1st try The Afghan leader submitted 24 names to the parliament last week. 17 were rejected. Wait, you mean they’re not in his pocket? Who forgot to bribe them?
2nd try Karzai’s second list, submitted today, is “a little better than the previous one – not a lot, but a little,” according to one critical Parliament member. Ouch. source
It reflects nothing more than the violent, deceitful tactics of the Taliban insurgency. To release this video on Christmas Day is an affront to the deeply concerned family and friends of Bowe Bergdahl.
US Navy Rear Adm. Gregory Smith • Condeming the Taliban’s choice to release a video of Afghan prisoner of war Bowe Bergdahl. The Bergdahl family didn’t have much else to add on their own end, except a plea for the captors to “to let our only son come home.” source
Nobody wants to spend their Christmas like this. U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl, 23, has been a prisoner of war in Afghanistan since June. And right on cue, just before Christmas, the Taliban sent a video of the Idaho-born soldier out. He says a number of things against the war, but we get the feeling he was fed those. Hopefully, he makes it out of this scary situation OK. (BTW, he’s the only soldier currently captured.) source
To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism – it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason.
Barack Obama • Offering a defense of his wartime strategy while accepting his Nobel Peace Prize. If that’s not ironic, then we don’t know exactly what is. Really good speech, though. He handled a potentially bizarre situation without a lot of trouble. source
51% support the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan
43%prefer to keep the troops we have now – if none at all
6%don’t really care either way because they don’t wanna source
For some reason, we had been wanting to play with a style like this on the blog for months, but only got to doing it tonight. Let us know what you think and you might see it more often. (P.S.: Not to be harsh, but if you’re reading this using Internet Explorer, this is gonna look ugly, but we’re OK with that. Maybe it’ll convince you to get a better browser or something.)