[politics] It gets better and better.

Such progress we're enjoying in the Global War on Terror... er, the Global War on Violent Extremism, or whatever the fuck we're calling it these days... Insurgents 'joining Iraqi police' Afghan insurgents urged to unite I'm momentarily drawing a blank on URLs for the mass protests outside Bagran Airbase in Afghanistan, but there's more depressing stuff here as well. [updated 29 July 2005 9:32 PM PDT to add this:] The hits keep on coming... We've just been booted out of Uzbekistan:

Uzbekistan has been widely viewed as an important test for the Bush administration -- and whether the anti-terrorism efforts or promotion of democracy takes priority. "We all knew basically that if we really wanted to keep access to the base, the way to do it was to shut up about democracy and turn a blind eye to the refugees," said the senior official, on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive diplomacy. "We could have saved the base if we had wanted."