This is I had to find out from Al Jazeera: US announces it is willing to hold reconciliation talks with the Taliban

And the source, by the way, is Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.

Gates: such talks are "ultimately the exit strategy for all of us."

Brigadier General Mark Carleton-Smith, the senior British commander in Afghanistan, is now on record saying that the war there cannot be won militarily, something that ever previous invader of the region--from the former Soviet Union back to Alexander the Great--could have told us all several years ago.

What I like best is the comment on the story by someone posting from Afghanistan, which points out the obvious: "If it cannot be won, it is lost."

In related news from Al Jazeera, Pakistan is reporting US missile strikes from across the Afghan border, and the Bush administration is pissed that a Federal judge has just ruled that 17 Guantanamo detainees who are Uighur nationalists interested in fighting China rather than America must be released.

I leave it to the reader to come up with his or her own commentary.

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