Ex-UK Foreign Office minister: "Afghanistan corrupt from top to bottom."

Ex-minister slates UK policy on Afghanistan

by Patrick Wintour

The former Foreign Office minister with responsibility for Afghanistan yesterday accused the country of being corrupt "from top to bottom", and said the international community had wrongly treated President Hamid Karzai with kid gloves.

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Breaking his silence on the issue, he told MPs: "Institutionally, Afghanistan is corrupt from top to bottom. There are few signs that the chaotic hegemony of warlords, gangsters, presidential placemen, incompetent and under-resourced provincial governors and self-serving government ministers has been challenged in any effective way by President Karzai.

"On the contrary, those individuals appear to be thriving, not least because Hamid Karzai has convinced himself that he cannot afford to sack or challenge the strongmen who, through corruption, brutality, power of arms or tribal status are capable of controlling their territories and fiefdoms."

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He said the government had to change its "daft" rhetoric on the war. "Forget the nonsense about being prepared to fight on the mountains and plains of Afghanistan for 30 years. People will not accept the notion that British families should send their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters to risk their lives fighting religious fanatics, tribal nationalists, corrupt warlords and heroin traffickers in one of the most godforsaken terrains on the face of the earth. The notion is daft, however much we may try to rationalise it by arguing that it is better to fight al-Qaeda over there than over here."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/dec/11/afghanistan-kim-howells-corruption-karzai

That's why they are in such bad shape to start with.
And now our own boys are there throwing money around at bushco's discretion.

If Obama can't see what a hole Afghanistan is, he needs to get a clue.

just cant run away...

this will ruin the united states, it is the death knell of freedom. Ironic..isn't it