First we have complete debacle that is the “Operation Enduring Freedom” or whatever the hell they are calling it this week. That is the ongoing war in Iraq, now 3 1/2 years in. Today at least 59 people were killed in a bombing in Kufa, Iraq. That is in addition to the 40+ killed yesterday in Baghdad along with dozens more killed in the day before and the day before that. George Bush and his crew have taken what was a relatively stable autocratic state and turned it into a completely anarchic killing field. In addition we Israel attacking Gaza to the south and bombing Lebanon to the north. They have been bombing the Beirut Airport, blockading the ports and bombing civilian targets. They are also apparently using white phosphorus incendiary bombs. All this over 2 abducted soldiers.

As if all of this wasn’t already bad enough, the one sort of success that they used to be able to claim with the removal of the Taliban regime, in Afghanistan, has been unraveling and returning back to the state it was in 2001. The administration made a big deal of smoking out the Taliban and giving freedom to the women of Afghanistan. Now girls schools are increasingly being torched by the Taliban and women are being forced to put there burkhas back on, particularly outside of Kabul. Now the AP reports that the Taliban have retaken two towns in southern Afghanistan. Even the US installed president Hamid Karzai has now approved the re-establishment of the dreaded Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. These were the guys who walked the streets of Afghan cities and towns during the Taliban period, with clubs and regularly beat and arrested anyone they accused of breaking the rules like not having a long enough beard, or not praying enough. I wonder how long it will be before the Taliban are back in control of the country, and Karzai is either under arrest or back in the US in exile.