American troops may remain in Afghanistan until at least 2024

[garbon]

Oops, that's Karzai.  :numbnuts: 

I had thought you were making a joke.

[Capetan Mihali]

Oops, that's Karzai.  :numbnuts: 

I had thought you were making a joke.

I was the joke. 

[Admiral Yi]

Garner was brought in because he had made his reputation providing humanitarian assistance to Khurds post GW I and it was assumed (incorrectly) that the most pressing need in the aftermath of GW II would be humanitarian assistance.

mongers, I took exception to your insurgency prediction at the time, because it was made at a time when insurgency was already occurring, and your prediction that it would spread from its Sunni base to encompass the broad swath of the Shi'ite population failed to materialize.

I was also one of the ones arguing against the disband = bonehead position, not because disbanding the army was so obviously the right choice to make, because it wasn't, but because it assumed away what I considered to be legitimate reasons for doing so.  Namely that retaining the army would be no guarantee that its members would not join the insurgency (a point which I think the number of terrorist acts by members of the Afghan army against their ostensible comrades in arms has reinforced), that it would provide these potential insurgents with additional training, access to arms and munitions, and ready-built organizational structures.

[mongers]

.....

mongers, I took exception to your insurgency prediction at the time, because it was made at a time when insurgency was already occurring, and your prediction that it would spread from its Sunni base to encompass the broad swath of the Shi'ite population failed to materialize.

.....

You're conflating two separate things. 

My comments about Sadr, were made in the first hours of his first uprising, which was questioned as being in anyway significant. Which it turned out to be, but at the time I wasn't predicting why you said in the emboldened passage.

But as we don't have access to the posts at that time, it's unprovable either way, my positions or yours.

Incidentally there was a long term Shi'ite originated insurgency in one not unimportant part of Iraq, it's what force the British out of Basra, almost tail between our knees as we skedaddled out of the former Saddam palace/guest house.