{"id":188165,"date":"2010-11-27T18:39:00","date_gmt":"2010-11-27T23:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/11\/27\/our-man-in-kandahar\/"},"modified":"2010-11-27T18:39:00","modified_gmt":"2010-11-27T23:39:00","slug":"our-man-in-kandahar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/11\/27\/our-man-in-kandahar\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Man in Kandahar"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/a.imageshack.us\/img443\/9375\/doublefacepalm9496114.jpg\" style=\"cursor: pointer; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px;\" width=\"390\" \/>So, we have been holding high level talks with a high ranking representative of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, and they plied him with many inducements, including no small amount of cash, only <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/11\/23\/world\/asia\/23kabul.html\">he turned out to be a con man scamming American negotiators<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"background-color: white; color: blue;\"><p>For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.<\/p>\n<p>But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s not him,\u201d said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. \u201cAnd we gave him a lot of money.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>American officials confirmed Monday that they had given up hope that the Afghan was Mr. Mansour, or even a member of the Taliban leadership. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>We are not just non winning in Afghanistan, we are actively, and aggressively, losing there.<\/p>\n<p>Things like this are a sign of a failed policy being pursued by desperate people.<\/p>\n<p>H\/t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2010\/11\/sadly-not-deleted-scene-from-in-loop.html\">Atrios<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, we have been holding high level talks with a high ranking representative of the Taliban, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, and they plied him with many inducements, including no small amount of cash, only he turned out to be a con man scamming American negotiators: For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,970,982,979,1098],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-corruption","category-stupid","category-wanker","category-war"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}