Grim

Afghanistan is now officially the bad war.  ABC News reports that the situation in Afghanistan is”grim”. The assessment may be correct but the thing to watch for is what actions the pre-leaked NIE findings will be used to justify. It’s a safe bet the still to be completed NIE will have as many political uses as strategic ones, but maybe politics and strategy are all the same thing.

“US intelligence analysts are putting the final touches on a secret National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan that reportedly describes the situation as ‘grim’, but there are ‘no plans to declassify’ any of it before the election, according to one US official familiar with the process. … According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a ‘grim’ picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.”