The conspiracy-theorist in chief

The Daily Beast features "the 6 wackiest Osama bin Laden conspiracy theories."  And it's wacky stuff.  Kate and Wills were tipped off.  He's not dead.  He was a CIA plant etc etc.

But one problem -- there's one truly wacky conspiracy theory not on the list.  That Osama and Saddam Hussein worked together, up to and including 9/11.  And instead of tabloids and crazy Internet users, that theory was held by George Bush and Dick Cheney.

The actual destruction that resulted isn't so wacky.

Wisconsin judicial elections in pictures

More here.

The curse of Cheney

In the picture, President Saleh of Yemen meets former Vice President Dick Cheney to sort out this whole business of Yemen as a potential source of al-Qaeda terrorism -- in 2002. 

A senior American official said Mr. Cheney had used his meeting with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh primarily to discuss assistance to prevent Yemen from becoming a haven for terrorists. Along with other issues, President Saleh registered his opposition to a potential American attack on Iraq and his concerns about Middle East violence.

The Pentagon is planning to dispatch American Special Forces to train Yemen's military in counterterrorism operations. An adviser to President Saleh said today that the advisers from the United States would consist of three teams, each of which would have 20 to 30 members and would stay about a month.

 Given the scale of the potential threat, 90 US military seems a tad small a mission.  Could it be that the US military was distracted by some other target at that point in time?

Minus One

Conservatives have strange counting problems when it comes to 9/11.  George Bush keeping the country safe for eight years and all that.  So here we have Daniel Pipes, doing what 9/11 anniversaries call for -- attacking other people who disagree with his buddies' interpretation of 9/11 --

In contrast to a conventional war, in which objective markers such as control of territory or the output of steel indicate trends, in this new kind of war one must look to subjective factors like understanding the enemy or pride in one’s own civilization. How, on this slippery basis, does the United States stand on the ninth 9/11?

Here's the problem. It's not the ninth 9/11. It's the 10th. The first one counts, when the actual bad things happened.  Incidentally, Pipes also claims that the conservative half of the population has done stuff "like reading the Koran."

He's got a lot to do

The latest hit on the "Ground Zero Mosque" is a transcript of remarks made by Feisal Abdul Rauf, promoter of the cultural centre, during an address at the Univ of South Australia in 2005. Someone had to use a lot of the Google to find that one. The supposed outrage comes from Rauf comparing the excess deaths resulting from the sanctions on Iraq to al Qaeda's death toll. Part of the supposed rebuttal is to claim that the sanctions really didn't result in that many deaths -- which makes one wonder why a war to depose Saddam was so much the preferred alternative.

But anyway. Rauf gave his address to the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Centre, in which lectures are supposed to give informed viewpoints in a way that engages communities. And Rauf was there to explain why the War on Terror can look different if you're a Muslim in a country on the receiving end as opposed to, say, being George Bush visiting Iraq but never addressing any crowds outside a military base. And his remarks, which are quite extensive, do a decent job of that. It's the kind of thing that someone like General David Petraeus, seeking to understand local populations, would read.

Interestingly, the prescient Bob Hawke (now 80 years old, and whose election winning skills apparently left Labor with him), in apparent recognition that Islamic issues were going to be on the cultural frontline for some time, has now gotten the university to establish an International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding. Rauf's 2005 address would be good material for that. But the problem now is that if you're a Muslim hoping for an American career, or even an American visa, what you can say at such a centre may be restricted to opinions that American conservatives find agreeable, with the scrutiny increasing as each election approaches.

We could thus be headed for the situation in which many conversations that Americans might find interesting can't happen in America, with Koranic interpretation left to such Arabic experts as Andrew McCarthy and Bill Kristol. Thank God there isn't any dodgy stuff in the Bible.

Outside his field

Robert "Robby" George is perhaps George W. Bush's favourite public intellectual; he holds down a professorship at Princeton University and is a specialist in the philosopy of "pro-life" issues; he is also a usual suspect in the various front groups that pop up to push aligned Republican and pro-life positions. But in the manner in which right-wingers like to branch out (such as Commentary magazine diversifying from angry pro-Israel positions to opposing Israel-style healthcare for Americans), Prof. George has decided to tell National Review of his outrage about the indeed outrageous release of Pan Am bomber Abdel Baset al-Megrahi.

