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What he said: The crux of Obama's speech was that what needed to be achieved in Afghanistan by the war has been achieved: The "tide of war is receding," he announced. As the New York Times notes, however, some analysts believe that the withdrawal plan in fact indicates that "the administration may have concluded it can no longer achieve its loftiest ambitions there."

Just over one third of the 100,000 U.S. troops stationed in Afghanistan will be brought back within 15 months (some 10,000 will leave this year with another 23,000 returnng just in time for the election). The draw-down, which will take a number of years, is still more rapid than his military commanders have advised (General David Petraeus, just named CIA chief, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have both publicy endorsed slow withdrawals. Obama mentioned neither Gates nor Petraeus in his speech).

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The brazen attack in the heart of Kabul's government district provided a sharp counterpoint to Karzai's announcement that the U.S. and Afghan government are in talks with the Taliban, the first official confirmation of such discussions. The violence also underscored the difficulty facing any possible negotiated settlement to the decade-long war.

Three men dressed in Afghan army uniforms stormed the police station near the presidential palace and opened fire on officers, said Mohammed Honayon, a witness. The Interior Ministry said in a statement that one of the attackers detonated a suicide bomb vest outside the gates while the others rushed in and began shooting.

The crackle of gunfire echoed through the streets typically bustling with shoppers and government employees on a Saturday, the start of Afghanistan's work week. The fighting ended by 3 p.m. when security forces shot dead the two other attackers. Three police officers, one intelligence agent and five civilians were killed in the attack, the Interior Ministry said.

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"This is absolutely wrong. It's only propaganda and we completely deny these rumors," Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a phone call. "He is inside Afghanistan and he is busy directing military operations with his commanders."

There has been much speculation that the U.S. might ramp up efforts to kill or capture the reclusive, one-eyed Taliban leader after the successful strike against Osama bin Laden. President Barack Obama has said he would order another covert military raid if it was necessary to stop terrorist attacks.

Attacks have increased in Afghanistan since bin Laden's death and since the start of the Taliban's yearly spring offensive. On Monday, four NATO service members were killed in an explosion in the east, NATO said in a statement. The military alliance did not provide details on the attack or the nationalities of the dead.

Most of those with knowledge of the Taliban organization say Omar is hiding in southern Pakistan, around Quetta or Karachi.

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The U.S. Attorney's office in Miami announced Saturday the arrests of Hafiz Muhammed Sher Ali Khan and sons Irfan Khan and Izhar Khan. Hafiz Khan is the imam at Miami Mosque, also known as Flagler Mosque, and Izhar Khan is the imam at Jamaat Al-Mumineen Mosque in nearby Margate. Officials say the mosques are not suspected of wrongdoing.

Authorities say they have recorded conversations in which Hafiz Khan supported violence perpetrated by the Pakistani Taliban.

If convicted, the men face 15 years in prison for each of the four counts.

Attempts to reach the men, their attorneys and their mosques were unsuccessful.

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The blasts in the northwest were a reminder of the savagery of al-Qaida-linked militants in Pakistan. They occurred even as the country faces international suspicion that elements within its security forces may have been harboring bin Laden, who was killed in a raid in Abbottabad, about a three hours' drive from the scene of the bombing.

"We have done this to avenge the Abbottabad incident," Ahsanullah Ahsan, a spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, told The Associated Press in a phone call. He warned that the group was also planning attacks on Americans living inside Pakistan.

The bombers blew themselves up in Shabqadar at the main gate of the facility for the Frontier Constabulary, a poorly equipped but front-line force in the battle against al-Qaida and allied Islamist groups like the Pakistani Taliban close to the Afghan border. Like other branches of Pakistan's security forces, it has received U.S. funding to try to sharpen its skills.

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According to POLITICO:

The new language drops any reference to 9/11 and “affirms” a state of “armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces.” The measure also explicitly gives the president the right to take prisoners “until the termination of hostilities” – something the courts have found to be implicit in the current version of the AUMF, though the new proposal could be seen to extend that power.

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Prison officials discovered early Monday morning that the convicts -- nearly all of them Taliban militants -- were missing from their cells, and then found the tunnel through which they appeared to have made their getaway.

