A Game That’s Not So Great

A Game That’s Not So Great
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: December 12, 2009

KIRKUK, Iraq

Puppets just aren’t what they used to be.

Or maybe a trillion dollars doesn’t buy the same felicitous level of obsequiousness it once did.

Visiting Afghanistan and Iraq in an attempt to shore up our wobbly wards, Bob Gates could not seem to get the respect due the man running the world’s best military, a force that has been protecting and propping up our two occupied territories for most of this decade.

At a joint press conference Tuesday at the presidential palace in Kabul, Hamid Karzai surprised the usually unflappable Gates when he knocked down President Obama’s attempt to get out of Dodge.

Needling his American sugar daddy, the Afghan peacock observed: “For another 15 to 20 years, Afghanistan will not be able to sustain a force of that nature and capability with its own resources.”


Rest of article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/13/opinion/13dowd.html?_r=1

But there weren't press conferences, and the foreign correspondents were very much embedded, so the folks back home didn't know about it. Uppity puppets were quickly replaced. We'll see how different this century is.