It seems not a day passes without some Western or Asian reporter filing a story relating the Taliban's massive build up in Quetta in preparation for their Spring offensive. Even the Los Angeles Times has a staffer, Laura King, over in the badlands keeping an eye on the automatic weapons fire echoing from behind the walls of the madrassas.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Strange Loner, the Texas Shrub, has made it obvious that he's planning on winning his war of whim in Iraq, even if that means breaking his own army. That's not what we need to hear from this guy. But, then again, this is a leader of the free world who has made just about every wrong move possible since his office towers were attacked in 2001. He's a rollicking barrel of screw-ups. How did we put ourselves in a position of having to depend on a bozo like this?
Oh, did I mention that we're dependent on Mr. Bush? Yeah, sorry. NATO doesn't have remotely enough soldiers in Afghanistan to even secure the countryside much less fight off a skilled and determined aggressor steeped in the knowledge of how to kick foreigners out of their country.
Even if Canada did have another 10-12,000 soldiers that would be needed to defend Kandahar province, we don't have the means to get them on the scene in time to be useful. Don't worry about that last part, we don't have the soldiers anyway. No, for us it'll be a "come as you are" party with the same 2,500 soldier force (1,000 strong battle group) we've deployed already.
That means we may well need a massive infusion of American troops on very short notice if this spring offensive proves even marginally effective. Now, where are we going to get those? Can we count on a president for whom Afghanistan isn't even on his radar screen?
It's too bad George Bush doesn't read newspapers.
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