Contrary to the usual pro-war propaganda published by The New York Times, they published the article Intelligence Reports Offer Dim View of Afghan War.

These few quotes don’t do the article complete justice, but they give you a hint at what you will see if you read the whole article.

The reports, one on Afghanistan and one on Pakistan, say that although there have been gains for the United States and NATO in the war, the unwillingness of Pakistan to shut down militant sanctuaries in its lawless tribal region remains a serious obstacle. American military commanders say insurgents freely cross from Pakistan into Afghanistan to plant bombs and fight American troops and then return to Pakistan for rest and resupply.
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.Pentagon and military officials also say the reports were written by desk-bound Washington analysts who have spent limited time, if any, in Afghanistan and have no feel for the war.
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But in Afghanistan, the intelligence agencies play a strong role, with the largest Central Intelligence Agency station since the Vietnam War located in Kabul. C.I.A. operatives also command an Afghan paramilitary force in the thousands. In Pakistan, the C.I.A. is running a covert war using drone aircraft.

Anybody who was an adult during the Viet Nam War can see history repeating itself. (Actually I have read that “History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.”).

The enemy has sanctuaries we can’t touch.  If we only go after them in their sanctuaries, the war will turn around.  The naysayers don’t have a feel for what is really happening on the ground.  Well, Nixon went after sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia and turned a bad situation into a horror show.  The naysayers were right, and the people who claimed to be closest to the war were the ones that really didn’t know what was going on.

Obama was just too young to have heard the first stanza of this poem.  Hundreds of thousands will die because of Obama’s youth.  When I voted for him, I did so because I thought he was good at listening to reason.  I thought he had the humility to ask for advice when he didn’t know the issue well enough.  I also thought he was good at telling the BS from the straight poop.  Again and again he has demonstrated that I was wrong about his talents as a manager.

I guess his campaign proved that if he were lucky enough to stumble across a winning strategy, he had the guts to stick with it. It wasn’t only guts, I thought.  His team was constantly measuring the effects of the strategy. I didn’t realize that if he stumbled across a bad strategy, he would stick to that one too. If he is still a manager that likes to measure results, his measurement of how his strategy is doing seems to be badly off target.

He seems to have the same nearsightedness when fighting the Republicans as he has with fighting the wars. Is this Obama’s character flaw that will be his Achilles heel?

These are apparently the words of President Obama himself. Oregon Representative Peter De Fazio saying Obama warns “This is the end of his presidency” if he doesn’t get tax deal.

DeFazio was not my representative when I lived in Oregon, but he did make me proud to live in the state that he helped to represent.