But here's the problem. He's blaming Barack Obama for it. And specifically, he's blaming Barack Obama for not doing enough to get Gordon Brown to stop it. But read his comments. They show no awareness of the difference between "United Kingdom" and "Scotland", let alone the primacy in judicial matters of the latter -- the critical factor in how al-Megrahi was released. If the London government was indeed angling to release al-Megrahi (as cynics maintain they were), then Obama would have had more leverage. But Scotland explicitly chose to avoid the seeming route offered by London -- the Prisoner Transfer Agreement -- and made the decision on their own moral grounds. This is all stuff that's easy to look up, but apparently too much effort to do so in the quest for a 103rd reason why he doesn't think anyone should vote Democratic.

Echoes

The man-made sand barriers that Louisiana is proposing to erect to block the Gulf oil spill are called berms.

That word rang a bell. George Bush, September 2006 --

THE PRESIDENT: No, no. The enemy is changing tactics, and we're adapting. That's what's happening. I asked General Casey today, have you got what you need? He said, yes, I've got what I need.

We all want the troops to come home as quickly as possible. But they'll be coming home when our commanders say the Iraqi government is capable of defending itself and sustaining itself and is governing itself. And, you know, I was hoping we would have -- be able to -- hopefully, Casey would come and say, you know, Mr. President, there's a chance to have fewer troops there. It looked like that might be the case -- until the violence started rising in Baghdad, and it spiked in June and July, as you know -- or increased in June and July.

And so they've got a plan now, they've adapted. The enemy moves; we'll help the Iraqis move. So they're building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example.

This was the time when the Iraq war was going disastrously and then Bush seemed to think that a moat or ditch around the city might help things. Perhaps as the Texas oil man he always said he was, berms were standard procedure for keeping bad stuff out.

That's not a good omen for the new plan.

US President in "meets dodgy leader" shock

Over at Contentions, Jennifer Rubin and Peter Wehner are angry that President Obama would have a meeting with the President of a dubious human rights case like Kazakhstan and say nice things about that leader.

Above, George Bush with Dick Cheney's favourite central Asian autocrat, President Nazarbayev, at the White House in 2006.

On the other hand, the Contentions items do direct attention to a bizarre statement at Sunday's White House conference call media briefing by Mike McFaul, National Security Council Senior Director for Russia and the Caucasus --

Q Hi, this is for Mike McFaul. When you were discussing the discussion between President Nazarbayev and President Obama about human rights and democracy, you seemed to be suggesting there was some equivalence between their issues of democracy and the United States’ issues, when you said that President Obama assured him that we, too, are working on our democracy. Is there equivalence between the problems that President Nazarbayev is confronting and the state of democracy in the United States?

MR. McFAUL: Absolutely not, Jonathan. To be clear, what the President was saying is that all democracies need to work to improve their democracies. And he’s taken, I think, rather historic steps to improve our own democracy since coming to office here in the United States. There was no equivalence meant whatsoever.

Huh?

Bush White House photo by Eric Draper

Bad medicine

Charles Krauthammer today in the Washington Post --

Well, said David Manning, a former British ambassador to the United States, to a House of Commons committee reporting on that very relationship: "[Obama] is an American who grew up in Hawaii, whose foreign experience was of Indonesia and who had a Kenyan father. The sentimental reflexes, if you like, are not there."

I'm not personally inclined to neuropsychiatric diagnoses, but Manning's guess is as good as anyone's.

Charles Krauthammer's past diagnoses --

During 2004 election season: This [Democratic contempt for Dubya] is all quite unhinged. Good God. What if Bush is reelected? If they lose to him again, Democrats will need more than just consolation. They'll need therapy.

Howard Dean: When he avers, however, that "the most interesting" theory as to why the president is "suppressing" the Sept. 11 report is that Bush knew about Sept. 11 in advance, it's time to check on thorazine supplies.

Al Gore: -"Well, it looks as if Al Gore has gone off his lithium again." (Fox News Special Report, 5/26/04)

... I'm a psychiatrist. I don't usually practice on camera. But this is the edge of looniness, this idea that there's a vast conspiracy, it sits in a building, it emanates, it has these tentacles, is really at the edge. He [Al Gore] could use a little help.

In fact, it's Krauthammer's bizarre description of Obama's foreign policy changes as "slapping" allies that merits a little time on the couch.

