Choice 1) Give McChrystal his 40,000 troops and a 6 month time table, and then get the hell out!

Choice 2) Allow Holbrooke to secretly negotiate extraordinary rendition of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz, as a peace offering to the Taliban. Let them get hacked to pieces, along with Karzai, and let Afghanistan go back to the 8th century.

Maybe they'll forgive us if we leave them alone, or buy Basmati rice and opium from them, help clean up their water supply, and pick up land mines and unexploded ordnance.

The European version of the Israel lobby is working overtime.
Aluminum tubes.

Bill Keller, editor-in-chief of the New York Times, didn't actually
lie to me when he said the Times would be much more cautious
about beating the war drums against Iran -- it's taken the New
York Times years (well, months) since I QUESTIONED Keller (May
2005) to really crank-up the lie machine.

Sanger looks like he's going to be this war's version of Judith
"Nooner" Miller:

From the New York Slimes

Nuclear Debate Brews: Is Iran Designing Warheads?

The Israelis, who have delivered veiled threats of a military
strike, say they believe that Iran has restarted these
“weaponization” efforts, which would mark a final step in
building a nuclear weapon. The Germans say they believe that
the weapons work was never halted. The French have strongly
suggested that independent international inspectors have more
information about the weapons work than they have made
public.

http://tinyurl.com/yedqbq5

"Veiled threats" indeed. Israel never makes a "veiled threat"--
Israel's the "only democracy in the Middle East" and the women
don't wear veils, just wigs and head scarfs and long skirts and
AK-47s.

The good news is that the American "intelligence" community is
staging a new American Revolution and telling the EuroIsraelis
to STFU.

From the article:

Meanwhile, in closed-door discussions, American spy agencies
have stood firm in their conclusion that while Iran may
ultimately want a bomb, the country halted work on weapons
design in 2003 and probably has not restarted that effort — a
judgment first made public in a 2007 National Intelligence
Estimate.

National Petroleum Radio -- anyone who trusts NPR, look at
their funders.

It's abundantly clear that the US has no clue as to what it's doing in Afghanistan. (If you don't believe me, just listen to the NPR piece.) Yet the main question remains whether to add troops or not. And if not, what? More bombing of wedding parties and funeral processions?

I hope Doonesbury picks up the ball and starts running with this. The US and NATO chasing its tail! It's priceless! (Unless you happen to live in Afghanistan.)

our "Friend" israel.

“John M. Cole, an FBI spy catcher who retired in 2004, says that from 1993 to 1995 alone, he had “125 open cases” of Israeli espionage, representing nearly half of all the investigations carried on in his Global Unit, part of the now-defunct National Security division.” Inside the FBI itself, Cole said, tracking suspected Israeli spies was hush-hush.In a sharp break with FBI procedures, he was prohibited from notifying field offices when an investigation crept into their jurisdictions. “No one was supposed to know we were investigating the Israelis,” Cole said.”

http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/09/28/and-its-not-only-sibel-edmonds-who-says-so/

Stein’s article also quoted several other FBI officials confirming Cole’s disclosure:
“The 125 figure “makes sense,” another former top FBI counterintelligence official said, speaking only on condition that he not be identified because of the issue’s sensitivity. This official called the Israeli embassy’s denials “horse [manure].” In fact, he said, U.S. officials repeatedly warned the Israelis to back off. But the finger-wagging only seemed to energize them. “We would call them in, call them on the carpet, and next week there would be 10 more cases,” he said. The Justice Department never seemed much interested in prosecuting them, he and other counterintelligence veterans said. Agents would get pissed off,” said the former top official. “We knew they were going to walk, that they were going to get a pass. . . . It was frustrating.”