The Taliban said the prison break was five months in the making, with diggers starting the tunnel from under a nearby house while they arranged for inmates to get cell keys so that they could open their cells on the night of the escape.

The Kandahar provincial governor's office said that Afghan and international forces are working together to find the missing convicts and re-arrest them. It said the troops have already caught 65 and killed two who tried to resist. Authorities have biometric data on each prisoner, which aids in their identification, the statement said.

But even if a sizable number of the convicts are recaptured, the already weak provincial government will likely continue to struggle to recover from the blow to its image.

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 As details have trickled out of Kandahar in the past several hours, what seems most clear is that the escape was meticulously planned and carefully executed:

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Officials at Saraposa prison in the city of Kandahar only discovered the breach about 4 a.m., about a half hour after the Taliban said they had gotten all the prisoners out.

The militants began digging the tunnel about five months ago from a house within shooting distance of the prison guard towers. It was not immediately clear whether they lived in the house while they dug. They meticulously plotted the tunnel's course around police checkpoints and major roads, the insurgent group said in a brazen statement.

The diggers finally broke through to the prison cells around 11 p.m. Sunday night, and a handful of inmates who knew of the plan unlocked cells and ushered hundreds of inmates to freedom without a shot being fired.

A man who claimed he helped organize those inside the prison told The Associated Press in a phone call that he and his accomplices obtained copies of the keys for the cells ahead of time from "friends." He did not say who those friends were, but his comments suggested possible collusion by prison guards.

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The U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned the New Ansari Money Exchange, which it says is at the center of a network of individuals, money-exchange houses and other businesses operating in Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates.

U.S. officials and others in the international community have been pushing President Hamid Karzai to crack down on corruption in his government and in its financial and business sectors. The near collapse of the Kabul Bank, the nation's largest private financial institution, because of questionable lending practices, as well as petty bribery schemes throughout the government have hurt the Karzai administration's efforts to woo the loyalty of the public from the Taliban insurgents.

Between 2007 and 2010, the New Ansari Money Exchange used billions of dollars it transferred in and out of Afghanistan to conceal illicit narcotics proceeds, the U.S. Treasury Department said in a statement released in Washington. New Ansari transfers money to its Dubai subsidiaries -- Green Leaf General Trading LLC and Al Adal Exchange -- which then transfer money through U.S. and international financial systems, the statement said.

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Once relatively peaceful, security in northern Afghanistan has deteriorated as the Taliban, squeezed by NATO operations focusing on militant strongholds in the south, have expanded their reach to other parts of the country.

NATO said a joint force stormed a compound in the Chahar Dara district of Kunduz province before dawn, killing an insurgent and detaining several suspects in an operation targeting a high-level Taliban leader believed to make roadside bombs and suicide vests. The coalition said it had not yet identified the slain militant.

But district chief Abdul Wahid Omarkhel and the Kunduz governor's spokesman, Mabobullah Sayedi, said the operation killed Maulvi Bahadar, who has been the Taliban's acting shadow governor for Kunduz for several months. They said another four suspects had been arrested. The Taliban have set up so-called shadow governors in many provinces, claiming to be the legitimate authority in the area.

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Gen. David Petraeus told reporters Monday that very high-level Taliban leaders have reached out to the highest levels of the government.

President Hamid Karzai has long said that he will talk to insurgents if they renounce violence, sever ties to terrorists and embrace the constitution.

The Taliban have publicly said they won't negotiate until foreign troops leave Afghanistan.

Petraeus said prospects for reconciling with Taliban leaders are being "pursued by the Afghan leadership at the very highest levels."

Presidential spokesman Waheed Omar says Karzai is waiting for a planned peace council to start any formal talks.

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Flooding there has already stranded 20 million people, more than 10 percent of the population. A fifth of the nation is underwater. More than 3.5 million children are in imminent danger of contracting cholera and acute diarrhea; millions more are in danger of starving if they don’t get help soon. More than 1,500 have already been killed by the floods.

This is a human disaster.

It’s also a frightening opening for the Taliban.

Yet so far only a trickle of aid has gotten through. As of today (Thursday), the U.S. has pledged $150 million, along with 12 helicopters to take food and material to the victims. (Other rich nations have offered even less -- the U.K., $48.5 million; Japan, $10 million; and France, a measly $1 million. Today, Hillary Clinton is speaking at the U.N., seeking more.)