The Heathrow liquid bomb plot, again

Marc Thiessen, from his Waterboarding Works book --

In one of these reports, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [KSM] describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994–1995 plan known as the “Bojinka plot”— formulated with his nephew Ramzi Yousef—to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean. Years later, an observant CIA officer notices that the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appears to match KSM’s description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack. He shares this information with British authorities. At first they are skeptical, but soon they acknowledge that this is in fact what the cell is planning. Intelligence from terrorists at Guantanamo Bay provides further insight into the cell’s plans for the use of liquid explosives.

In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot. On the night of August 9, 2006—just over a month before the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks—they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects.

This is a very different chain of events from the conventional narrative for the plot, in which the suspect group was under surveillance for some time but the actual breakup of the plot occurred in a rush in August 2006, with multiple news accounts indicating that it was Dick Cheney's demand for an early arrest in Pakistan which was the precipitating factor, not the imminence of any plot. And two people are not mentioned in Thiessen's account -- Richard Reid, who was doing on-board bomb making in December 2001 and yet sailed past the Bush-era enemy combatant system, and Rashid Rauf, the supposed mastermind of the Heathrow plot who, to this day, has never been found.

Thiessen's book, Courting Disaster, is going to need intensive triangulation against other sources, because as of now its claim is essentially that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, post-waterboarding, can be linked to every plot. Except Richard Reid.

As things got messy

Alistair Campbell didn't concede a whole lot in his Iraq War Inquiry testimony today. But there were a few interesting points of historical perspective nonetheless. The committee members were taking him through the deteriorating conviction that WMDs would be found in Iraq and the related topic of UK-US tensions on how the Iraq war strategy should be communicated.

Campbell mentioned in particular a row behind the scenes at the Hillsborough (County Down) summit between George Bush and Tony Blair on April 7-8 2003 (in which Bertie Ahern was an occasional participant). Condi Rice, seen here with Jack Straw and (we think) James Hamilton, the 1st Governor of Northern Ireland: It became clear to the UK side that Condi was pushing an agenda of marginalizing the role of the UN in post-Saddam Iraq, whereas the UK side was keen for both legal and practical reasons that they should be involved. Campbell claimed that Blair intervened to get the UN role upgraded to "vital" but the assembled hacks smelled a rat and repeatedly pressed what exactly this meant --

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, I mean, when we say vital role for the United Nations, we mean vital role for the United Nations in all aspects of the issue -- whether it be humanitarian aid, or whether it be helping to stand up an interim authority. The Iraqi people will decide who's on the Iraqi -- the interim authority. The interim authority is a transition quasi-government until the real government shows up; until the conditions are right for the people to elect their own leadership. And the United Nations will have a vital role.

When we say vital role, that's precisely what we mean -- that they will be involved, along with the coalition, in helping to stand up an interim authority. But the Iraqi people are responsible for who's on that authority. And Tony can describe what's happening in Basra. He might describe some of the meetings that are taking place as leadership begins to emerge.

It is a -- it is a cynical world that says it's impossible for the Iraqis to run themselves. It is a cynical world which condemns Iraq to failure. We refuse to accept that. We believe that the Iraqi people are capable, talented, and will be successful in running their own government.

This of course set the stage for the disastrous decision-making that was soon to follow -- the failure to maintain law and order (a legal obligation of the occupying powers of which Blair was clearly aware), the disbandment of the Iraqi army, and the breezy assurances that the emerging Mehdi army would be easily seen off.

George also rallied the Irish peace process --

There is such hope here in Northern Ireland that the past can be broken. And the Prime Minister is right when he says that when the peace process is successful here, it will send a really important signal to other parts of the world. It will confirm the fact that people who have a vision for peace can see that vision become a reality.

Unfortunately, for all of this era's obsessions with "signals", recent events in Northern Ireland show how any signal is highly likely to be obscured by local noise. Hopefully no one abroad is looking to Ireland for good signals at the moment.

God (R-Heaven)

It used to be that the religious cudgels used against non-Republican Catholics in elected office in the USA were fairly clear. They had to be demonstrably against abortion and various types of contraception. But did you know that they have to be in favour of waterboarding? That's what former George Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen says --

It is also worth noting that a terrorist like KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] — who has killed thousands and has set in motion plans to kill thousands more — remains an unjust aggressor even while in custody. By withholding information about imminent attacks, he holds the power to kill. According to the Catholic Catechism, those in power have a moral obligation to render an unjust aggressor unable to cause harm.

