In Bed with Afghanistan's Warlords

The New York Times story Wednesday on the “revelation” that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s embattled president Harmid Karzai, is of the “dog bites man” variety: prominent Afghan warlord behaving as prominent Afghan warlords behave.           

Amazingly, he’s involved in drug trafficking and he’s getting money, allegedly, from the CIA.

Amazingly, in a country that’s been involved in chaotic civil and international conflicts for thirty years, the people who have scrambled to the top of the bloody heap are unsavory.             

And, equally amazingly, American officials desperately working in this wretched country to stave off military defeat and political collapse find themselves cutting dirty deals with nasty people.