Nostalgia.  

It feels as if we are back in 9-11 World, with imams and jihadist websites and statements by Euros that there is "no evidence" of this or that character connecting to an extreme act. The political landscape has tipped against the Obama administration, and there will be a rush to move beyond Yemen news. CNN featuring an American jihadist wearing an ice cream hat with a goofy beard and near-sighted squint is like nostalgia.  Yes, Anwar al-Awlaki was born in New Mexico and graduated from Colorado State in engineering; yes, he is linked to Nidal Hasan of Fort Hood, and now to the Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that launched Abdulmutallab.  Will there be a 12-25 Commission?  There is no recovery at least until SOTU.  Yet there will be hearings, and that will drag out the themes.  By Spring, without more troubles, there may be peace.  Then there is the possibility there will be more cruise strikes on Yemen -- and perhaps another shot at Awlaki.

Larry Johnson remarked that the White House handling of the second announcement in two days about Abdulmutallab is a news sort of disaster. What is POTUS saying is a "failure?" The CIA officer at the Abuja, Nigeria embassy interviewed Abdulmutallab's father on November 19 and filed a report that went to the National Counter Terrorism Center. This is correct conduct. The NTCT did not connect the report to the State Department Visa section. Why should it? The NTCT did not connect the report to the JSOC raids on the Yemen terror camps on December 17 and 24. Why should it? Where is the failure? The failure is in the Obama administration scrambling to explain what did or did not happen on December 25. Crime or war? If it is a crime, what is the significance of the CIA?   Pre-crime to the rescue? If it is war, why did you read Abdulmutallab Miranda and pay for him to lawyer up and dummy up?  POTUS in a fever of rationalization.  Note that the entire statement does not permit the word "terror" nor "terrorism" nor "terrorist."  Instead, the word "extremist" is the all-purpose pejorative.  Who is fooled?

Karl Rove is relaxed, well-spoken, cogent. He quotes the afternoon presser remarks by the bloviating and defensive POTUS, "The American people should be assured that we are doing everything we can to keep your family safe."  Karl Rove then pounds the Obama administration on its decisions since the Flight 253 event. Rove makes it clear that POTUS views the attack as a crime, as assault and bettery, as a one-off.  Rove says, "This is not a crime.  This is a war."  Rove says, "How much valuable information was lost in the 72 hours after..."  "And sweat him as we have seen in a dozen movies..."   Inarguable, on target, comprehensive, passionate, easy listening.  My source information is that Obama administration defenders Karen Tumulty and Donna Brazille are in agreement with the observation that Janet Napolitano's unusual, vapid performance on TV on Sunday 28 was a new crater in the national security landscape of the Obama administration.  "The system worked," is the new jibe replacing "Yes, we can."

On Larry King, Tom Ridge attacked the Obama administration decision to read Abdulmutallah his Miranda rights and treat him with lawyers and presumption of innocence.  Same question that Rove asks: is this a crime or a war? 

Janet Napolitano was not ready for this CNN conversation about the attack on Flight 253 and the USA, and her rejoinder to Candy Crowley's not unsympathetic and hardly direct questions suggests that Janet Napolitano does not aim to speak to the facts of any of it.  "That's part of the criminal justice investigation that is ongoing... " Wrong answer. This was an attack against the national security of the United States. It was not the act of a lone criminal named Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.  It was the act of a gang.  It indicates strongly that the suspect was the end of a chain of decisions made by enemies of the state.  A wider terror plot?  Yes.  Much wider.  Since the first World Trade Tower attack in 1993, at least.  What the Secretary of Homeland Security makes of the events on Flight 253 is PR doubletalk. "...and I think it would be inappropriate to speculate whether or no he has such ties... one think I would like to point out is that the system worked. Everyone played an important role here. The passengers and crew of the flight took appropriate action..."  Janet Napolitano's contrived, clumsy, condescending, cloying performance is an alarm bell. Many are listening.  Janet Napolitano is not watching the bad guys.  What are we doing in AfPakia but trying to decap Al Q?  Why did we fire cruise missiles into Yemen except to decap Al Q?  Does JN get the emails?  My first watch is on the national security polling that will come in the new year.

Earth Shocks.  

I was off-air for Christmas week on December 26, 2004, when the tsunami struck Sumatra and Thailand and the Andives and Ceylon and caused the death of perhaps 250k people; however upon return I reported carefully for weeks on the arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln and other rescue efforts. It is a certain memory. What Michael Vlahos calls earth shocks. There is no predicting. Afterward, there is only survival.

