Wednesday, November 24, 2010

How Can We Get Osama Bin Laden When We Do Not Even Know Who The Taliban Leadership Is? -- A Commentary



The Great Game Imposter -- Maureen Dowd, New York Times

And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce. In the sort of scene that would have entertained millions if Billy Wilder had made a movie of Kipling’s “Kim,” it turns out that Afghan and NATO leaders have been negotiating for months with an imposter pretending to be a top Taliban commander — even as Gen. David Petraeus was assuring reporters that there were promising overtures to President Hamid Karzai from the Taliban about ending the war.

Read more ....

My Comment: I stopped posting commentary from Maureen Dowd years ago .... in the past decade she lost her edge and perspective .... which is unfortunate because I always enjoyed reading her posts years ago. But .... if her articles in the past few weeks are any indication .... her spunk is back. In her latest posting .... she has written an excellent commentary (in her own unique style) on how clumsy and incompetent our intelligence services have become. Read it all.

More News On The Taliban Impostor Who Fooled Our Intelligence Agencies (And Everyone Else)

Taliban imposter: Nato chiefs paid 'commander' a fortune for his secrets... but in reality he was just a shopkeeper -- The Daily Mail
Petraeus Suggests U.S. Suspected 'All Along' Taliban Negotiator Was a Fake -- FOX News
Senior Taliban leader 'an imposter' -- The Telegraph
Did Afghan Officials Meet With Taliban Imposter? -- NPR (Audio)
Fake Taliban makes mockery of talks -- Economic Times
Oops ... wrong man! -- Asia Times
Nato 'duped by impostor who posed as Taliban negotiator' -- The Independent
“We Gave Him A Lot of Money” -- New Yorker
Afghanistan shifts from reconciliation after Taliban impostor revealed -- Christian Science Monitor
Bamboozled by imposter, a war strategy stumbles -- Tod Robberson, Dallas News

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