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Ilan Goldenberg catches the Bush Administration admitting something that all us lefties have been saying for years: Iraq is preventing us from achieving success in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon has concluded it can't send additional troops to Afghanistan until sizable numbers of forces withdraw from Iraq, a senior military official said Monday.

U.S. commanders in Afghanistan believe they need an additional three brigades of American forces, between 10,000 and 12,000 troops, to combat the Taliban and to speed the training of Afghanistan's security forces.

The requests will go unmet until U.S. troop levels in Iraq start coming down. The military "can't move a substantial amount of additional forces into Afghanistan unless there are additional forces which come out of Iraq," the official said. "We might be able to generate a little bit more, but not 10,000 to 12,000 more troops."

The comments were an acknowledgment of the challenges facing the Pentagon as it scrambles to find enough troops for counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

U.S. troop levels in both Iraq and Afghanistan are already at or near their highest levels since the start of the two wars. The administration's decision to freeze troop levels in Iraq after the last of the 30,000 "surge" troops depart this summer has left Pentagon officials with few options for finding more forces for Afghanistan.

To put this another way, our use of military force in Iraq directly undermined our mission in Afghanistan.

On of my favorite tactics in arguing about the role of Iran in Iraq is to imagine a similar situation much closer to home: if Iran invaded both Canada and Mexico, how would we respond?

The Internet's Matt Yglesias is doing the same thought experiment here. Although he ignored the Afghanistan/Mexico parallel, its nevertheless worth a read.

But I thought all Islamic militants were fascist evildoers bent on destroying the United States?

BARA, Pakistan -- The only thing standing between Pakistan's Taliban and the lifeline for U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan may be an Islamist warlord who controls the area near Pakistan's famed Khyber Pass.

In an interview with McClatchy, Mangal Bagh, who leads a group called Lashkar-i-Islam, voiced his disdain for America but said he's rebuffed an offer from the Taliban to join them.

Truckloads of food, equipment and fuel for NATO troops wind through the Khyber Pass daily to the bustling border at Torkham. Last month, Taliban fighters bombed fuel trucks waiting at Torkham to cross into Afghanistan, and last week, fighting between Bagh's men and a pocket of Taliban resistance closed the highway for several days.

Locals said that Bagh wouldn't allow Taliban fighters to cross into the Khyber agency, which is part of Pakistan's tribal belt and is now largely under his control.

Bagh's stronghold, the market town of Bara, is a half-hour drive from the center of Peshawar, the provincial capital, but an escort of his heavily armed followers is needed to reach his fortified compound in the countryside.

"I'm not the ruler of Khyber, I'm the servant," said Bagh, 35, who had an unexpectedly gentle manner as he relaxed with his Kalashnikov-toting men, drinking tea. "My aim is to finish all social evils."

The Pakistani Taliban, who control other parts of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas on the country's wild northwestern border, have issued repeated entreaties to Bagh to join forces with them. A traditional jirga, a meeting of elders, was held between Lashkar-i-Islam and the Taliban about 40 days ago.

"I told them (the Taliban) that what I am doing is enough. It is the right direction. There is no need to join you," he said.

"The Taliban consists of religious scholars. We are fighters for Islam, laypeople. We don't have any religious figures in our organization."

Unlike the Taliban and al Qaida, Lashkar-i-Islam opposes kidnappings and suicide bombings. Bagh's message is more an austere one, that "vices" must end, rather than the calls for international jihad, or Islamic holy war, of the Taliban and al Qaida.

However, he also called the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan "wrong" and said American troops must leave.

"While the Americans are in Afghanistan, there is no way to bring peace and prosperity, over there and here," Bagh said. "We do not want to kill Americans, we just want to make them Muslims."

Things are far, far more complicated than the juvenile debate of the last 5 years would make them seem.

Notice what they were discussing when he just got up and left:

Enough is enough, it seems. With the NATO summit meetings consistently running two hours over schedule most of the day, President Bush abruptly got up and left the last formal session of the day, not bothering to wait for an official summit photograph of all the leaders.

Bush is no fan of windy meetings and evidently had had his fill. He left behind Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to represent him for the rest of the session, which concerned NATO operations in Afghanistan, but his departure was so sudden and unexpected that he left some of his motorcade behind, inculding his press pool, when he got into his car and headed back to his hotel.

The NYT today has an amazing read on the perils of outsourcing and privatizing essential government services. There's quite literally nothing about this story that makes sense. Here's how the story begins:

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan's army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

In purchasing munitions, the contractor has also worked with middlemen and a shell company on a federal list of entities suspected of illegal arms trafficking.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company's president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company's purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

And believe me, it only gets worse from there.

Why on earth would we think it a good idea to give a contract of this magnitude and importance to the lowest bidder without even bothering to check and see if they were qualified for the job? Not including previous ideological commitments, of course.

This just makes no sense. Some things are so important that we should make sure that the experts are in charge. Providing munitions to our allies in Afghanistan in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban would seem to be one of those things. And the experts in this case would clearly be procurement experts in the Pentagon.

