Category: The Dish

Forestville, California, 11.45 am.

What the Soviets faced in Afghanistan, the US is now tackling in Iraq. Patrick Shea explains:

The Mujahideen used many of the same methods we see in Iraq today: roadside IEDs targeting convoys, bombing of Soviet sponsored government buildings, assassinations of officials and influential tribal chiefs, tactics designed to target and inflame the civilian population, and the destruction of essential infrastructure. Tribal and Islamic passions were a deliberate focus of their efforts.

The comparison with the Red Army’s preparation for war is even more striking. They attacked without sufficient intelligence, planning, and with too few troops to get the job done. They lacked understanding of the culture. They were unprepared and untrained to wage counter-insurgency operations. Their armored vehicles were vulnerable to unsophisticated attacks. The army was comprised largely of reservists. Most importantly, generals showed a dramatic inability to adjust to the situation on the ground, in large part due to indecision and stubbornness in Moscow.

Like the US in Iraq, the Soviets won every major engagement of the war by a decisive margin. Nonetheless, their successes evaporated quickly.

The notion that acknowledging this reality is somehow defeatist or merely politically opportunistic is, I fear, the same pattern of denial that has gotten us this far.

His story of how he survived Vietnamese "stress positions". Yes, he calls them torture. Bush doesn’t:

The State Department is gearing to release data showing a huge rise in terrorist incidents in the world last year, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan, where the war on terror is focused. I fear we have cnjured up the worst of both worlds. We have picked a fight with an enemy – on his own turf, with just enough resources to lose and just enough to stir Muslim resentment to create even more terrorists. It has none of the advantages of offense; and none of defense. And we have a president insisting that he won’t budge.

The Japanese have all the fun.

Makes me like Obama more:

The New York Observer on the cutting edge of journalism as usual.

A success story no one wants to hear:

While there was a ten percent decrease in total estimated new [HIV] cases, this seemingly modest decrease is actually a much greater prevention success than it appears. From 2001 to 2006, the estimated number of gay men living in San Francisco increased from 46,800 to 58,343. The increase was likely due to real growth in the gay community and, potentially, in part the result of an underestimation of the population size in 2001.

When the effect of the increase in the population size of [men having sex with men] is taken into account, new infections have decreased by an estimated 33 percent.

Sero-sorting – condom-free sex between people of the same HIV status – is a big reason why.

Amazing, I know – but the capture of this Qaeda operative is obviously a small breakthrough. Congrats to those who managed it. I only hope that he has not been tortured. But he has been in the Bush-Cheney torture network, is in Gitmo’s Camp 5, and so we know now what to expect.

An American soldier does what soldiers have done for centuries – go looking for sex. Trouble is: this is Afghanistan and the dangers are immense. But our hero (who wouldn’t pass the Imus test) is undeterred:

There were about 8-10 girls, and maybe 3-4 at best were worth looking at. I chatted one up for a bit, then quickly changed course, in favor of a bigger breasted, more tender seated, slightly older woman. This action illustrates a strongly held principle of mine when it comes to whore mongering. I will always go for a girl with a fit body and a less exciting face as opposed to the reciprocal of that equation. A pretty face on a whore is a lot like a GPS tracking system in a Humvee. They’re nice to have, but not mission essential.

Of course, I cannot verify this story which appears anonymously in a Moscow internet paper.