An article here, if true, confirms what I think we have all figured out: we are paying a price now for letting the Afghans do the dirty work in our initial military thrusts back at Tora Bora and elsewhere.

It is becoming increasingly plain that during the original military campaign last fall we were allowing the Afghan forces on our side to do most of the grunt work of attacking the enemy while we dropped bombs from planes. It is also becoming plain that the "net" we supposedly had in place to trap escaping Taliban and Al Quaeda* forces largely consisted of Afghan allies and probably had a LOT of holes in it. It is also becoming plain that we are being used in some cases to settle tribal feuds. "Oh, yeah, there's a WHOLE buncha Al Quaeda guys over in that village. Would I lie to you?"

Now we have to do the grunt work ourselves, and will take a lot of casualties. But I bet a lot fewer bad guys are going to be able to bribe their way over the borders.

Any take on this from you military guys?

*How the hell DO you spell that?