"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Nov 23, 2010

My Kind of Grifter

"KABUL, Afghanistan — For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement. 

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little. 

'It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.'” 

Source.


All was right with the world for about 3.68 seconds, today. Grifting impostor takes US money, takes lesson from Israeli negotiators, applies it to Israel's primary benefactor.

5 comments:

AlanSmithee said...

Bwa! I love it when the Empire gets Pwned! It's like Star Wars meets The Sting.

Randal Graves said...

I'd love to say 'I can't wait for the movie' if only The Bad Guy® wasn't the victor! Oh unkind world, how you've let me down, sniff.

Anonymous said...

That's as tasty as Grandma's home-made pumpkin pie.

Justin said...

Wow, what moxie.

Jack Crow said...

Pleased, we are.