Don't forget the Other Fraud

While Bush was entertaining the President of the Japanese Hair Club for Men, Condi was off at the other, forgotten, place that "we're losing".

"They'll leave the wank on for ya'"

As noted in my earlier dispatches, NATO's commanders have devised an intriguing strategy—a revival of classic counterinsurgency theory, combined with high-tech communications and more than a dollop of precision air power—but the real question is whether Afghanistan is too far gone for any strategy to matter.

So, Secretary Rice was in a tough spot as she stood there yesterday in Kabul, touting our great friendship with Karzai, pledging not to abandon him like we abandoned Afghanistan before—but, in the end, having no rabbit, or other magic tricks, to pull from her sleeve.

Still, if the point of her visit was to reaffirm our support for Karzai and to extinguish all doubt about America's intentions to stick around for the long haul, she tarnished her credibility by lacing her messages with so much blatant nonsense.