Masopher's Mind

Masopher opened The Times. He laughed, long and loud as he read this:

A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

After furious denials in Rome of a Times report that the Italian authorities had paid the bribes, the Afghans gave further details of the practice. Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taleban commander, said that a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the Sarobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

Mr Ishmayel said that under the deal it was agreed that “neither side should attack one another. That is why we were informed at that time, that we should not attack the Nato troops.” The insurgents were not informed when the Italian forces left the area and assumed they had broken the deal. Afghan officials also said they were aware of the practice by Italian forces in other areas of Afghanistan.

People still haven’t gotten used to recycling. Throw away the old, get something new. They’ve made the “mistake” of recycling a Bush Whitehouse and they don’t want to make the mistake of recycling a Clinton. With the dirt that was dug up on the Clintons and Rodhams back in the 90’s I’m surprised that this dolled up Hillary dared resurrect herself with her “war stories” and animated gestures. It looks very unnatural for her to do that, because people with long term memory or footage of her from the 90’s know that Hillary Clinton is nothing like that. She has never been in danger and she doesn’t have a dynamic personality no matter what her PR manager makes her up to be. Those with memory remember how “cold” she was and I am pretty sure that we genuinely speculated of the purely strategic nature of Hillary and Bills relationship. If America genuinely wanted a woman in candidacy they would have forced Oprah to run. Biologically Hillary qualifies as female but so do cadavers and blow up dolls.

Let’s not forget events like Whitewater, role in controversial presidential pardons, her relationship with Walmart, and her strategic bandwagon hopping along with the entire Democratic party. I don’t accuse Mrs. Clinton of anything other than being part of the wallpaper of a boring unmotivated and equally corrupt democratic house. She has currently painted herself as a door to somewhere else but it’s just paint there is nothing behind it.

The question on everybody’s mind is: will she pick up the marbles and go home? Will she kill the Democratic Party’s chance for presidency if she is unable to lead it? Masopher believes that she will. The Democratic Party has suffered infighting for many years now, even when Bill Clinton was in power the party could not hold it together to lock the Republicans out of congress. Their previous nominations have been abysmal and the current “rerun versus mystery box” ticket is another example of their inability to say anything other than, we won’t do what the other guys are doing. Jumping on the war bandwagon, hopping off it when things looked bleak; using anti-war as their platform to gain congressional power, remaining silent now that they are in charge of it; voting according to personal agenda and opinion polls rather than for what is right. A divided house cannot stand.

Clinton may lose nothing for the party if she locks Obama out with her delegates. Many of her supporters will refuse to vote Obama further reducing his opportunity at presidency. John Edwards has done so and Hillary may be looking beyond the horizon to being the hero of the Republican Party and returning to being a senatorial power broker. Her tenacity is dogged and true to form, if there is still an ounce of modern woman left in Hillary Rodham Clinton, she will make this fight dirty and disgraceful and Masopher eagerly awaits this.

In the United States, the traditional American game, baseball, is starting its spring training. ‘March madness’ is over and the general populace is anticipating a new distraction. Far away in Afghanistan, there is another traditional spring activity about to start too. An offensive.
Recent reports of towns like Musa Kala, being retaken by the Taliban are not uncommon. It seems that no matter how hard-won these enclaves are, the minute the allied troops withdraw the turbaned fighters return and set up shop. The Taliban leadership is avowing to teach the Nato forces a ‘lesson’ this spring, with new weapons smuggled in from Pakistan and other Russian stockpiles, new and rested mujahedeen fighters and as usual a new supply of Arab combatants seeking a glorious death.
Just in time it seems that the French and Nato forces have ratcheted up their support of the ongoing operations and even Russia has pitched in to defeat the cavemen with Kalashnikovs that they failed to beat 20 odd years ago. America in Iraq is winding down and so is Al Qaeda in Iraq coincidentally, Palestine is too sticky an issue and the horn of Africa isnt ready for battle so that leaves only one place.
Masopher indicates that it is going to be a long hot and bloody summer in Afghanistan.