Sarah sez

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One in a series that takes a look at some of the wild, zany and madcap things said by the former governor of Alaska.





Here's Palin on our relationship with the ummm, Taliban:

"Look, the Taliban per se is not our enemy. That's critical," Palin said. "There is not a single statement that the president has ever made in any of our policy assertions that the Taliban is our enemy, because it threatens U.S. interests. If, in fact, the Taliban is able to collapse the existing government, which is cooperating with us in keeping the bad guys from being able to do damage to us, then that becomes a problem for us."

Ha! You know the drill. Not Palin. Not Palin at all. Something that absurd could only fall from the lips of our first in succession, one Joey B., Vice President, Joe Biden.

So, it's official: we went into Afghanistan 10 years ago merely to upgrade the Taliban to frenemy status... per se.

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In other totally related news:

The Twitter war began in earnest Sept. 14, in the midst of a sustained attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the adjacent headquarters of the U.S.-led international military force.

Until then, NATO officials had kept close tabs on the messages posted on two accounts linked to the Taliban’s media arm — but had refrained from engaging or acknowledging them.

U.S. military officials assigned to the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the coalition is known, took the first shot in what has become a near-daily battle waged with broadsides that must be kept to 140 characters.

“How much longer will terrorists put innocent Afghans in harm’s way,” @isafmedia demanded of the Taliban spokesman on the second day of the embassy attack, in which militants lobbed rockets and sprayed gunfire from a building under construction.

“I dnt knw. U hve bn pttng thm n ‘harm’s way’ fr da pst 10 yrs. Razd whole vilgs n mrkts. n stil hv da nrve to tlk bout ‘harm’s way,’ ” responded Abdulqahar Balkhi, one of the Taliban’s Twitter warriors, who uses the handle ­@ABalkhi.

Lke, ttly soundz lke not enmys to us, rght?

Video clip of the day

Recall the photo of American Special Ops personnel on horseback working in conjunction with the Northern Alliance against the Taliban in the initial stages of combat action in Afghanistan in November 2001. This is their story:




The statue commemorating their efforts will be on display at Ground Zero in New York.

If you watch nothing else today...

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... please make it this.



Jon Tumlinson, a Navy SEAL from Iowa died aboard the Chinook that was shot down by the Taliban over Wardak Province a few weeks ago. Below is his story and that of his loyal dog.





Rest in peace.



H/T: Hot Air

Off-coverage = Off-shore?

Achieving our goals does not require us to build a flawless democracy, defeat the Taliban in every corner of the country, or create a modern economy—what we’re talking about is “good-enough” governance, basic sustainable economic development and Afghan security forces capable enough that we can drawdown our forces.

Reaganesque it was not but that was from Senator John Kerry last week.

So does bringing in an extra defensive back and only rushing 3 or 4, the equivalent of the off-shore strategy towards which the President appears to be hedging?

As far as tortured sports analogies go, we actually really like this one. KT has the details, here.

P.S. Tangentially, Michael Barone believes the President won't be able to squeeze in another 24 hr. trip to Europe, this time to celebrate the fall of the Berlin Wall in that same city because of the contrast between the current hedging and the much tougher talk regarding the Taliban and al-Queda in his speech he made in July of 2008 at the Tiergarten in Berlin.

We have some thoughts of our own which we may share later.

Yes, but would we be infringing upon bin Laden's privacy?

Article here talks about new Predator imaging technology that allows the good guys (that’d be “us”) to be able to see inside buildings to track down, ID and kill the bad guys (that’d be “them”). Author opines that this new technology combined with an alleged secret order signed by President Bush to allow Afghan-based U.S. Specil Op forces to cross into Pakistan without Islamabad’s permission increases the odds of an “October surprise”.

And this…

Moreover, as Woodward writes, the president frequently relishes the death of individual extremists and insurgents in a way that even our professional soldiers find striking. Then-American commander in Iraq Gen. George W. Casey Jr. "told a colleague in private that he had the impression that Bush reflected the 'radical wing of the Republican Party that kept saying, "Kill the bastards! Kill the bastards! And you'll succeed."

Hate to be so reactionary but after watching the History Channel's "102 Minutes that changed America", count us among those who don’t mind a little blood-lust in the heart of our CinC when it comes to these “folks”.