Well this could be good actually if this H1N1 starts moving back into animals we could soon be done with it. That said this could as be potenially dangerous because it could pick up harmful traits inside the felines and other animals. None the less tho it is interesting that the cat got it. Reply...

so, heavy or light footprints?   What is needed WW.

And yes, its obamas war now.   And  October has been the worst month, the deadliest month in the whole 8 yrs for our troops.   Can't blame that on Bush.

We need a decison quickly,  and our allies need a decison quickly.   Its already taking too long,  too much time on the golf course and at the basketball hoops if you ask me.

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Shoppe. There is the actual and the perceived.

The fact is.....much of what is wrong in Afghanistan is Bush's fault.  Certainly, when Nixon inherited Vietnam, 10 months into his presidency, he would have every reason and right to say....."hey LBJ left me with a freakin' mess and every move seems like the wrong move." And in this sense, Obama's blaming of Bush is, well......accurate.

However, with that said.......it is his war now. And the American people want him to make a decision. The situation in Afghanistan/Pakistan has changed since his initital assessment upon taking office.  And the "blaming of Bush" should be left to the historians......and they will.

And if this does turn into "another Vietnam", then he will take his place next to Nixon in historical culpability as well.

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satire:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/u_s_continues_quagmire_building

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Light footprint or   heavy footprint.   We have to decide which is needed in  Iraq and afghanistan.

In Iraq and Afghanistan we initially chose the light footprint for obvious reasons:  Less risk, fewere losses of our troops, while reducing the intrusiveness of the occupation and thus the chances of crating an anti-foreigner backlash that would fan the insurgency.  Light footprints woujld minimize local opposition

~~~~~~~~~

But we were wrong.  The locals sided with the Taliban and Al-quaeda out of sheer FEAR.

~~~

Petraeus wants a HEAVY FOOTPRINT... SURGE.

Obama needs to decide, its his war now.

I would really like  Neon , Jack and  WW's opinion on this article.   And anyone else that finds it very interesting.  

Thanks , sg

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/10/30/its_time_for_obama_to_stop_blaming_bush.html

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See what we started over there?  Now nobody knows what to do.

Boy, we sure "liberated" those Iraqi's didn't we.?

who we gonna "liberate" next  ?

Maybe one of shoppe's sons should go over there next.  Seems like your son, Marilyn, has done more than his share.

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Vietnam seems to be doing fine without us meddling with them anymore. Reply...

Re: Afghanistan; this is a longish article, but it's very interesting.

U.S. official resigns over Afghan war
Foreign Service officer and former Marine captain says he no longer knows why his nation is fighting
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 27, 2009


When Matthew Hoh joined the Foreign Service early this year, he was exactly the kind of smart civil-military hybrid the administration was looking for to help expand its development efforts in Afghanistan.
A former Marine Corps captain with combat experience in Iraq, Hoh had also served in uniform at the Pentagon, and as a civilian in Iraq and at the State Department. By July, he was the senior U.S. civilian in Zabul province, a Taliban hotbed.
But last month, in a move that has sent ripples all the way to the White House, Hoh, 36, became the first U.S. official known to resign in protest over the Afghan war, which he had come to believe simply fueled the insurgency.
"I have lost understanding of and confidence in the strategic purposes of the United States' presence in Afghanistan," he wrote Sept. 10 in a four-page letter to the department's head of personnel. "I have doubts and reservations about our current strategy and planned future strategy, but my resignation is based not upon how we are pursuing this war, but why and to what end."
The reaction to Hoh's letter was immediate. Senior U.S. officials, concerned that they would lose an outstanding officer and perhaps gain a prominent critic, appealed to him to stay.
U.S. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry brought him to Kabul and offered him a job on his senior embassy staff. Hoh declined. From there, he was flown home for a face-to-face meeting with Richard C. Holbrooke, the administration's special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
"We took his letter very seriously, because he was a good officer," Holbrooke said in an interview. "We all thought that given how serious his letter was, how much commitment there was, and his prior track record, we should pay close attention to him."
While he did not share Hoh's view that the war "wasn't worth the fight," Holbrooke said, "I agreed with much of his analysis." He asked Hoh to join his team in Washington, saying that "if he really wanted to affect policy and help reduce the cost of the war on lives and treasure," why not be "inside the building, rather than outside, where you can get a lot of attention but you won't have the same political impact?"
Hoh accepted the argument and the job, but changed his mind a week later. "I recognize the career implications, but it wasn't the right thing to do," he said in an interview Friday, two days after his resignation became final.
"I'm not some peacenik, pot-smoking hippie who wants everyone to be in love," Hoh said. Although he said his time in Zabul was the "second-best job I've ever had," his dominant experience is from the Marines, where many of his closest friends still serve.
"There are plenty of dudes who need to be killed," he said of al-Qaeda and the Taliban. "I was never more happy than when our Iraq team whacked a bunch of guys."
But many Afghans, he wrote in his resignation letter, are fighting the United States largely because its troops are there - - a growing military presence in villages and valleys where outsiders, including other Afghans, are not welcome and where the corrupt, U.S.-backed national government is rejected. While the Taliban is a malign presence, and Pakistan-based al-Qaeda needs to be confronted, he said, the United States is asking its troops to die in Afghanistan for what is essentially a far-off civil war.
As the White House deliberates over whether to deploy more troops, Hoh said he decided to speak out publicly because "I want people in Iowa, people in Arkansas, people in Arizona, to call their congressman and say, 'Listen, I don't think this is right.' "
"I realize what I'm getting into . . . what people are going to say about me," he said. "I never thought I would be doing this."
'Uncommon bravery'
Hoh's journey - - from Marine, reconstruction expert and diplomat to war protester - - was not an easy one. Over the weeks he spent thinking about and drafting his resignation letter, he said, "I felt physically nauseous at times."
His first ambition in life was to become a firefighter, like his father. Instead, after graduation from Tufts University and a desk job at a publishing firm, he joined the Marines in 1998. After five years in Japan and at the Pentagon - - and at a point early in the Iraq war when it appeared to many in the military that the conflict was all but over - - he left the Marines to join the private sector, only to be recruited as a Defense Department civilian in Iraq. A trained combat engineer, he was sent to manage reconstruction efforts in Saddam Hussein's home town of Tikrit.
"At one point," Hoh said, "I employed up to 5,000 Iraqis" handing out tens of millions of dollars in cash to construct roads and mosques. His program was one of the few later praised as a success by the U.S. special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction.
In 2005, Hoh took a job with BearingPoint, a major technology and management contractor at the State Department, and was sent to the Iraq desk in Foggy Bottom. When the U.S. effort in Iraq began to turn south in early 2006, he was recalled to active duty from the reserves. He assumed command of a company in Anbar province, where Marines were dying by the dozens.
Hoh came home in the spring of 2007 with citations for what one Marine evaluator called "uncommon bravery," a recommendation for promotion, and what he later recognized was post-traumatic stress disorder. Of all the deaths he witnessed, the one that weighed most heavily on Reply...