Peculiar attack ad by the NRCC against Alabama's Parker Griffith just last year in 2008. Attack ads work so well they are laughable when you look at them again. What exactly was the point of hearing a fellow remark that the single most destructive attack on America int he last decade was the collective bank run of September and October 2008? Trillions and trillions of assets destroyed by the tomfoolery of Congress, regulators, bankers and the willful suspension of moral hazard implicit in Fannie and Freddie and then the Bear Sterns bailout. Pogo: "Yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us." You hear different?

POTUS remarks at the White House after the Democratic Senate caucus passed Harry Reid's 2733 page bill for a healthcare insurance bail-out/take-over, "I look forward to working with members of Congress in both chambers over the coming weeks to do exactly that."  This is funny.  Working with Democrats?  POTUS faces the ordeal of demonstrating that he is a bipartisan executive who only concerns himself with the most demanding and needful and manipulative members of his own party on the Hill.  The GOP is not in POTUS's view.  A president of one party; a Congress of one party; a Federal government of one party; a one party state.  The most partisan presidency ever?  To what end?  The Federal city looks unstable for the next ten months, until the mid-term.

Speaking Alan Murray, WSJ, Saturday 26 re the last ten years, the decade of two lurid bear markets and grotesque misbehavior by the rich and the insufferable, and it is especially useful to note that this was the worst decade of stocks ever.

Spoke David Luhnow, WSJ, bureau chief in Mexcio City Tuesday 22, and he told me that the Mexican TV is now using the word "terrorism" for the drug wars between the military and the cartels. In retaliation for the Mexican Navy operation against the now departed ghoul Beltran Leyva, the new ghoul-in-chief of the gang, named Valdez, nick-named "La Barbie," sent gunmen to slaughter the family (right) of a sailor, Angulo, killed in the operation, the very mother, sister and brothers who had been honored on national television that day (above) as the slain sailor had been buried.  Mexico turns medieval in the revenge cycle.  Luhnow also said that the man on the street is indifferent, numb, unconcerned.  The Calderon government is at risk after three years of fighting the drug cartels, yet still refuses to invite US assistance on the border.  David Luhnow said that political assassination against Calderon and his government is now a credible turn.

Pandora Hunt.   

Colleague Simon Constable speaks to Robert Lee Hotz and a Harvard grad student, Zachary Borta, re the discovery of a Super Earth around a red dwarf only 40 light years out. Using the indirect modelling methods, and using linked 16-inch telescopes, GJ 1241b is 2.7 times of the Earth with a density that is somewhere between water and rock. Speaking Sunday 20 to Lisa Kaltenegger, Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysics Center, re the search for rocky and wet exoplanets, and we do speak of GJ 1241b. Our chief interest is the science behind James Cameron's creation of the moon Pandora, a satellite of a Super-Earth like planet orbiting Alpha Centauri A, which is only 4.5 light years out.  The James Webb Space Telescope (right), due to replace Hubble as soon as March 2014, will provide capability to hunt for and discern Earth-like moons such as Pandora: rocky and wet with density consistent with 1.0 gravity and a thick, oxygenated atmosphere.  In sum, Cameron's "Avatar" follows the best and latest expectation of the planet-hunters.  The Kepler results to be announced in January 2010 promise major turns of many Edens, all to be confirmed over the next five years.  Waiting for the JWST to point and shoot at nearby stars with rich possibilites, such as Alpha Centuari A.

Al Qaeda's Taliban production unit, subset of a savvy and inspired Al Jazeera video team, produced this spectacular trash-talking session of a junior field officer, Salafi, in the Taliban cadre at Kunar Province.  These lads are likely related to or part of the operation that swept against two US supported FOBs in Nuristan Province in early November, a strike that led to the US abandoning Nuristan and Kunar to the Taliban.   This Taliban fireteam looks substantial and well-armed and cocky.  "If we get killed, we are martyrs..."  The landscape looks gritty, vast, hostile and ready-made for guerilla ops.  Pakistan's Northwest Province just across the border is a beehive of Taliban recruits who can resupply without fear of reprisal from the US or harassment from the Pakistan army.  Not a positive scenario.  Hollywood Taliban carries on as if it has already made this movie in Russian subtitles.    

