The two countries' divergent views of the threat posed by Islamist extremists, and the Obama administration's efforts to press Pakistan to move against groups that menace Afghanistan have produced strains between the two countries and between Pakistan's civilian government and its powerful military and Inter Services Intelligence agency — and a growing drumbeat of Pakistani allegations about alleged nefarious CIA activities in Pakistan.

Speaking to the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Clark said American leaders should strengthen the national partnership with Pakistan -- including sharing intelligence regarding al Qaeda operations -- and promote economic development in Afghanistan to undercut the drug trade fueled by growing poppies. Gen. Clark, a former Democratic presidential candidate, praised President Barack Obama for taking his time in developing an Afghanistan strategy and said that any troop increase should wait until a firm endgame has been establsihed for U.S. Involvement in the country.

Afghan political analysts observe that Ghazanfar and Zahid Walid are striking examples of the multimillion-dollar business conglomerates, financed by American as well as Afghan tax dollars and connected to powerful political figures, that have, since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, emerged as part of a pervasive culture of corruption here. Nasrullah Stanikzai, a professor of law and political science at Kabul University, says of the companies in the pocket of the vice-president: "Everybody knows who is Ghazanfar. Everybody knows who is Zahid Walid. The [government elite] directly or indirectly have companies, licenses, and sign contracts. But corruption is not confined just to the Afghans. The international community bears a share of this blame."

The Barack Obama administration and the US Congress are now trying to address the fundamental issue of TBTF, generally acknowledged as a key contributing factor to the near collapse of the global financial system in 2008. Yet, government bailout programs for big financial institutions have resulted in banks becoming even bigger than before the crisis. Apparently, the administration’s solution to "too big to fail" is to make banks bigger. JP Morgan Chase is reportedly holding more than $1 of every $10 on deposit in the US. The four biggest super banks (JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Citibank) now issue one of every two mortgages and about two of every three credit cards in the US. Since the financial crisis, these four super banks are each allowed to hold more than 10% of the nation's deposits, having been exempted from a longstanding rule barring such market dominance. In several metropolitan regions, these new super banks are now permitted to take market share beyond what the Department of Justice's anti-trust guidelines previously allowed. The American banking system is now one of a handful of large global trading companies pretending to be banks, taking huge profits from high-risk proprietary trades with government-backed money, instead of one of a network of small conservative local institutions serving their domicile communities merely as intermediaries of money through local deposits for nominal fees.

The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, said senior U.S. officials. In his communications with Washington, Amb. Eikenberry has expressed deep reservations about Karzai's erratic behavior and Afghan government corruption, particularly in the senior ranks of the Karzai government, said U.S. officials familiar with the cables. Since Karzai was officially declared re-elected last week, U.S. diplomats have seen little sign that the Afghan president plans to address the problems of corruption they have raised repeatedly with him.

Greg Jaffe, Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung for The Washington Post report that the US ambassador to Afghanistan has urged the administration to hold up on sending any new troops to the country: Strongly worded cables urge a pause until Kabul government shifts course. The U.S. ambassador in Kabul sent two classified cables to Washington in the last week expressing deep concerns about sending more U.S. troops to Afghanistan until Afghan President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption and mismanagement that has fueled the Taliban's rise, said senior U.S. officials. Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry's memos were sent in the days leading up to a critical meeting Wednesday between President Obama and his national security team to consider several options prepared by military planners for how to proceed in Afghanistan. The proposals, which mark the last stage of a months-long strategy review, all call for between 20,000 to 40,000 more troops and a far broader American involvement of the war. The last-minute dissent by Eikenberry, who commanded U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007, has rankled his former colleagues in the Pentagon -- as well as Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, said defense officials. McChrystal has bluntly stated that without an increase of tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan in the next year, the mission there "will likely result in failure."

Fort Hood is still reeling from last week’s carnage, in which an Army psychiatrist is accused of a massacre that left 13 people dead. But in the town of Killeen and other surrounding communities, the attack, one of the worst mass shootings on a military base in the United States, is also seen by many as another blow in an area that has been beset by crime and violence since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began. Reports of domestic abuse have grown by 75 percent since 2001. At the same time, violent crime in Killeen has risen 22 percent while declining 7 percent in towns of similar size in other parts of the country. The stresses are seen in other ways, too. Since 2003, there have been 76 suicides by personnel assigned to Fort Hood, with 10 this year, according to military officials.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the Taliban have been able to win some support. The cruelty of their rule before 2001 is becoming a distant memory and they are successfully portraying themselves as the defender of the country against foreign occupation. Matthew P Hoh, the senior American civilian representative in Zabul Province east of Kandahar, resigned last week convinced that the US military should not be in Afghanistan. As a former US marine officer who served in Iraq, he says in his resignation letter that the US has joined in on one side in a 35-year-old civil war between the traditional Pashtun community and its enemies. "The US military presence in Afghanistan greatly contributes to the legitimacy and strategic message of the Pashtun insurgency," he says. "Our backing of the Afghan government in its current form continues to distance the government from the people."

If the foreign forces are not seen so by Afghans already, they are on the cusp of being regarded as occupiers, with little to show people for their extended presence, fueling wild conspiracies about why they remain here. The feeling is particularly acute in the Pashtun south, but it is spreading to other parts of the country. More American troops could tip the balance of opinion, particularly if they increase civilian casualties and prompt even more Taliban attacks.

