the blackout that hit much of the northeastern corner of this country missed me entirely, so i got to stay at work all day. the funny thing is, it never even occurred to me when i first heard about it that the outage would be a terrorist attack. i didn't consider the possibility until i read an article ruling it out.
the "great blackout of 2003," as i've already heard it called, will probably trump this story: the taliban takes control of an afghan provence. on the other hand, since this happened a few days ago without a peep in the papers, so it probably wouldn't have gotten any attention anyway. calpundit has a discussion and map. now many of us may have been under the impression that the taliban were no more, but actually, they have been attacking both u.s. forces and various afghan militias for the last few months. yesterday, in fact, was particularly bloody. no wonder the u.s. seems to be trying to buy its way out of afghanistan.
on that other front, the bush administration won't let the u.n. have a bigger role in iraq. the administration explained that doesn't want to give up control because it is afraid that, if let into iraq, other countries will "try to get more contracts and economic benefits for themselves." after all, the economic benefits of iraq should only go to america, or at least halliburton. tom tomorrow does an excellent job taking apart the times article i linked to at the beginning of this paragraph.
as a follow-up to one of the stories i posted about yesterday, the u.s. military is apologizing for that banner incident. however, they still insist they did not intentionally take down the islamic banner, no matter that it look like on the videotape.
all these stories together are bad news for the bush administration. his popularity is largely based on the perception of his foreign policy successes--meaning afghanistan and iraq. if the taliban resurgence ever makes the headlines or iraq continues to be unstable, the american public may finally realize that the u.s. may not been victorious in either war, as the administration has led us to believe. personally, i think the decision not to use the u.n. is extremely stupid, even from a purely tactical standpoint. by involving the u.n, the u.s. could begin to win back all those allies it has alienated in the past year. also if the u.n. took over and things continued to deteriorate, the administration could just blame the u.n. for the chaos (like many did with somalia). bush is burning one of his few remaining bridges out of baghdad. which just goes to show that he may actually believe the wishful fantasies the administration is trying to sell the american public.