POTUS delivered a non-starter of a pitch at day's open (above), and by day's end the best POTUS could rally himself to say was that COP 15 produced a document that was "meaningful."  Late news from Copenhagen (see POTUS statement below) speaks of feverish negotiations around a hastily organized table of sovereigns from the BRICs as well as the US and South Africa.  There are bizarre accompanying photos, as if we have plunged into a movie set of a sudden world-scale crisis.  The table looks to be either the audience to welcome an alien ambassador from the Klingons or a last moment confab about the evacuation of the planet just before a planet-killer NEO strikes.  What is this crisis about?  War?  Famine?  Pandemic?  No.  Melting ice somewhere!  There is no "settled science."  There is no pool of money for the kleptocracies.  There is no United Nations governance.  And now there is no treaty.  The bigwigs sit the table as if there is a point of view.  There is what a EU booster calls "catastrophe."  Why is POTUS Obama facing off with Wen of China?  Where is the head of state Mandarin Lord Hu?  Wen is a functionary, nearly powerless, as is the Standing Committee of the Party Politburo,  after the economic shredding and the last years of mismanagement of the earthquake, the liberation tides in Tibet and Xianjiang.  Hu is holding on to a chaotic and unknown process of aggrandizement and post-industrialization.  Beijing is a headless boaster.  Why is POTUS dealing with a lieutenant?  What does South Africa represent?  Not the G-77.  This table is an illustration of a what used to be called a multi-polar world.  No one is in charge.  Brazil's President Lula sits on POTUS's side of the table?  Why?  Who are the Chinese flacks beside Wen?   Does POTUS know that he outguns and outweighs everyone else, most especially the BRICs?  Their strength is potential, not earned, not certain.  The US strength is operational, earned, certain.  This is fascination and astonishment.  POTUS appears as if he is back to his rumored savvy poker-playing  in Springfield and is trying to bluff with trash.  Show your aces, guy.  What am I thinking?  This table isn't about winning.  This is about promising a Tower of Babel with Green Tech.  Who is surprised that they walked away in blame-shifting grumpiness.  (A G-77 mouthpiece offered, "Gross violations...")  Leaving us all to welcome the asteroid strike without raising our taxes to pay for cleaning up the debris of the Northern Hemisphere.

 

POTUS and the White House message unit feature a National Security meeting that is ranged for Friday 18 with Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, at a bilateral pow-wow at the Copenhagen Climate Summit, to discuss arms control that is not much at issue for the summiteers. It does seems a sideshow to the howling and pan-handling inside the arena of global warming tears. It is not entirely old news. There is the new detail, released in the WSJ from the DoD correspondents August Cole, Yochi Dreazen, Siobhan Gorman, with information that can only come from military sources, that the Predator drones were compromised at least five years ago by Russian and Chinese ops -- and that the DoD has known of the security problem and not fixed it until now. A scandal of the Bush years. Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, remarked Thursday 17 that this intelligence hole is flabbergasting, and that it was left deliberately unsealed requires an explanation in the language of the Yahoos. Perhaps POTUS may raise the issue with the Russians. Ask after the video rights for ITunes.   Best of whacking the Haqqani Network.

Who is Listening?  

If.... "the Federal government will go bankrupt..." Re healthcare, POTUS Obama moves to speak in an unusual fashion.  Not just hyperbole, not just preposterous, also aimless.  Whom is he talking to? The NBC/WSJ poll shows a majority of people have stopped listening and moved to the negative on healthcare, on jobs, on the economy. Mrs. Pelosi argues that when they get healthcare passed, they can move to jobs and the economy and the polls will show forbearance and reward. This is creative of the Speaker. The polls point in the direction of an election massacre for the majority in November.   POTUS needs a villain to frame his case to the electorate. For the next ten months, no villains.  Where is the villain in "...going to consume the entire US budget..."

GITMO North is the Obama administration's solution to a facile campaign promise that grew into a burden this last year of having no answers where to put the last of the rascals from GITMO South. State after state turned aside the White House beseechments. Not in my backyard from coast to coast and then around the planet as nations treated the detainees as Kryptonite. Those released overseas were quickly rehabilited and return to their families (euphemism for back on the streets with bragging rights at the local mobile phone kiosk). Now sadsack ruural Loserville Thomson, Illinois is to get about 100 or more of the remnant. Pat Quinn and Dick Durbin of Illinois pitch the tales as a jobs program. Stimulus II. It is hooey. POTUS told them they had to take the GITMO orange-dressed geniuses or else.  The Obama administration creates a pet monster cage that the Euro NGOs can now call a gulag with country music.  What is most fun here is that none of these boys look as if they much believe their own palaver.    Illinois rolled over.   The screws get to respect the Koran for breakfast.

