One Utah

President-Elect Obama’s message of “change you can believe in” apparently resonates in Iraq, where Iraqi politicians have revealed the reason why they have been reluctant to agree on what looks like a favorable treaty deal to end the U.S. occupation. They didn’t trust the Bush administration, and were skeptical about McCain too.

“Before, the Iraqis [...]

President-Elect Obama inherits a bulging IN box full of unsolved problems and things the Bush administration has ignored. Right on top is the war in Afghanistan. It’s not going well. Bringing about an end to the fighting on terms favorable to U.S. national security will be very hard to do.

Fortunately, [...]

Last night, “60 Minutes” reported on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. One soldier explained, “I thought it was gonna be a little bit quieter here. But we landed in a hornet’s nest when we got here.” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Schlosser said bluntly, “I need more resources, more soldiers, and more assets.”
Lara Logan’s 13-minute report is [...]

Raw Story reporter Eric Brewer recently asked White House Press Secretary Dana Perino to comment on Senator McCain’s interesting claim that he knows how to find Osama bin Laden.
Q: John McCain said recently that he knows how to get Osama bin Laden. And a couple of months ago he said that he knows how to [...]

The war in Afghanistan has been the third-longest longest conflict in American history, after the Revolutionary War and Vietnam. Yet there is no end in sight, the situation is deteriorating, and our allies have concluded that U.S. strategy cannot succeed.

Over-reliance on air strikes has caused civilian casualties disproportionate to any military goals, making these [...]

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, the British Ambassador in Kabul, believes that U.S. strategy is wrong and the war is as good as lost. The potentially explosive views were published by Le Canard Enchaîné, a respected French weekly, which said that they were direct quotations from a diplomatic cable written by François Fitou, the French Deputy Ambassador [...]

Via Raw Story: The Bush administration is keeping a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan under wraps until after the election.

Brian Ross of ABC News reports that the NIE describes the Afghanistan situation as “grim”, but there are “no plans to declassify” any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar [...]

I was a die-hard McCainiac in 2000, part of a small band of Utah loyalists. We didn’t all agree with Senator McCain on every single issue, but we agreed with him that straight-talking candidates are the only ones worth voting for. I know now that McCain supported a war of aggression against Iraq, [...]

While the Presidential campaigners make their rounds talking about victory in “eye-rack,” they are careful to say nothing whatsoever about Afghanistan. Unlike the unbelievably costly and pointless Iraq fiasco, the Afghanistan/Pakistan war matters greatly to U.S. national security.

Fraidoon Pooyaa/Associated Press
In Azizabad, an Afghan boy carried his belongings amid the ruins of his home, which [...]

The New York Times reports that helicopter-borne American Special Operations forces attacked al-Qaeda militants in a Pakistani village in the Angoor Adda area of South Waziristan, close to the border with Afghanistan early Wednesday.
“What you’re seeing is perhaps a stepping up of activity against militants in sanctuaries in the tribal areas that pose a direct [...]

A little over a year ago, a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) entitled The Terrorist Threat to the U.S. Homeland. concluded that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has fueled Sunni radicalism around the globe and has caused the terrorist threat to grow. While the Bush administration sent the bulk of our nation’s ground forces [...]

A few years ago, the youth group from my congregation participated with the youth group from the mosque on a service project. At the end of the night, the kids returned to HUCC for debriefing. The Muslim youth later complained they felt it was wrong for boys and girls to sit together in [...]