• Deeply concerned about the prospect of failure in Afghanistan, the Bush administration and NATO have begun three top-to-bottom reviews of the entire mission, from security and counterterrorism to political consolidation and economic development, according to American and alliance officials.
  The reviews are an acknowledgement of the need to greater coordination in fighting the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, halting the rising opium production and trafficking that finances the insurgency and helping the Kabul government extend its legitimacy and control.
  — The New York Times (12/16/07)

After more than six years, the mission to route out Osama and his boys has become another 1993 Somalia — failure to fully concentrate on the task at hand while launching a total, unmitigated disaster in Iraq.
The Times report concludes:

• Julianne Smith, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and Internation Studies, said the mission in Afghanistan was at risk of failure, as political support in European capitals strained NATO’s ability to sustain, let alone expand its effort there.
  “The mission in Afghanistan has been suffering from neglect on all sides,” she said.

Neglect is just another word for Iraq. The US now has about 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, out of about 40,000 total from a dwindling selection of countries. NATO has been in charge since last year. Meanwhile in Iraq, near 160,000 US troops are being ground down into fine powder.

When Decider George decided to go into Afghanistan in October 2001, the nation, the world, just about everybody was OK with the mission — the US was actually going after the culprits behind the Sept. 11 attacks.
And everything seemed to work, except by December in his first mission accomplished — not — Decider George gave Tommy Franks his marching orders for Iraq and Osama made an escape from Tora Bora. The entire Afghan scenerio then collasped.

Indeed the forgotton war. Iraq turned into a bloodfest and pulled the eyes of the world away from the original true mission — find Osama and his boys.

The attacks on 9/11/01 united the world. Even Iranians displayed sympathy for the first terrrorist attacks in the US in the modern era (excluding Wounded Knee and all those other unspecified slaughters against Native Americans) and the world, almost as one, were behind the project.

Decider George, however, couldn’t leave well enough alone. Although his main objective since he took office, he and his VP, Dufus Dick Chaney, wired up some real-dangerous people (Rumsfeld, Wolfawitz, et al) and set them loose on Iraq. The result is the worse, most-tangled up mess in US history, and pending an outcome, in all of world history.

Afghanistan will always be forgotten, just as Decider George’s bullshit-patriotic oratory in the days following 9/11 will be forgotten.

Damnit! George, why couldn’t you be fogotten.