Coming full circle...

I once had a great discussion on a job interview about the format of writing. I was of the opinion that it was linear while my interviewer thought it was circular. Well if our military situation was a book, I'd be wrong:

"If you checked out yesterday's Worldwide Threat briefing, you could be forgiven for checking your calendar to see if it was still September 10, 2001. Discussing al-Qaeda, John McConnell, the new director of national intelligence, described a metastasizing threat coming from... the lawless Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

This year will be "pivotal" for Afghanistan, McConnell said. From the NYT:


""Mr. McConnell’s assessment was grim: “Long-term prospects for eliminating the Taliban threat appear dim, so long as the sanctuary remains in Pakistan, and there are no encouraging signs that Pakistan is eliminating it. ‘’"

Thanks in large part to Pakistan's toleration of al-Qaeda's growing presence in North Waziristan, it's questionable whether the western troops will be able to even arrest what McConnell called the "resurgence" of Taliban and allied (read: al-Qaeda) forces. Last month, the outgoing U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. General Karl Eikenberry, said that cross-border Taliban raids for December were up a staggering 200 percent. And a new report from the Jamestown Foundation finds that, although their effectiveness is questionable, there were nearly as many suicide-bombing attacks in the first seven weeks of 2007 as in all of 2005."

The wheels on the bus go round and round.