The result in the NY 23rd, where the candidate of the right wing crazies lost a seat that was reliably Republican for generations, just might signal that the GOP has much bigger troubles than it ever thought. This just might open the way for Palin in 2012, and that’s good for comedy writers and the Dems. Bring on the Pageant walking!

Afghanistan’s boom in the trade in opium, used to produce heroin, over the past eight years of occupation has funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to the Taliban, al-Qaida, local warlords, criminal gangs, kidnappers, private armies, drug traffickers and many of the senior figures in the government of Hamid Karzai. The New York Times reported that the brother of President Karzai, Ahmed Wali Karzai, has been collecting money from the CIA although he is a major player in the illegal opium business. Afghanistan produces 92 percent of the world’s opium in a trade that is worth some $65 billion, the United Nations estimates. This opium feeds some 15 million addicts worldwide and kills around 100,000 people annually. These fatalities should be added to the rolls of war dead.

The USDA's Farm Service Agency policy is continuing to provide loans to build new specialized hog and poultry facilities at a time when overproduction in these agricultural sectors is leading to depressed prices, contract cancellations, abusive contract terms and increased corporate consolidation of the hog and poultry industries. This policy is a reversal of a directive issued on January 8, 1999, that suspended all direct and guaranteed loan financing for the construction of such facilities. The reasoning behind the suspension was the concern that FSA loans of this type could exacerbate the crisis of oversupply and depressed prices that were already affecting the hog industry. Shortly after assuming office in 2001, the Bush Administration re-instituted the loans, and so far the Obama Administration has continued to support this policy.

The tally of bank failures easily broke past the No. 100 milestone on Friday night, with regulators announcing the year's 103rd closure.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's said on Thursday it was "hard to believe" that no one in Pakistan's government knew where al Qaeda leaders were hiding, striking a new tone on a trip where Washington's credibility has come under attack. Scores of al Qaeda leaders and their operatives, including Osama bin Laden, are believed to be in hiding in the rugged border territory that divides Pakistan and Afghanistan, but both countries routinely accuse the other of being the main sanctuary "I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn't get them if they really wanted to," she told a group of newspaper editors during a meeting in Lahore. "Maybe they are not 'get-at-able'. I don't know," she said. [Note: As WRH says, they are "wagging the dead guy again" must mean war.]

It is the tragedy of this invasion that the people we sought to help are suffering on a scale that should have been predictable and remains the Allied force's responsibility, given our plan for reconstruction and our failure to realistically plan for required troops, budgets, infrastructure, reconciliation, time, materiel, expertise, security, stability, and all the other factors required for a functional Iraqi government. Caught in the tsunami of this war-of-choice, Iraqi men and women are being forced to face the very real possibility that they may never get home. If we do not address this in our press and in our policies, other forces unfriendly to our country will feed, secure and protect many of these refugees, and new generations will grow up hating us for invading with good intentions, but nonetheless having left them destitute and displaced.

After three days of encounters with America-bashing Pakistanis -- who rejected her contention that the U.S. and Pakistan face a common enemy -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday that "we're not getting through." Prominent women and tribesmen from the North West Frontier Province delivered the same hostile message that she'd heard the two preceding days from students and journalists: Pakistanis aren't ready to endorse American friendship despite an eight-year-old anti-terrorism alliance between the countries and a multi-billion-dollar new U.S. aid package. One tribesman bluntly told her: "Your presence in the region is not good for peace."

Capmark Financial Group Inc., the lender owned by Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and KKR & Co., among other companies, filed for bankruptcy protection after posting a second-quarter loss of about $1.6 billion. The company listed consolidated debt of $21 billion and consolidated assets of $20.1 billion as of June 30, according to Chapter 11 documents filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Forty-three affiliates also sought protection. According to the filed court documents, Capmark and its units owe $7.1 billion to the 30 largest creditors, without collateral backing their claims.

Flipping a switch on one of Afghanistan's long-awaited electrical power plants in August, U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry urged Afghans to think of U.S. taxpayers' support when they turn their lights on at night. Plagued by delays and rising costs, the project reveals how the U.S. government continues to ignore the hard lessons of Iraq, critics say, where contractors received billions of dollars with little oversight and inspectors have found rampant waste, fraud and abuse.

When the Nobel Committee awarded its annual peace prize to President Barack Obama, it afforded him a golden opportunity seldom offered to American war presidents: the possibility of success. Should he decide to go the peace-maker route, Obama stands a chance of really accomplishing something significant. On the other hand, history suggests that the path of war is a surefire loser. As president after president has discovered, especially since World War II, the U.S. military simply can't seal the deal on winning a war. While the armed forces can do many things, the one thing that has generally escaped them is that ultimate endpoint: lasting victory. This might have been driven home recently - had anyone noticed - when, in the midst of the Washington debate over the Afghan War, a forgotten front in President Bush's Global War on Terror, the Philippines, popped back into the news. On September 25th, New York Times correspondent Norimitsu Onishi wrote:

The report, by the State Department's inspector general, cites flaws in numerous systems throughout the embassy complex and says that the contractor, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., failed to properly design, construct and commission the largest U.S. Embassy overseas. In one finding, the report says that "safe areas," used to protect staff in emergency situations, "were not constructed according to contract specifications." The audit, conducted with help from the Army Corps of Engineers, also found problems with the embassy's water treatment plant, power systems, walls and concrete walkways, and fire protection systems. It found "plumbing deficiencies" at more than 200 locations.