“Mr Gates’s comments were echoed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she met UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Foreign Secretary David Miliband in London on Wednesday.

“The alliance is facing a real test here. And it is a test of alliance strength,” she said.

Ms Rice added that people needed to understand it was not a peacekeeping mission in Afghanistan, but a fight against the resurgent Taleban.”

How can we be fighting them if they are gone? :)

a Peter/Paul/Mary song:

Just like Poland is protected by her Russian Friends
El Salvador (?Afghanistan?)s protected by Americans
And if 200 billion per year seems too high a price for Afghanistan…

Pakistan has suffered yet another suicide bombing in one of its major cities. A suicide bomber targeted police stationed outside of the Lahore High Court in the provincial capital of Punjab. At least 22 police and civilians were killed and 70 wounded in the attack.

Al Qaeda and the Taliban have conducted numerous suicide attacks in Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Peshawar, Karachi, Quetta, and a host of locations in the tribal areas, the Northwest Frontier Province, and Sindh, Baluchistan, and Punjab provinces. Several of the attacks have occurred on or near military bases housing Pakistani’s nuclear weapons facilities.

The taliban in Afghanistan, and the pakistanis in the “Tribal Areas” are all ethnic Pashtoons. The Border between them is an artifice of western influence from the past.

They will add this new one to the list.

Say you won and run.

Oh, I am sorry, that was the first time we screwed it up in Afghanistan. You know, ignoring them after the Soviets left. Gave some idiot by the name of Bin Lad-something that we were against the muslims. No, this is the second time that we screwed it up by going to war and failing to provide adequate resources to finish the job against Bin Laden and the Taliban.

updated 2:48 a.m. PT, Wed., Feb. 6, 2008
TOKYO – Opium cultivation in rebel-controlled areas in southern and southwestern Afghanistan is expected to grow this year, fueling the Taliban insurgency with more drug money, a U.N. report said Wednesday.

The report, by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said that Afghanistan, in turmoil since a U.S.-led military operation toppled the repressive Taliban regime in 2001, is also steadily increasing its production of marijuana.

Afghanistan supplies some 90 percent of the world’s illicit opium, the main ingredient in heroin, and the Taliban rebels fighting the U.S.-led forces receive up to $100 million from the drug trade, the U.N. estimates.

Hey, it always worked on Hogan’s Heros.

The Dems have had no backbone since 2000…. of course this will change when they take back Executive Branch probably with Obama but then watch the GOP minority wackos go even more ballistic !