It's really remarkable the number of universal principles that can be hitched to KSM's confession to 31 different plots. And there's no practical limiting logic. Conventional techniques could have gotten the suspect to admit to so many plots, but there could always be another one. Time to take it up a notch. And the Vatican says it's OK. Or at least someone who worked for George Bush says they do.

Incidentally, since the future KSM plots to which Thiessen refers must include the West Coast plot, he needs to explain why it was not a sin for the Bushies not to have waterboarded Richard Reid, who had apparent connections to this plot nearly 2 years before it was broken up.

Arabia Felix

Frances Fragos Townsend appears frequently on CNN as a terrorism expert and has recently written in the Washington Post of the need for the US to issue an ultimatum to Yemen that sounded like very much like a threat of an invasion. Since the Detroit bomber trail leads to Yemen, the issue of how terrorism in Yemen got energized is going to be much discussed.

The fact that the backbone of al-Qaeda in Yemen comes from Guantanamo detainees released to Saudi Arabia under George Bush -- for whom she worked as counter-terrorism coordinator -- will certainly be relevant and is something that can be brought up when she is discussing terrorism and Yemen now.

But there's another issue. On 26 May 2009, she met with Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh, as shown above. For a foreign private citizen to get a meeting with the King is not easy. One hopes that she is not pulling punches or tailoring messages so as not to interfere with any ongoing relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Thou rod of George's stem

It must be what passes for wit on the right on these days, but the headline on George Bush loyalist William McGurn's anti-healthcare op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, which is ostensibly about Barack Obama and the politics of it all, is "O Come O Come, Emanuel" -- and thus an Advent hymn aimed at Obama's Jewish chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. You go to war with the digs that you have, not the ones that you'd want, apparently.

The talking point bust

It's the claim that keeps popping up in English newspapers and keeps being recycled by US conservatives. Here's the Telegraph's Con Coughlin in today's Wall Street Journal --

Soon after his [Obama's] inauguration, he sent back to the U.K. a bust of Sir Winston Churchill that had been loaned to President George W. Bush after the 9/11 attacks. The sculpture had enjoyed pride of place in the Oval Office.

Above, George W. Bush accepting the bust on July 16, 2001. Perhaps the spirit of Winston was trying to warn about an imminent attack but was being ignored.

The proliferator in chief

Mark Steyn thinks there's some kind of message in the fact that George W. Bush was well received in India on a weekend visit having let India legitimise its nuclear weapons while Hillary Clinton had a tough time in Pakistan since she avoided the happy talk that usually accompanies such visits. It would be worth asking the Indian government whether they thought Hillary was asking the right questions.

But anyway, George Bush is apparerently proud of his Indian nuclear deal. His secret service people have other worries --

Confirming the incident, S G Amin, Assistant Deputy Fire Officer (ADFO), Fort area, reveals to Sunday MiD DAY, "They (Bush security officials) were keen to know whether the MFB [Mumbai Fire Brigade] is capable of handling situations arising out of chemical or atomic attack. Our reply was a blatant no as we are not trained to handle such emergencies."

Leave aside the Bush team's focus on a WMD attack in a city whose most recent terrorist atrocity was a plain old guns and bombs affair. Under this great nuclear deal, India gets access to even more nuclear technology without any more capacity of first responders to deal with the situation where something goes wrong. Another Bush cost that got dumped into the future.

More Vicars of Dibley

The Washington Post rounded up some usual suspects to discuss the Vatican's latest salvo in its relationship with the Anglican Church. Included in them is George Weigel, who never found a George Bush policy that he didn't like. But anyway, Weigel applauds the Vatican's move on the ground that it creates a "moment of clarification" (which was always one of George Bush's favourite phrases when there was a war going on), specifically regarding the divergent positions of the two churches on the ordination of women --

The tensions were evident more than twenty years ago, in a historic exchange of letters among Pope John Paul II, Archbishop Robert Runcie of Canterbury, and Cardinal Johannes Willebrands, the veteran Dutch ecumenist then leading the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

The Pope and the cardinal asked Runcie to explain the reasoning that had led certain parts of the Anglican communion to ordain women to the ministerial priesthood. Runcie replied in largely sociological, rather than theological, terms, citing women's changing roles in business, culture, and politics.

