Northern Alliance

I am drawing together here the stories of six men who, nearly eight years after their wrongful and mistaken capture, are finally free from Guantánamo, even if an uncertain future awaits them.

That failure has finally occurred in Afghanistan and the consequences will be devastating, yet Washington continues along in a dreamlike haze, narrowing the argument to simplistic Vietnam era clichés while the world moves on without it.

We can't afford to build a nation in Afghanistan. We have one reasonable goal there, and everything else, no matter how seemingly noble it may or may not be, is a luxury.

A coalition government in Afghanstan, while supposedly offering the best of both worlds, tacitly condones an illegitimate election and would require America to broker power among competing personalities.

Osama bin Laden's lame 9/11 message and Barack Obama's lethal approach in Somalia raise a central question: Are we not in fact much closer to achieving our central goal in Afghanistan than most imagine?

Eight years since 9/11. It feels like 18 years, if not 80. So much has changed since then, yet so much is still the same.

The Obama administration should sigh with a sense of relief after the election in Afghanistan -- the Taliban failed in their threat to halt the election, and were unable to pull off any of the promised attacks.

Defense is clearly at the sharp end of the Government's ongoing budget cuts. Yet British coffers alone may not be the only reason Brown is willing to stand firm.