This is bizarre and shameful. We’re spending over $100 billion this year on military maneuvers to defeat the Taliban in Pakistan and neighboring Afghanistan. Over 200 helicopters are deployed in that effort. And we’re spending $2 billion in military aid to Pakistan.

More must be done for flood victims, immediately.

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But the document declares that people working for international forces or the Afghan government are "supporters of the infidels" and can be killed. Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar took a similar hard line in orders to insurgents that NATO forces said they intercepted in early June.

Mullah Omar urged fighters to kill anyone working with international forces or the Afghan government, including women, according to NATO.

The Taliban began distributing their new code of conduct in southern Afghanistan a little over a week ago, shortly before the top NATO commander in the country, Gen. David Petraeus, issued guidelines that also urged soldiers to avoid civilian casualties.

"The Taliban must treat civilians according to Islamic norms and morality to win over the hearts and minds of the people," said the 69-page Taliban booklet, which was obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday from a Taliban fighter in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak.

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Check out this war log from November 2007 in which a member of the 101st Sustainment Brigade near Bagram Airbase passes along a contractor report of the Taliban requesting per-truck protection payments. It also notes (emphasis ours at bottom) that other Defense Department trucking contractors confirm they are making such payments to the Taliban: 

On 09 Nov 2007 Four Horsemen International reported that they were approached by Taliban personnel to talk about payment for the safe passage of convoys through their area. The current price for passage is $500US per truck from Kandahar to Herat, $50US per truck from Kabul to Ghazni, $100US per truck from Ghazni to Orgun-E, and $200-300US per truck from Orgun-E to Wazi Kwah. All negotiations are conducted outside of Afghanistan with the [Taliban] POC located in Quetta, Pakistan.

This information has been verified by other [Host Nation Trucking contract] companies and the other companies state they are paying money for safe passage.

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Soon after President Obama took office, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed her commitment to Afghan women, and resistance to the Taliban. Now, President Obama is backing Karzai's proposal and, according to the Guardian's Jonathan Steele,  many women in Afghanistan do too, despite potential setbacks to their freedoms. After interviewing a diverse sample of Afghan women, he came to the conclusion that their desire for peace trumps their desire for liberation.

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That means everyone from Afghan warlords to Taliban and al-Qaida commanders to intelligence agencies in neighboring states have upped their game to undercut rivals, achieve their aims and further their influence. The danger is that Afghanistan will once again become, in the words of Lord Curzon, the 19th century British imperial figure, "the cockpit of Asia.''

Obama himself gave the game away when he said last December that even though 30,000 more U.S. troops would be deployed to Afghanistan this year in a large military and civilian surge to drive back the Taliban, by July 2011 US forces will start withdrawing from the country and handing it over to the Afghans. By this October there will be 100,000 US and more than 40,000 other troops -- mainly from other NATO countries in Afghanistan -- and by next July they will start withdrawing.

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Maldives spokesman Mohamed Zuhair said Thursday that representatives of the Afghan government and Taliban members were meeting in the island nation this wek to discuss an end to the nearly nine-year war.

A Taliban statement e-mailed to reporters Friday said those at the talks claiming to be from the Taliban are no longer active members and have "surrendered" to President Hamid Karzai's government.

The talks were organized by Hizb-i-Islami, a Taliban-allied insurgent group which began negotiations with the government last March. The government says it has no representative at the talks either although lawmakers are attending unofficially.

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The powerful blast occurred on a major Kabul thoroughfare that runs by the ruins of a one-time royal palace and government ministries. It wrecked nearly 20 vehicles, including five SUVs in the NATO convoy, and scattered debris and body parts across the wide boulevard. The body of woman in a burqa was smashed against the window of the bus.

The attack -- the deadliest for NATO troops in the capital since September -- comes despite a ramped up effort by Afghan authorities to intercept would-be attackers and better secure a capital city that saw a spate of brazen attacks this winter.

In the last such attack in February, suicide bombers stormed two small downtown hotels and killed 16 people.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told The Associated Press in a phone call from an undisclosed location that the bomber was a man from Kabul and his car was packed with 1,650 pounds (750 kilograms) of explosives. The target of the attack was the foreign convoy, he said.

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