of the famed Gurkha Rifles on parade
A flurry of reports in the Indian, Pakistani and Western media indicate that both India and Pakistan are taking serious steps to prepare for a new conflict between the two nations, which have fought three wars since 1947, in the wake of the November 26 terror [...]

First Lady Laura Bush makes an appearances and talks about the need for more rights for women in Afghanistan.

Thoughts?

With the current financial crisis, Iraq and Afghanistan haven’t been leading many news stories. But those conflicts are still going on and, just as importantly, the effects of those wars are still being felt by the soldiers who fought them.
Whatever you think of the policies behind our current wars, I think it’s always important to [...]

Things are getting extremely dire…
WASHINGTON — A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.
The classified report finds that the breakdown [...]

I agree with everything Chris has to say here. If Afghanistan has any hope of recovering, it’ll have to be via standard of living improvements, and nobody can make a living if we destroy their only cash crop. Especially when we could be buying it to produce legal pain killers.

In other news, it sounds like [...]

She got the name of the top general in Afghanistan wrong. It’s actually “McKiernan.”
That can’t be good for people who think she’s inexperienced.

Also, it turns out she was just plain wrong when she claimed he didn’t say an Iraq style surge didn’t work.
And I quote…
“Afghanistan is not Iraq,” said Gen. David McKiernan, who led [...]