So let's go read the actual Runcie letter --

The fundamental principle of the Christian economy of salvation-upon which there is no question of disagreement hetween Anglicans and Roman Catholics-is that the Eternal Word assumed our human flesh in order that through the Passion Resurrection and Ascension of the Lord Jesus Christ this same humanity might be redeemed and taken up into the life of the Triune Godhead. In words common to both our liturgical traditions: ‘As he came to share in our humanity, so we may share in the life of his divinity.’

It is also common ground between us that the humanity taken by the Word, and now the risen and ascended humanity of the Lord of all creation, must be a humanity inclusive of women, if half the human race is to share in the Redemption he won for us on the Cross.

Some Anglicans would however then go on to point to the representative nature of the ministerial priesthood. They would argue that priestly character lies precisely in the fact that the priest is commissioned by the Church in ordination to represent the priestly nature of the whole body and also-especially in the presidency of the eucharist-to stand in a special sacramental relationship with Christ as High Priest in whom complete humanity is redeemed and who ever lives to make intercession for us at the right hand of the Father. Because the humanity of Christ our High Priest includes male and female, it is thus urged that the ministerial priesthood should now be opened to women in order the more perfectly to represent Christ’s inclusive High Priesthood.

This argument makes no judgment upon the past, but is strengthened today by the fact that the representational nature of the ministerial priesthood is actually weakened by a solely male priesthood, when exclusively male leadership has been largely surrendered in many human societies.

This is not a "sociological" argument. It's a doctrinal argument that Runcie said has only become more relevant because of sociology. And in fact, one could even argue that it's a fundamentally Catholic argument. If you're going to go to the trouble of creating a hierarchy of sacraments in terms of who is in a deeper relationship with God, then to maintain the claim of universality (or "catholicism", if you will), don't you have to open these sacraments to everybody?

For Weigel and more than a few of the neocon Catholics, it sometimes happens that the real Catholics aren't Catholic at all. For once, we agree!

He was there in spirit

Karl Rove in his Wall Street Journal perch --

There is also the heavy whiff of politics in the administration's [Afghan] war deliberations. The president's senior political adviser, David Axelrod, apparently attends war cabinet meetings—something I did not do as President Bush's senior political adviser.

From Bob Woodward's account of the Iraq war run-up --

The president also informed Karl Rove, his chief political strategist, of his decision [that there would be war in Iraq] over the [2002] holidays. Rove had gone to Crawford to brief Bush on the confidential plan for Bush's 2004 reelection campaign. While Laura Bush sat reading a book, Rove gave a PowerPoint presentation on the campaign's strategy, themes and timetable.

Opening his laptop, he displayed for Bush in bold letters on a dark blue background:

PERSONA:

Strong Leader
Bold Action
Big Ideas
Peace in World
More Compassionate America
Cares About People Like Me
Leads a Strong Team

All things being equal, the president asked, when would you like to begin the campaign and active fundraising?

Rove said he wanted the president to start that February or March [2003] and begin raising the money, probably $200 million. He had a schedule. In February, March and April 2003, there would be between 12 and 16 fundraisers.

"We got a war coming," the president told Rove flatly, "and you're just going to have to wait." He had decided. "The moment is coming." The president did not give a date, but he left the impression with Rove that it would be January or February or March at the latest.

"Remember the problem with your dad's campaign," Rove replied. "A lot of people said he got started too late."

"I understand," Bush said. "I'll tell you when I'm comfortable with you starting."

So before getting to the bit where Woodward was being spun by his sources [K. Rove], note that Bush was telling Karl Rove over Christmas 2002 that there was going to be a war with Saddam. In public, the suspense was maintained up until March 2003. Technically, Rove wasn't in the "war cabinet". He didn't need to be.

But now note the preposterousness of Bush's supposed sacrifice of campaigning. There wasn't an election coming until November 2004. There was no prospect of an opponent in the Republican primary. So he was still a full 15 months at the earliest from needing to do any serious campaigning.

But Rove wept as Bush forsook some fundraisers in early 2003. And never noticed that Bush telling him there was a war coming could be mapped into the first four criteria of his Powerpoint presentation. The Bush-Rove relationship was You Furnish the Pictures, and I'll Furnish the War. No cabinet meetings necessary.

