And it was painful to lose out on the Olympics in the first round. Pretty ignominious, even though I didn't really want a corrupt Chicago Machine to get it. I thought we must have had it in the bag--else why would our President Barack Obama squander his political capital, only to get rolled by the IOC. It wouldn't be the first time. Iran was the day before, though he wasn't there in person. The consequences of that are a bit more serious. Not to mention Afghanistan. The President appointed General McChrystal himself. Yet until Friday he had only spoken to him once since, and left his plan, submitted at the end of August, lying on the shelf for weeks:
Some opponents of the counterinsurgency approach (including, apparently, Vice President Biden) advocate doing more killing and less nation-building. But how? The limiting factor on targeted strikes is intelligence, primarily. [snip]Our troops are the better multiculturalists.
Human intelligence is much preferable. But to get human intelligence, you have to be among the humans, giving them a reason to risk their lives to help you. That means having forces on the ground — and not just commandos rappelling onto rooftops. The fewer forces we have among the human population, the more we must rely on technical intelligence, and the less accurate our targeting will be — and the harder it will be even to maintain the current level of effective strikes, let alone increase it.
I heard Valerie Jarrett, after comparing the whole Olympic effort to the Iowa caucus blamed bad intel or something. Then White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs made some crack about what was Michael Steele doing at 1:50 in the morning. Well.
What was the president doing at 3 a.m.?
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