Posted on 11/23/2010 5:07:07 AM PST by maddog55
Edited on 11/23/2010 8:33:25 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Traditionally, the American people have cared very little about foreign policy. In part, that's because they assume that the experts that are handling it know exactly what they're doing. Tragically, this is all too often a completely erroneous assumption.
If you want to see a story that illustrates that, well wow, you really couldn't do much better than the one you're about to read. How bad is it? Imagine that Larry, Curly, and Moe are running the State Department's ground game in Afghanistan and you'll get the general idea. Am I exaggerating? Well, read the excerpts from this New York Times story and my comments afterwards and form your own conclusions:
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.
We handed piles of money to some random con man and spent months negotiating with him even though he was running a fraud? That sounds like a spy novel? It actually sounds more like a Saturday Night Live skit.
But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.
“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”
Another blog in the wrong place....
“In part, that’s because they assume that the experts that are handling it know exactly what they’re doing. Tragically, this is all too often a completely erroneous assumption. “
ROTFLMAO!!! So true with this administration!
It’s on several sites including drudge now:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/23/world/asia/23kabul.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/23/fake-taliban-dupes-nato-negotiators
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/11/23/faking-it-taliban-negotiator-was-a-phony/
Am I exaggerating? Well, read the excerpts from this New York Times story and my comments afterwards and form your own conclusions:
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Why not just post the New York Times story and then we can form our own comments ???
This would be mind-bendingly funny but for the fact that the "lot of money" those bastards gave to that other bastard belongs to US.
Then why, pray tell, did you give him "lots of money"?
Apparently so...
Spotted it on right-wing-news... lesson learned, post the source.
Hussein has been lucky so far in the foreign policy arena. A foreign crisis is long overdue.
So we’re paying the Talaban to sit at the negotiating table, then paying them again to return for each meeting. Essentially, the White House is funding the purchase of Talaban weapons used to kill our own soldiers.
Who’d have dreamed something like that from an Obama Administration... (sarc)
That headline deserves some exposure.
Well, the waste of $3 Billion of taxpayer money means NOTHING to these jerks, who just want to re-distribute the wealth, whether domestically, or to a foreign scammer.
Mansour was also the name of the man who said “Are there any men left in Washington ?”
“I’m Mullah Mansour.”
“No, I’m Mullah Mansour”
“Me, Me, I’m him.”
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