Al Gore's silly misstatement that the North Pole ice cap will disappear in five years underlines a very bad few days for the UN Climate Change Summit. The Chinese and American ambassadors are exchanging verbal blows such as "irresponsible" and "ignorant." The UK ambassador declares that China is non-transparent and therefore untrustworthy on greenhouse emissions. The UN Secretary-General spoke of "posturing." Coral Davenport, CQ, reported Monday 14 from the convention center that the poor nations walked out, the rich nations were confused, stymied, troubled, and that there was no agreement on anything, not the money, the targets, the facts, the end time. Another rousing demonstration of one-world government in Babel.  Chilly and surly world leaders arrive in days to what promises to be a subdued rage of the malcontent. North Pole at risk at Christmas, Al Gore's farewell to Santa.

Bruise Control.  

Great fun Sunday 13 when Charlie Gasparino reported that the FDIC is permitting Citi, the deathless zombie bank of 2008, to purchase its way out of government supervision by repaying TARP $20 billion and proceeding as a publicly traded bank. This is funny, as it comes on the same week that POTUS will scold the big banks and call them "fat cats." The banks remain in the hospice. The overhang in residential REOs is now joined by the suddenly severely marked down CREs. Joblessness is a spreading. Transparent buildings, empty floors, empty malls, boarded up window fronts. The big cities are overowned. The CRE funeral is receiving mourners.  Doom is the address.  POTUS begins the class war chorus lessons with a room full of bankers, "And a One, and a Two, and a Three, sing!"  h/t Calculated Risk.

What I told the audience in Washington and Northern Virginia on Thursday evening 10 was that if you think your sons or husbands are prey to the madness of these five stooges lite just arrested in Pakistan on their way to the jihad killer camps in North Waziritstan, then turn them in now, rat them out now, betray them now, because you are paying taxes to buy the systems that will capture or kill them inevitably. Little about this tale adds up. The five putative jihadist wannabee cronies in an uncle's house in Pakistan -- all Americans from Pakistani, Egyptian, Eritrean and Somali backgrounds. The reported family member calling CAIR and turning in a videotape that made CAIR's executive director "uncomfortable." The arrests in Pakistan the same news cycle in which we learn of the October arrest of David Coleman Headley (heretofore Gilani), a Washington born drug felon, who was once run by the DEA, and is now accused of plotting with the Mumbai killers of the LeT. Doesn't add up. Early days. Pakistan is deeply sinister. Headley has a Pakistan control agent. So did the killers at Mumbai. And now the Obama administration asserts that Pakistan is our partner in the fight against the Taliban that takes refuge in Pakistan.

"Heart of Hollywood."  

The gamble of the moment in Hollywood is how far down the stairs James Cameron will fall when he opens his "Avatar."  The movie gods have invented a new concept call "unaided awareness" to anticipate opening weekend boxoffice gross.  (UA is slightly close to the famous UAV of the battlefield, and therefore more thrilling, and they are fretting that UA for "Avatar" is running behind UA for the monster "Transformers.")  From the trailer, the narrative looks like Cameron has gone Kurtz-always-works in his thinking.  You recall the Conrad short tale "Heart of Darkness," re the Belgian Congo where King Leopold gave license to massacre in order to extract plunder, and Kurtz, the average European taskmaster, went native as a savage butcher.  Coppola remade the tale re Vietnam and Cambodia in the 1976 "Apocalypse Now."  Cameron has updated with attractive and Disneyfied graphical representations of affectionate characters.  The villains look to resemble Haliburton hires (a tribute to the Wicked Witch Cheney).  Coppola did not explore the village anthropology around his Kurtz (Brando mumbling drunkenly in a cave).  Cameron looks to be persuaded that mice-like creatures who fly on mammalian birds in Amazonian jungles are superior tacticians.  Call this "Heart of Hollywood."  This is not an accurate dystopian translation of the set-piece in "Avatar" when the villains aim to capture the native village, because it sits atop mindless wealth in commodities.  

