JoshuaPundit has inagurated a new feature : Short Takes. This will encompass stuff I see that I think merits the attention of Joshua's Army members and that I will embellish with a few lines of the wit, wisdom, insight and written insurgency you've come to expect from your pal Freedom Fighter.
This is an attempt to cover more ground in less time and compress a lot into a small space, rather like the young gentleman seen above.
*Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist continues to exercise non-leadership, unfortunately. I say unfortunately because I genuinely admire the Senator's acomplishments and positions overall..but his leadership as senate majority leader leaves a lot to be desired.
Today, during a visit to a US-Romanian base, Frist made the statement that the Taliban are too numerous and have too much popular support to be defeated militarily, and should be included inthe Afghan government! Of course, he added that the decision to ask Taliban to join the government was up to Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who just returned from a White House summit. Nice of him to acknowledge that.
In a further move, US CENCOM (Central Command) is turning over the remaining areas of Eastern Afghanistan to NATO control, giving NATO the responsibility for security in the entire country..something that's a fool's errand until they secure the borders with Iran and Pakistan.
FF wonders whether Frist was speaking for the Bush Adminstration. I hope not.
*The Iraqi parliament has extended the official state of emergency...and the sectarian violence continues, with no letup in sight.
In two days, at least 15 Iraqis were killed in attacks around the country, 28 people were kidnapped and another 50 bodies were found in the Baghdad area. In Anbar, 3 US Marines were killed September 30th, and in Basra, a British soldier died in a mortar attack on yesterday...probably by al-Sadr's Iranian backed Mahdi Army.
Iraqi PM Maliki announced a plan to form local committees in each Baghdad district with representatives of every party, religious and tribal leaders and security officials to consult on security operations, with a central committee made up of all the parties will coordinate the armed forces. "We have vowed to God to stop the bloodshed," said the prime minister.
Nothing's going to change there until we confront Iran and Syria over their interventions in Iran.
*Deposed Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra finally resigned from his Thai Rak Thai party Tuesday.
The billionaire politician had resisted months of calls from his opponents to step aside, but his forced removal by the royalist backed coup pretty much settled things.
"No more Thaksin means the end of TRT, because Thaksin was the party," said Prudhisan Jumbala, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University. "Party members probably imagine that the brand is dead."
Indeed. Thai politicians pre-empted Thaksin yesterday when the party's largest faction, comprising about 100 lawmakers, left the party en masse.
*It looks like the frontrunner for Kofi Annan's job as UN Secretary General is South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon. He was the only candidate to escape a veto during an informal Security Council ballot.
The Security Council is expected to hold a formal vote to pick the eighth secretary-general in the United Nations’ 60-year history on October 9, making Ban Ki-Moon’s appointment almost assured.
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