George W Bush was handed a plum years ago when the Iranians
demanded that the Americans must leave Iran in 1911.
Now Obama gets one too.... one less excuse to stay in Afghanistan
This one is different tho, Karzai makes a boo-boo, but plants it on Obama.
It's called "politics is all local"
NY Times
MATTHEW ROSENBERG
Published: January 8, 2012
Karzai’s Ultimatum Complicates U.S. Exit Strategy
Quote:
KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai’s denunciation
last week of abuses at the main American prison in Afghanistan
— and his abrupt demand that Americans cede control of the site within a month — surprised many here.
The prison, at Bagram Air Base, is one of the few in the country where
Afghan and Western rights advocates say that conditions are relatively humane.
American officials, caught off guard by the president’s order,
scrambled to figure out the source of the allegations.
Now they have at least part of an answer: the Afghan commission
that documented the abuses appears to have focused mainly
on the side of the prison run by Afghan authorities, not the American-run part,
according to interviews with American and Afghan officials.
Mr. Karzai was, in essence, demanding that the Americans cede control of a prison
to Afghan authorities to stop abuses being committed by Afghan authorities.
But the American snickering subsided quickly as it became apparent that the Afghans
were not backing off their demand, the officials said, and instead appeared intent
on turning it into a test of their national sovereignty.
The matter is exposing the deep vein of mutual mistrust and suspicion
that runs beneath the American and Afghan talk of partnership, and
officials characterize the prison dispute as a critical complication for the United States’
intent to withdraw from the Afghan war on its own terms.<snip>
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