Afghanistan

We climbed the stairs to the third floor, where Osama bin Laden died early in the morning of May 2, 2011. I stepped into the bedroom where he was killed and looked up at the ceiling, where you could still see the patterns of blood that had spurted from bin Laden's head when the bullet fired by a U.S. Navy SEAL tore through the terrorist leader's face.

The height of the room was low for someone as tall as bin Laden, who was 6 foot 4.

Last week, Afghan president Hamid Karzai surprised U.S. and coalition officials by announcing the creation of a special tribunal and prosecutor to seek redress for the almost two year old Kabul Bank scandal. And earlier this month, the Afghan House of Representatives rejected the proposed federal budget in part because of the allocation of U.S. $80 million to Kabul Bank. Already, the Central Bank has poured $450 million into the beleaguered bank after it lost almost a billion dollars in the 2010 financial scandal.

The gripping account of the decade-long hunt for the world's most wanted man.

Nearly one out of every five NATO soldiers killed in Afghanistan this year were killed by Afghan police or army forces. Nine of the 16 victims were U.S. soldiers.

Gen. John Allen, commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, testified before Congress this week for the first time since his confirmation, and I haven’t seen such unbridled optimism about a war—any war—since Donald Rumsfeld’s heyday.

“To be sure, the last couple months have been trying,” Allen acknowledged, referring to the Koran burnings, the massacre of 16 Afghan citizens, the killing of U.S. advisers by their Afghan underlings, and other disasters. But, he added, “I am confident that we will prevail in this endeavor.”

Amid the international debate over the future of Afghanistan, a false binary has taken hold. Afghanistan is torn, we are told, between two choices: a corrupt, ineffective, increasingly unpopular government of President Hamid Karzai or the prospect of the return of the Taliban and their twisted and violent vision of Islam and a manifestly disastrous ruling history. In this stark choice, Mr Karzai is the usual winner.

Tapping away at his computer in the study of the suburban compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that he called home for the last years of his life, Osama bin Laden wrote memos urging his followers to continue to try to attack the United States, suggesting, for instance, they mount assassination attempts against President Obama and Gen. David Petraeus.

The massacre of 16 Afghan civilians by a lone U.S. service member last weekend has intensified debate as to whether the U.S. should speed the end of the war in Afghanistan. According to the New York Times, the Obama administration is considering whether to announce a redeployment of 20,000 troops by the middle of 2013, on top of the 22,000 scheduled to leave by this September. (There are 90,000 U.S. troops currently in Afghanistan.) The Times reports that Vice President Joe Biden has voiced support for a faster pullout. And he’s got company.