war in afghanistan

Remember when the right thought Stephen Colbert was the real deal? They believed he was really a right wing comedian/commentator and couldn’t seem to understand that his whole routine is making fun of the right. Well those righties haven’t become any smarter since then:

Fox News' opinion website Fox Nation and their readers don't seem to know satire when they see it.

The Fox News sister site re-posted a joke from the satirical website The Onion Friday about President Barack Obama sending a 75,000-word e-mail to the the entire nation. At no point does Fox Nation note that the story is a satire.

The Onion story joked that Obama had "reached the end of [his] rope" and sent out the "rambling" stream of consciousness e-mail that addressed everything from the war in Afghanistan to his live-in mother-in-law.

At this rate the right will make the movie Idiocracy become a reality.

When you ignore Afghanistan for 7 years then you never get stories like this:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mullah Baradar has been in Pakistani custody for several days, with American and Pakistani intelligence officials both taking part in interrogations, according to the officials.

This is a great accomplishment for the military and administration, but for some reason I feel Dick Cheney will consider it a major failure.

OK this is beyond priceless:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney on Wednesday night accused the White House of dithering over the strategy for the war in Afghanistan and urged President Barack Obama to "do what it takes to win."

"Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries," Cheney said while accepting an award from a conservative national security group, the Center for Security Policy.

And how long did Bush “dither” when it came to Iraq? Which administration pulled Afghanistan from the brink of victory and plunged us back to a situation worse than when the war first started?

Those are serious questions that have very serious, yet obvious answers. There is even a more important question though – why is Cheney out there saying this? Doesn’t he know that this destroys the morale of our troops and becomes propaganda for our enemies? I mean if this was pre-Obama that’s exactly what Cheney would be saying if someone on the left said this exact same thing. As matter of fact that’s exactly what they did numerous times.

So the final question – why does Dick Cheney hate America and our troops?

We still got seniors who can not afford vital medications because of the new Medicare plan. New Orleans still looks like a third world country as the entire Gulf Coast region fights to get money so they can rebuild. Our nation's infrastructure is crumbling. A drive down any road proves that.

So with all those items, which require money, where are the administration's fiscal priorities? Insight Magazine, the conservative publication, tells us where some of that money is going:

The Bush administration, amid record budget deficits, has been spending huge amounts on advertising and public relations contracts to counter a hostile media environment.

The administration spent $1.62 billion on advertising and public relations contracts over two and a half years. Most of the money was spent by the Defense Department amid its efforts to recruit soldiers for the war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"The extent of the Bush administration's propaganda effort is unprecedented and disturbing," said Rep. George Miller, California Democrat.

Appearing this week in
Newsweek:

Exclusive: CIA Commander: We Let bin Laden Slip Away

Newsweek

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - During the 2004 presidential campaign, George W. Bush
and John Kerry battled about whether Osama bin Laden had escaped from Tora
Bora in the final days of the war in Afghanistan. Bush, Kerry charged, "didn't
choose to use American forces to hunt down and kill" the leader of Al Qaeda.
The president called his opponent's allegation "the worst kind of
Monday-morning quarterbacking." Bush asserted that U.S. commanders on the
ground did not know if bin Laden was at the mountain hideaway along the Afghan
border.

But in a forthcoming book, the CIA field commander for the agency's
Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, says he and other U.S. commanders
did know that bin Laden was among the hundreds of fleeing Qaeda and Taliban
members. Berntsen says he had definitive intelligence that bin Laden was holed
up at Tora Bora—intelligence operatives had tracked him—and could have been
caught. "He was there," Berntsen tells NEWSWEEK. Asked to comment on
Berntsen's remarks, National Security Council spokesman Frederick Jones passed
on 2004 statements from former CENTCOM commander Gen. Tommy Franks. "We don't
know to this day whether Mr. bin Laden was at Tora Bora in December 2001,"
Franks wrote in an Oct. 19 New York Times op-ed. "Bin Laden was never within
our grasp." Berntsen says Franks is "a great American. But he was not on the
ground out there. I was."