Afghanistan Dump

History repeats itself all the time.

NYTimes article about Bobsled pilot John Napier coming home from Afghanistan after a 6-mo tour. "Early that morning, he sent a text message to his United States team coach, saying he should probably stay off the track. He hadn’t slept much, he wrote. Nightmares had kept him awake."

Red Cross: Aid conditions in Afghanistan "At their worst". "By every measure that the Red Cross tracks, the situation has worsened throughout the country for civilian casualties, internal displacement and health care access and all of it is 'against the background of a proliferation of armed actors,' Mr. Stocker said."

A nice take-down of dishonestly optimistic assessment of the Afghan war by reporters close to Patreus. "In fact, if you read what locals tell an unembedded reporter, you see they’re annoyed and wary because this always happens—troops move in, clear it (The Arghandab has been cleared three times, with the military’s assurance that it has enough resources to do the job right… and the locals know success is only as good as the day it’s happening), and within months things are back as they were before, or worse. There’s no evidence, not even in the op-ed arguing this is case, that this year is breaking that cycle."

Intelligence assessments contradicting claims of progress, suggesting progress is rare and unstable. "Initial reports suggested the man had been paid large sums of money and given safe passage by NATO forces to Kabul for the talks and was even granted a meeting with President Hamid Karzai - which the presidential palace denied yesterday. The Taliban yesterday gloated over the ruse, with spokesman Qari Yusuf Ahmadi telling reporters: "The Americans and their allies are very stupid and anyone could fool them."