UPDATE: Headline on Rove op-ed in US edition of WSJ --

Obama Goes Wobbly on Afghanistan

Headline on Con Coughlin op-ed in WSJ European edition --

Brown Goes Wobbly on Afghanistan

So the people who have to make the actual decision about sending troops into danger are "wobbly". The pundits are all for it.

He knows what a stolen election feels like

National Review's Rich Lowry doesn't like John Kerry's central role in the Afghan election compromise --

Isn't this what Richard Holbrooke was supposed to be doing? Could it be that Holbrooke — diplomat extraordinaire — so badly alienated Karzai in the course of leading the administration's botched handling of the first election that he no longer has any sway with the Afghan leader?

Holbrooke's botched handling of the 1st election amounted to saying that there will have to be a runoff.

There is going to be a runoff.

But anyway, the Wall Street Journal gives us some insights into how Kerry won Karzai over to the inevitable --

That night, Sen. Kerry went to the presidential palace, where the two men, sometimes accompanied by Mr. Eikenberry [US Ambassador] and sometimes alone, hashed out Mr. Karzai's concerns. "We had lot of hours together and talked about a lot of things, including the American experience in elections, and going back to 1864, Al Gore in 2000," Sen. Kerry said. "I think it helped to put it into a certain framework."

It's hard to know what "certain framework" Kerry has in mind, but one might be that when an election is subject to serious doubt, as Florida 2000 was, a complete re-run of the election might not be a bad idea. Legitimacy, mandate, all that stuff. No wonder Lowry is mad.

UPDATE: Lowry comes out against the runoff and doesn't seem too perturbed by the election fraud. Having a leader is more important.

He's cleaning up a mess

Eight US soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack on a NATO outpost in Nuristan province on Saturday. Here is part of the reaction of Veterans for Bush operative Pete Hegseth, posting at National Review's The Corner --

The big difference between the Surge violence in Iraq in 2007 and the increase in violence in Afghanistan today, is that in 2007 our troops knew reinforcements were coming, and would be added to the fight wherever necessary. Men like Eric Geressy fought in enemy strongholds, knowing that additional forces were coming and would be all around them — squeezing al-Qaeda like a pimple.

Right now, I can’t imagine our troops in Afghanistan feel the same way. Our Soldiers and Marines are manning remote combat outposts, surrounded by enemy fighters, with no idea whether the reinforcements they so desperately need will ever come. Nonetheless, our troops are bravely following orders and taking the initial steps necessary to implement the counter-insurgency strategy President Obama approved in March and General McChrystal has been implementing aggressively.

A casual reader might conclude that Hegseth is claiming that the soldiers got stranded at the outpost because of some new Obama strategy. But that wouldn't be true and we know it can't be true because the Saturday attack bears striking resemblance to one in July 2008 in the same province in which 9 US soldiers was killed.

The circumstances that led to the latter incident, the so-called Battle of Wanat, are still unresolved. Dumped into last week's news was a statement from General David Petraeus that he has ordered another inquiry into the battle, which apparently will be the 3rd such investigation. This one will will "also address circumstances beyond the tactical level." Which sounds like an investigation of strategy.

So the point is that a major attack happens in July 2008 and the investigations are still going on. A repeat attack happens in October 2009 and Hegseth is wondering "Where Is the Urgency on Afghanistan?" A question better addressed to the commander-in-chief for 2008 who at the time was being hailed as a genius by Hegseth for the surge in Iraq. The one that kept Afghanistan short of troops.

UPDATE: Max Boot, on an Afghanistan-Iraq tour, has an interesting couple of lines on the Nuristan incident --

One of those "impertinent questions" concerns the deployment of small coalition outposts in remote regions of Regional Command-East along the border with Pakistan. Here small numbers of soldiers were isolated and subject to daily attack in bases that could be supplied only by air. What was the point of having soldiers so far from population centers, [General Stanley] McChrystal demanded? Previous commanders had asked the same question, only to hesitate to remove them because they knew that this would represent a propaganda boost for the Taliban. McChrystal went ahead with the consolidation even after insurgents nearly overran Combat Outpost Keating in Nuristan Province in early October, killing eight American soldiers, just days before it was to be dismantled. He insists, rightly, that a successful counterinsurgency strategy must be focused on the people, not on terrain, and that's where he's putting his troops.

This makes clear that Hegseth has the situation pretty much backwards. It was the old strategy to have thinly-defended combat outposts. Obama wants to implement a new strategy.