Horse's Head In Karzai's Bed

So Hamid Karzai decided to get a bit uppity after hearing how we've been abusing and torturing some of his citizens, some of whom were declared innocent after we beat them to death, trying to pummel answers out of them that they simply didn't have. So sorry, our bad, wouldn't like it if it happened to us, but that Golden Rule shit's for Sunday school.

Anyway, the Ministry of Truth wasted no time at all pimp-slapping Karzai for having the temerity to speak up in defense of his own countrymen.

United States officials warned this month in an internal memo that an American-financed poppy eradication program aimed at curtailing Afghanistan's huge heroin trade had been ineffective, in part because President Hamid Karzai "has been unwilling to assert strong leadership."

A cable sent on May 13 from the United States Embassy in Kabul, the Afghan capital, said that provincial officials and village elders had impeded destruction of significant poppy acreage and that top Afghan officials, including Mr. Karzai, had done little to overcome that resistance.

"Although President Karzai has been well aware of the difficulty in trying to implement an effective ground eradication program, he has been unwilling to assert strong leadership, even in his own province of Kandahar," said the cable, which was drafted by embassy personnel involved in the antidrug efforts, two American officials said.

Yeah, it's not as if people haven't been pointing out for two years now that Karzai's power is so limited, he's basically the mayor of Kabul. And that's our doing; after taking out the Taliban, we left the provinces to the established warlords. And they've turned the place right back to the previous millennium -- and I don't mean the one we just exited 4½ years ago.

Opium poppies are the only real profitable enterprise. Women are back in burqas; aid workers are getting murdered; womens' rights workers have been getting raped and killed. And we're not gonna do a goddamn thing about it, 'cause it don't fill the gas tank. All that championing of the cause seems to have fallen by the wayside. I, for one, am shocked.

The message being relayed to Karzai here seems pretty clear: Look, asshole, you and the Taliban were useful to us back in the '90s when we were thinking about a nice pipeline for all that Caspian oil, because we loveses our precioussss, yes we does.

But that was then, and this is now, so sit down and shut up, before we knock that hat off your head just to point and laugh while you retrieve it. Got that, Chief?

Remember -- it's hard work, bein' done by good people.