Clinton Boosts Kerry on Afghan Mission

(AP) - Hamid Karzai intends to announce tomorrow how he will "set the stage" for resolving the country's postelection political crisis, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said today. She wouldn't say whether the Afghan president has decided to accept the findings of a UN-backed fraud investigation that threw out nearly a third of Karzai's ballots from the disputed August election and set the stage for a runoff. More»

Under pressure, Karzai becomes increasingly erratic

(NEWSER) - Hamid Karzai has told Afghan lawmakers he will join the Taliban if his western backers kept pushing him to reform. The legislators said the Afghan president's comments shouldn't be taken at face value—he was pandering to pro-Taliban members of parliament, and he seems unconcerned about losing western support. The remarks are characteristic of his increasingly erratic behavior as he struggles to maintain his grip on power. More»

Time to snuggle up to the lesser of two evils

(NEWSER) - Washingtonians lie all the time, but “with the arrival of Hamid Karzai, the mendacity blossomed into absurdity,” writes Maureen Dowd of the New York Times . Obama can't stand Karzai—and really, neither can anyone else. But Dowd says they'll pretend to like him, because “like a lover who has learned that his fickle mistress responds better to sweets than rants, the administration has abruptly switched from nagging the corrupt Afghan president to nuzzling him.” More»

Afghan president 'clarifies' his knock on international community

(AP) - A day after accusing the US of "vast fraud" that nearly denied him a second term, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to back off. The 25-minute phone call came as the Obama administration labeled his comments "genuinely troubling" and dispatched its ambassador to Afghanistan to "clarify what he meant." More»

President, Clinton cite US arrests, but link to Pakistan appears weak

(NEWSER) - The White House has been overstating the link between recent domestic terrorism arrests and al-Qaeda activities in Pakistan and Afghanistan, security experts say. In justifying the Afghanistan troop buildup, President Obama cited recent arrests within the US; Hillary Clinton cited some of the same incidents a few days later. But the connection between al-Qaeda’s nerve center in Pakistan and those arrests is much more nebulous than they’re implying, counterterrorism officials tell the Washington Independent . More»