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A key adviser to Nato forces warned today that Barack Obama risks a Suez-style debacle in Afghanistan if he fails to deploy enough extra troops and opts instead for a messy compromise.

David Kilcullen, one of the world's leading authorities on counter-insurgency and an adviser to the British government as well as the US state department, said Obama's delay in reaching a decision over extra troops had been "messy". He said it not only worried US allies but created uncertainty the Taliban could exploit.

Speaking in an interview with the Guardian, he compared the president to someone "pontificating" over whether to send enough firefighters into a burning building to put a fire out.

Michael Yon tweets:

Kept it all quiet for NYT. Now why are the NYT endangering British hostages in Somalia? NYT needs to shut up. They are endangering British.about 3 hours ago from web

I have been told by very close sources that ex-CIA officers helped pay off release for Rohde. I knew this while it was ongoing.about 3 hours ago from web

NYT is endangering the hostages in Somalia.about 3 hours ago from web

Am told by good sources Rohde is good guy, but still NYT cannot ask for discretion when they don't use it.about 3 hours ago from web

Numerous very well placed sources have told me New York Times/associates paid millions to get Rohde release.about 3 hours ago from web

New York Times cannot expect quiet about David Rohde when they blab all: http://www.nytimes.com/2009...about 3 hours ago from web

"Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble."

A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe."

A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe."

Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes."

In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up.

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- The U.S. military suffered another day of heavy losses in Afghanistan on Tuesday as roadside bombs killed eight soldiers, two military officials told CNN.

An Afghan civilian working with NATO troops also was killed in the attacks in southern Afghanistan, the military said. The officials said that, according to initial reports, one blast took place just outside Kandahar and the other was in neighboring Zabul province.

Seven of the soldiers who died were traveling together in one vehicle, said Sgt. Jerome Baysmore with the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command.

UNITED NATIONS – A U.N. human rights investigator warned the United States Tuesday that its use of unmanned warplanes to carry out targeted executions may violate international law.

Philip Alston said that unless the Obama administration explains the legal basis for targeting particular individuals and the measures it is taking to comply with international humanitarian law which prohibits arbitrary executions, "it will increasingly be perceived as carrying out indiscriminate killings in violation of international law."

Alston, the U.N. Human Rights Council's investigator on extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions, raised the issue of U.S. Predator drones in a report to the General Assembly's human rights committee and at a news conference afterwards, saying he has become increasingly concerned at the dramatic increase in their use, especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, since June.

He said the U.S. response — that the Geneva-based council and the General Assembly have no role in relation to killings during an armed conflict — "is simply untenable."

The radio crackled. About 50 yards from the base's perimeter, nine U.S. soldiers manning an observation post were on the verge of being overrun. Several soldiers were already dead.

"We need to get up there!" screamed 1st Lt. Jonathan Brostrom, the platoon leader at the main base. He and Spec. Jason Hovater grabbed as much ammunition as they could carry and someone popped a yellow smoke grenade to cover their movement. The two soldiers sprinted into enemy fire.

It was a predictable reaction from the 24-year-old lieutenant -- courageous, reckless, impulsive. When Brostrom joined the military, his father, a retired colonel and career aviator, had tried to steer him away from the infantry and toward flying helicopters. "I don't want to be a wimp," the son chided his father.

Washington - Sophisticated critics of sending more US troops to fight the Taliban argue that the group is not as central a threat to American
national security as Al Qaeda.

Yet, for Al Qaeda operationally, there is nothing more important now than the Taliban wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To start with, the critics are undoubtedly correct in underscoring Afghanistan's near-irrelevance, and thus lack of influence,
in the development of modern Muslim thought as well as the central importance of Arabs to Al Qaeda. I can't think of a single
Afghan intellectual who has shaped either Sunni or Shiite militancy.

Unless Al Qaeda is able to reignite Sunni-Shiite strife in Iraq – and the odds of this happening seem pretty small – Sunni
jihadism has lost the Iraq war, and with it, cross your fingers, the Arabs.

Mesopotamia really was the central front in the war on terror because it was the only military theater Al Qaeda and its allies
had in the Arab world. Drive out the Americans, unleash a Sunni-Shiite bloodbath that just might bring Sunni Arab states and
Iran into a bloody cold – ideally hot – war, and Sunni Islamic militancy might just shake the region.

Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri, both decent strategists, knew what they were saying when they described Iraq as the
decisive battleground. Victory there would have given their cause real possibilities in the Muslim heartlands.

The neo-Taliban in Afghanistan, like the Pakistani Taliban, are the children of Al Qaeda. Only in Afghanistan and Pakistan
have we seen jihadism actually take root in large numbers. No place else in the Muslim world was laid waste like Afghanistan.
The Taliban represent a remarkably redoubtable militant Islamist movement capable of grafting onto a vibrant ethnic identity
(Pashtunism) and the diversity of culture and local loyalties that inevitably come with mountainous terrain.

“Inadequate resources,” McChrystal wrote, “will likely result in failure.”

The magnitude of the choice presented by McChrystal, and now facing President Obama, is difficult to overstate. For what McChrystal is proposing is not a temporary, Iraq-style surge — a rapid influx of American troops followed by a withdrawal. McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.

And that’s if it succeeds.

Senators diverted $2.6 billion in funds in a defense spending bill to pet projects largely at the expense of accounts that pay for fuel, ammunition and training for U.S. troops, including those fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an analysis.

Among the 778 such projects, known as earmarks, packed into the bill: $25 million for a new World War II museum at the University of New Orleans and $20 million to launch an educational institute named after the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, Massachusetts Democrat.