Wait... what's that you say? Under then Sec. of Defense Dick Cheney, we began privatizing most of the Pentagon's procurement functions back in the 1980s? It was designed to be more cost effective and efficient you say? Of course it was.

To repeat: Some things are so important that we must make sure the experts retain control of them. And if the Pentagon isn't expert in this, what the hell is it good for?

UPDATE: The House is already planning hearings on this mess. No word yet from Sen. Joe Lieberman's Senate oversight committee. Because this will make his friends in the White House look bad, I wouldn't hold your breath on that one.

UPDATE II: As if on cue, the Washington Post reports on the wider impact of Pentagon contracting:

Government auditors said yesterday that the Pentagon relies too much on contractors who often work alongside their government counterparts, cost more and sometimes take on responsibilities they are not supposed to.

The Government Accountability Office said that as the government's workforce has shrunk, its demand for services has mushroomed and procurement deals have become more complex and hard to manage. That has forced agencies to hire more contractors. Last year, the Defense Department spent $158.3 billion on services--a 76 percent increase over the past decade, and more than what it spends on supplies, equipment and major weapons systems, according to the report.

Tim F. comments:

The Bush years haven't been kind to olde-timey conservative principles like small, limited government that respects individual freedom or skepticism about casually using force abroad, but the modern GOP hasn't forgotten all of its roots. The notion of privatizing government functions and eliminating tax revenue have more than persisted, they have become the apotheosis of Republican government, the absolute rigid ideological framework from which no deviation can be tolerated. It is hard to imagine a recent instance when Republican leaders have not taken the most maximalist possible approach to handing over important functions to allies in the private sector.

And yet in almost every case that doctrine has proven a failure. Pick your topic - charter schools, FEMA, The State Department. How about those White House email records? Privatizing Social Security was an absolutely capital idea - imagine the universal happiness if part of the SS portfolio was invested in Wall Street today! Nominating lobbyists to manage departments that regulate their own industry counts as a kind of privatization, and that has proved a disaster.

Sad as that is, the Republican dogma is doing great at home compared with the beating that it's taking in Iraq. Iraqis hate American troops or they don't, but they detest the private firms that cowboy around pointing their guns without any meaningful oversight. At least troops who massacre civilians face some nominal consequences through military justice; mercs who shoot up a neighborhood walk without any reckoning at all. That drives Iraqis insane, it adds popular support to people who kill Americans and it makes troops' lives harder....

The doctrine of reflexively privatizing every imaginable service and then skimping on oversight is not some incidental point, it's the only aspect of Bush Republicanism that is still recognizably conservative. There are few ideas closer to the core of their being, and it's a fraud.

This new claim by the Bush Adminsitration is so unbelievably stupid I hardly know where to start. First, Reuters:

Iran may be becoming involved in Afghanistan in an ``unhealthy way,'' a senior U.S. official said on Wednesday, pointing to signs of Iranian arms supplies to the Taliban and other contacts.

The comments by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Richard Boucher came a day after America's top general said Iranian weapons headed for Taliban fighters had been intercepted in Afghanistan in the last month.

Tensions are high between Washington and Tehran. The United States and others accuse Iran of seeking nuclear weapons behind the cover of a nuclear energy program, a charge Tehran denies.

Boucher said Iran had played a positive role in the international process to establish a post-Taliban government in 2001 and in fighting the drugs trade from the country.

But he said there had been increasing concerns about Iran's behavior in Afghanistan in the past year.

``We have been seeing a series of indicators that Iran is maybe getting more involved in an unhealthy way in Afghanistan,'' Boucher told a news briefing in Brussels, where he had held talks with EU officials.

He said these included reports of involvement in ``political areas'' and of contacts and arms supplies to the Taliban.

Echoing comments by U.S. Gen. Peter Pace, he said: ``We don't know exactly who is doing this and why but we know that these are Iranian-origin weapons that have shown up in the hands of the Taliban.''

Asked to expand on evidence of Iranian interference, he said:

``I don't want to overstate it. We have seen these things that I've noted; the weapons that General Pace talked about show up in Afghanistan; seen reports of political involvement from Iran, and these are things that we are watching very carefully.''

Iran has yet to respond to Pace's accusations. It has dismissed U.S. accusations that it is fuelling the chaos in Iraq by providing weapons and training to Shi-ite militants.

Boucher did not respond when asked whether he thought it was unusual that Shi'ite Muslim Iran could be helping the Taliban, which adheres to the rival Sunni sect of Islam.

During the years that the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, Iran supported Afghan groups fighting the group, including the Northern Alliance which played a crucial role in toppling Taliban after the 2001 U.S.-led invasion.

In 1998, Iran almost went to war with Afghanistan after the Taliban government killed 10 Iranian diplomats.

Pace said Iranian-made mortars and C-4 explosives were intercepted in Kandahar by coalition forces. He did not provide further details, saying he knew only that the weapons were made in Iran and were on their way to the Taliban.