Symmetrical warfare units (such as the US Marine Corps) have vastly superior skills when it comes to capturing a map coordinate.  The inadequacy of the war-fighting plan starts when the symmetrical warfare unit must garrison a dystopian ruin like Baghdad or a wilderness like AfPakia. See the colonial wars of the 20th century.  In all, I will see the flick, probably when it goes ITunes next summer.  The music sounds cool, perfect for what I need.  However the major struggle for the film is that it tells an anti-war tale of the wrong POTUS.  This works for POTUS Bush and the villains of the GOP in Iraq.  It does not work for POTUS Obama and the engaging heroes of Afghanistan.  Just took two years too long to release the film.  Christmas 2007, with POTUS Bush rationalizing the surge, with McCain down in the polls, with Obama just a flicker int he distance to the all-conquery Hillary Clinton, that was its moment.  Now?  The Peace Prize for Afghanistan is beyond even Kurtz's wicked irony.

Gang of 10.  

Spoke to Adriel Bettelheim, CQ, and Jodi Schneider, American Banker, re the healthcare reform compromise cooked by the Gang of 10 Democrats, and they both pointed to Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snowe as the senators whom Harry Reid must persuade. Lots of other can fall away, such as Red State Ben Nelson, Kent Conrad, Blanche Lincoln, can fall away or remain dubious; yet they will all likely vote for the new new version, sans public option, if either Lieberman or Snowe are converted. The game awaits the CBO score. Jodi Schneider said it was hard to guess if the CBO score would be cheaper than the public option, since they are now including the possibility of 55-64 year-olds joining the troubled Medicare program, but we must wait and see. The timeline remains sometime in January or more likely around or after the State of the Union address. What does POTUS say? POTUS wants anything to sign that has the word healthcare on it. The threat is the jobless. The Obama team concentrates its energy and worry on healthcare.

George Friedman, Stratfor.com, told me Tuesday 8 that the McChrystal mission of training the ANA and police to stand-up by mid 2011 and after is unrealistic, because the lesson of Vietnam was the more you expand the indigenous forces, the more your security is penetrated by enemy agents. Without surprise, counterinsurgency cannot succeed. Also, George Friedman believes it is unrealistic to expect the US military can operate effectively across the Pakistan border in the Taliban and Al Q sanctuary. It is too far to go for even our best capabilities. Hostile territory, overwhelming resistance. Bill Roggio agreed that the Taliban sanctuaries are beyond the reach of US operations. What is "achievable" in 18 months for the surge -- so says General McChrystal in testimony on the Hill -- if we cannot trust the ANA and cannot cross to take the fight to the Taliban sanctuaries?

John McCain answered Harry Reid's peculiar concoction of Senate failures -- abolition, suffrage, civil rights -- with a long, halting, acerbic and not uncareful reply in which he asked for Harry Reid to apologize.  Spoke Ryan Donmoyer, Bloomberg, re the frustrations and diversions in the Senate during the debate, and he told me that there was little to a very small chance that Harry Reid can bring the 2000 page healthcare reform bill to the floor.  Reid lacks 60 votes for action.  Joe Lieberman will not approve of the public option.  Olympia Snowe will not be the 60th vote for cloture.  Tuesday sees a crucial test vote on abortion.  No whipping reported.  Does Reid have 60 votes?  Unknown.  Old rule, if you are demanding an apology, you are winning; if you are apologizing, you are losing.

 It is the policy crime without a name and with no expiration date, the forever stupid decision not to send in waiting-to-be-deployed Army Rangers to Tora Bora in December 2001 to close and engage the delusional and cowardly Osama Bin Laden and his demoralized and helpless 200 gangsters in the caves and valley above the forward position of American agents. SecDef Robert Gates was not in authority at the time; the paternalistic and slow-minded Rumsfeld was, along with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Today we listen to Gates report that he has heard no report on Bin Laden in years. Means nothing. Gates is not at the position of knows it all. However it does mean that the 2001 decision not to kill Bin Laden close up grows and grows in legend and foreboding. Bin Laden's escape with a handful of cronies into Pakistan haunts many countries, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, the House of Saud and most especially the US. What could have been. Old lesson is new lesson. When you invade, invade. When you have the shot, take the shot. The old men who made the mistake will be dust before we see victory and peace in the Ummah.

