This is just special.

If true, Gerald Posner's blueprint of the al qaeda, saudi arabia, and pakistani nexus is truly disturbing (thanks to Atrios for the link). Those 28 pages that the White House won't release get more and more intriguing.

I've been wondering if things in Afghanistan and Iraq are truly as dire as they seem, and whether Rumsfeld and the other suits at the Pentagon have truly screwed things up, or if it's just a media concoction. Nope. It appears to be true. In Friday's Wall Street Journal, Jackie Calmes writes,

"More critiques of Pentagon's postwar planning comes from within.

"A report on Afghanistan from Army War College's Peacekeeping Institute says Pentagon was so intent on 'no nation-building' that postwar plans haphazardly 'grew from the needs in the field rather than any concept or vision in Washington, D.C.'

"Private experts whom the Pentagon earlier sent to review Iraq will return in November. In July, the team under former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre warned of chaos unless the U.S. improves security and gets international help. Since then, troop deaths are up and bombs have hit Jordan's embassy and a U.N. building."

The car bombing may prove a turning point, and not a good one. So far, the Shiites in southern Iraq have been cautiously supportive of the U.S., and, perhaps more importantly, have not been determined to exact revenge on the Sunnis for years of oppression. That may now change. And if that happens, we will never have enough troops to maintain any security in the country, and certainly no member nation of the UN is going to send troops into the mess. If that's the case, the Bush administration's sudden change of heart regarding the UN -- if that's what it is and not, in fact, a rogue diplomat's frustration at the incompetence of his bosses -- may be too late.

*****

For those of you who don't live in the Northeast, you missed quite a series between the Red Sox and Yankees up in that old ballpark on Yawkey Way. It wasn't always pretty baseball, but it was ferociously played by both teams. It's said that the Rivalry no longer exists for the players, just the fans, but the way these guys play when they get together, it's not just a regular season game. And Clemens winning his 100th game at Fenway -- 100th -- was sweet. He'd been shaky in his previous start, looking all of 41, and the emotion of pitching his last reg. season game in Boston could have made him overthrow, but he was brilliant. And the Red Sox fans, after seven years of loud loathing for Clemens, decided to remember the 13 years of nasty pitching he provided the citizens of Red Sox Nation. It was a great moment.

Speaking of Red Sox nation, here's a fascinating piece of anthropology by David Halberstram. It goes a long way in explaining the mentality of the Sox fan. For me, it was summed up in 1999, when the Yankees and Sox met in the ALCS. With the Yankees up 2-1 in the series, Clemens went into Boston, facing Pedro, and got hammered. The fans in Fenway were delirious. For many Sox fans, that game more than made up for losing the series 4-1.

And it's September. The Yankees, after getting hammered Friday night, are now better off than when they landed in Boston. And, typically, things are getting strange on the fens.