good ol' Sid (Blumenthal)

"'I was horrified by the president's last speech on the war on terror [on June 28] -- so much unsaid, so much disingenuous, so many half-truths,' James Dobbins told me. Dobbins was Bush's first envoy to Afghanistan and is now director of international programs at the Rand Corp., a defense think tank. Afghanistan is now the scene of a Taliban revival, chronic Pashtun violence, dominance by U.S.-supported warlords (who have become narco-lords, exploiting the exploding traffic in opium poppies), and a human rights black hole. "Afghanistan is going better than Iraq," Dobbins said. 'That's not much of a standard.'"