Spoke to Michael Specter, author, "Denialism, How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives," re the future of synthetic biology, or virus-concocting, and he commented it it was possible, that all genetic engineering was credible including the sinister source. Biotechnology is more likely than not over the next century, and those who practice what they preach are able to glimpse improved human beings, superior skills and performance, and medical intervention that remakes the organisms in place. It is not irrational to fret about an accident. I mentioned the Outer Limits episode, "The Man Who Was Never Born," (1963), with Martin Landau, in which Landau is a freak mutant in the 22nd century who travels back to the 20th century to murder the mother of the man who invents a virus that wrecks humanity before she can give birth. Forty-six years later, the familiar sci-fi is not wrong-headed. Spoke to Henry Miller, Hoover, re H5N1 or avian flu, which remains the most likely mass-killer in this century. The status of H5N1 is that it is now global in birds and that we do not know when it will jump to human to human transmission. When it does, its mortality rate is 60%. The necessity is to maintain defenses, such as the ability to create and grow a vaccine quickly. The chronology is simple. It emerged in 1997 in Hong Kong. It went undergroung and remerged in 2003-04 in Hong Hong. Since then, nothing but isolated cases in which the afflicted had physical contact with birds. Waiting for Outer Limits and the mutation that makes the jump human to human..

Unhappy Farce.  

The next twist in the melodrama of the rejection and humiliation of the Hugo Chavez-stooge Manuel Zelaya must include a decision by the newly-elected president P. Lobo whether or not to arrest Zelaya when he leaves his cozy refuge in the Brazilian embassy.  Roberto Micheletti and the Congress have determined that Zelaya is a loser, that he will not have another day in the presidency, and that his fate is trivial.  The larger stage is that tiny Honduras, the mouse that roared, has now faced down a chorus line of losers including the US, Brazil, the OAS, the UN, and most especially Venezuela.  The wondrous Peter Sellers in the original "Mouse That Roared," closed with a happy farcical ending.  The intrigues of Venezuela now include a bi-weekly Airbus flight between Caracas-Damascus-Tehran.  No happy ending for this farce. 

Spoke to Frances Beinecke, Wed 2, re the Copenhagen summit and her new pamphlet book "Clean Energy ; and she made the case that the climate change is a clear and present danger.  The book points to drastic desertification that pushes vast populations into fame, to ice free Arctic seas that have not been available to sea-faring in millions of years, to drought and perfect storms and sweltering cities and monsoons and other severe weather -- in all a Mad Max scenario of Apocalypse Already.  Beinecke's case is that Copenhagen begins the global solution of cap and trade, enforced greenhouse gas emissions, and most importantly transition from fossil fuels to clean energy such as wind, tidal, geothermal, solar and the energy boost that comes from simpler, more efficient, practical engineering of habitats and infrastructure.  Clean energy green jobs are emphasized.  Asked her thoughts about the recent brouhaha over the hacked emails, Francis Beinecke, a major player in the Obama administration friends of green jobs circle (former director NRDC, pal of Robert Redford), said, "Not much."  Word comes from Marc Marano, ClimateDepot.com, that Al Gore has now cancelled a long since sold-out lecture in Copenhagen scheduled for December 15.  No explanation offered; 3000 ticket takers offered the money back, much embarassment.  Also a   new Rasmussen polls indicates 59% of the American public now believe that scientists "falsified" data to support their opinions of global warming.  

Victor Davis Hanson told me Tuesday 1 that POTUS remarks about hi Afghanistan decision lacked heart, that he spoke from the intellect, that his speech was less than effective.  "Underwhelmed" is the word that VDH used.  Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the Nation, also commented on POTUS tone.  She regarded the last quarter of the speech as the most effective part when he spoke of the missions to accomplish other than Afghanistan.  She regarded the first three-qurters of the speech, speaking the details of the Afghan decision, as mechanical and not convincing.  Two professional speakers and writers, from widely divergent political positions, both pointing to the lack of heart, energy, committment, or passion in the POTUS words about Afghanistan. 

Blame Bush Cheney Again.  

The Hollywood film-maker Michael Moore publishes an open letter of verbose denunciations that fixes POTUS as a "war president" unless he retreats from Afghanistan. The signal from the glamorously noisy Left is that POTUS is now a disappointment and perhaps headed to becoming a disgrace like the convenient jackanape George Bush.  Democratic Congressman and whopper-teller Maurice Hinchey demonstrates a school of Bush-blame-shifting above by arguing that Bush kept back the Rangers from Tora Bora in order to allow Bin Laden to escape so that Bush could have en excuse to invade Iraq.  Reworking this wondrous paranoid logic, perhaps we can argue that Bush invaded Iraq so that he could create an opportunity for an Iraq critic to win the presidency and reinvade Afghanistan in order to provoke Bin Laden into action in order to create conditions for Israel to bomb Iran.  Sure.  Michael Moore discovers that POTUS is a product of Bush and Cheney conspiracy genius.

Bush won't stop until he destroys the Earth.