Juan Cole: Not to mention poor management in Afghanistan <http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/world/4112223.html>. Is it really a good idea to allow $2.5 bn a year in opium and heroin production there? Why haven't Bin Laden and al-Zawahiri be caught? What is this about a "resurgence" of the Taliban? Would that have been possible if Bush hadn't run off to Iraq?
And, why are the big threats to the US there people like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Usama Bin Laden, allies of the Reagan administration in fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s? The ways in which harebrained US schemes and use of rogue Muslim radical proxies back in the Cold War contributed to the current crisis are constantly forgotten. So too is Bush's virtual abandonment of Afhganistan as soon as he conquered it, in favor of his pet project of regime change in Iraq. Bush managed to establish al-Qaeda in Iraq,*as a popular political party* when back in the 1990s Baathist secular Arab nationalism had checked it in that country. <...> [And, in today's 'hood news, where it may not be good news, but it sure is Hood news:] The Sunni Arab guerrillas have long sought to cut Baghdad off from fuel. Al-Sharq al-Awsat/ AFP say that the strategy may be working <http://www.aawsat.com/details.asp?section=4&issue=10120&article=377723>. The current fuel crisis in Baghdad is virtually unprecedented. This report suggests that if it goes on, it could bring down Maliki's government. Iraq's underground civil war continued on Saturday <http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=2306424>, with bodies showing up dead at Suwayra (12 in a crate) and Baghdad (15), plus scattered bombings and assassinations that brought the total number of dead to 50, according to AP. My experience is that such wire service counts tend to be low and more deaths are mentioned in the Iraqi press. Reuters reviews some of the violence <http://mobile.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BUL233246.htm>. Among the important events: ' MOSUL - A sniper attacked a police patrol, killing one officer and wounding another in Mosul, police said. DIWANIYA - Gunmen assassinated a member of Iraqi intelligence in front of his home in Diwaniya, 180 km (112 miles) south of Baghdad, police said. BAGHDAD - Two civilians killed and three wounded in a roadside bomb attack aimed at a police patrol in central Baghdad, police said. The attack took place on one of the city's main highways. . . BASRA - Three die in a bomb blast in the southern city of Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, police sources said. Iraqiya state television said the bomb was inside an electronics shop in the mainly Shi'ite city. BALAD - Police said they had found the bodies of two civilians shot in the head and chest in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. BAQUBA - Gunmen killed police captain Nuri Juad in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, police said. BAQUBA - Seven policemen were wounded in a roadside bomb targeting their patrol in Baquba, police said. ' . . . . . . . .