Just because weapons are coming from Iran does not mean they are coming from the Iranian government. This shouldn't be terribly difficult to understand, and yet somehow it is.

Prior to 9/11, Iran had two mortal enemies, one on each of its eastern and western borders. They didn't just dislike the Taliban. They despised them. Remember, Iran provided significant logistical support for our initial military action against Afghanistan. They were thrilled that we were going to remove them from power, just as they were thrilled when we took down Iraq for them a few years later. But now, all of a sudden, I'm supposed to believe that they want to see the Taliban back in power? Seriously?

In this article from the NYT, the claim is pushed even further, suggesting there may be a tie between the Taliban and the hardline Quds Force within Iraq. (For the record, the Quds Force is the same thing as the Revolutionary Guard. Why both the media and the administration decided to abandon the later in favor of the former is something I've never seen explored).

Here's why I have a hard time believing this: The Revolutionary Guard reports directly to the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. During the Afghan civil war in the early 1990s, the Guard openly supported the Northern Alliance, the primary opposition group to the Taliban that was also backed by the United States. The Iranian government is Shiite. The Revolutionary Guard is Shiite. The Taliban are ultra-orthodox Sunni.

I understand that many people, no doubt including some in Iran, subscribe to the "my enemy's enemy is my friend" school of foreign policy. Perhaps there are even some within the Revolutionary Guard who believe this. But the fact that they have fallen for this logical fallacy does not mean that we have to. We have nothing to gain and everything to lose by doing so. These groups are natural enemies, not allies. We need to recognize that and act accordingly.

For the record, I hate Wolf Blitzer. In fact, the man annoys me as much, if not more, than either George Bush or Dick Cheney. Which means that I suspect I will not be watching Blitzer's interview with Cheney later today. Thankfully, TPM has the transcript. Here's an excerpt:

Q The current situation there is very unstable.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: It is.

Q The President himself speaks about a nightmare scenario right now. He was contained, as you repeatedly said throughout the '90s, after the first Gulf War, in a box, Saddam Hussein.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, he was after the first Gulf War -- had managed -- he kicked out all the inspectors. He was providing payments to the families of suicide bombers. He was a safe haven for terror, was one of the prime state sponsors of terror, as designated by our State Department, for a long time. He'd started two wars. He had violated 16 U.N. Security Council resolutions. If he were still there today, we'd have a terrible situation. Today, instead --

Q But there is a terrible situation.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: No, there is not. There is not. There's problems, ongoing problems, but we have, in fact, accomplished our objectives of getting rid of the old regime, and there is a new regime in place that's been there for less than a year, far too soon for you guys to write them off. They have got a democratically written constitution, first ever in that part of the world. They've had three national elections. So there's been a lot of success.

So there you have it. According to the Vice President of the United States, there "is not" a "terrible situation" today in Iraq. Words fail me.

A second excerpt:

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Remember, remember me -- remember with me what happened in Afghanistan. The United States was actively involved in Afghanistan in the '80s supporting the effort against the Soviets. The Mujahideen prevailed, everybody walked away. And in Afghanistan, within relatively short order, the Taliban came to power, they created a safe haven for al Qaeda, training camps were established where some 20,000 terrorists trained in the late '90s. And out of that, out of Afghanistan, because we walked away and ignored it, we had the attack on the USS Cole, the attack on the embassies in East Africa, and 9/11, where the people trained and planned in Afghanistan for that attack and killed 3,000 Americans. That is what happens when we walk away from a situation like that in the Middle East.

Now you might have been able to do that before 9/11. But after 9/11, we learned that we have a vested interest in what happens on the ground in the Middle East. Now, if you are going to walk away from Iraq today and say, well, gee, it's too tough, we can't complete the task, we just are going to quit, you'll create exactly that same kind of situation again.

This is a version of the "9/11 changed everything" argument I hadn't heard before. The US involved itself heavily in Afghanistan in the 1980s. It even armed the groups that became al Qaeda and the Taliban. [This was, for the record, a set of policies Dick Cheney himself played an integral part in creating and maintaining.] But then, the US walked away. According to Cheney, it is because we walked away from the region, rather than that we involved ourselves with the wrong people in the first place, that 9/11 happened.

Or maybe not. Because then there is that "Now you might have been able to do that before 9/11" cavaet. And that just makes no sense. On the one hand, he's trying to claim those policies led to 9/11. On the other, he's saying that despite the fact that they led to 9/11 those polices were OK before 9/11. I've heard of incoherent, but wow...

Then again, if you were one of the people who helped arm the groups that became the Taliban and al Qaeda, maybe incoherence is your only refuge.

Cheney has learned all of the wrong lessons from his own history. The problem with Afghanistan wasn't that we walked away. It is that our earlier interventions, however right they may have seemed at the time, have had very severe long-term unintended consequences. That is the most important part of the story. And it is a part of the story that Cheney seems to have entirely missed.