The Pentagon wants you to ignore some inconvenient facts about the failure of the escalation strategy in Afghanistan.

The latest Petraeus/Gates media tour is under way in preparation for the general’s testimony to Congress next week, and they’re trotting out the same, tired spin they’ve been using since McChrystal was replaced in disgrace last year.

One explanation put forth for why President Obama and his aides are so upset with the liberal base of the Democratic Party is that they believe Obama has achieved legislative success rivaling that of President Lyndon Johnson, but the base does not appreciate this success. Even NPR’s Mara Liasson easily refuted the “success” aspect of the comparison, but the comparison to LBJ is an especially poor choice for a number of other reasons, as well.

This isn’t a withdrawal, it’s a reshuffle. And the trajectory stays upward.

On college campuses, credit card companies entice naive undergrads into signing up for super-high-interest-rate credit cards by giving away “perceived high-value items” like t-shirts or coffee mugs. They’re called perceived high value items because they really aren’t worth as much as people assume. Their only purpose is to distract from the terrible terms in the [...]

In the wake of General McChrystal’s firing, supporters of his counterinsurgency strategy have shifted to the blame game. Their target? US Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry. But is Eikenberry really at fault, or has he been right all along?

The government is broken, in Afghanistan and the United States, and if we don’t use government the way it’s supposed to function, if we continue to play media games with our politics, the death toll will only get worse.

Feingold asked a very good question. Why aren’t we sending troops to Pakistan (where al Qaeda is headquartered) or Somalia (which is causing real problems in the US) like we’re sending troops to Afghanistan?

I do not know, and no administration official has credibly explained to me, why Karzai won’t perceive the U.S.’s double game and proceed with commensurate intransigence. But I do know that they’re aware of the problem, and looking toward mitigation.

From tonight’s speech, along with surreal argument that somehow increasing US forces in Afghanistan to 100,000 is necessary to defeat the 100 Al Qaeda members the Pentagon says are left there, one section jumped out at me. Obama said: And we have forged a new beginning between America and the Muslim World – one that [...]

I’ll be liveblogging the president’s speech tonight. Here are the excerpts that are available at the moment: “The 30,000 additional troops that I am announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 – the fastest pace possible – so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers. They will increase [...]