Uh-oh

President Hamid Karzai today demanded justice for Afghan prisoners abused by American interrogators, and he blamed the United States and Britain, not his government, for the slow progress of anti-drug efforts in his country.

He also said he would ask President Bush for greater control over Afghan affairs as part of a longer-term strategic partnership.

Asked if he had complained to the United States about the abuse - two Afghans in United States military custody in Bagram died in December 2002 after severe beatings - he replied: "We have before, I will do it again. This is simply, simply not acceptable, we are angry about this, we want justice, we want the people responsible for this sort of brutal behavior punished and tried."
  NY Times article

How long before Buttie and gang let Karzai get assassinated?

But speaking a day before he is to meet here with Mr. Bush, Mr. Karzai also portrayed the prisoner abuse as rare and atypical, the work of only one or two American soldiers. He said, in a CNN interview, that this should not reflect on all Americans, adding, "There are bad people on duty everywhere."

Oh well, that's okay then.

Still, that part about having greater control over Afghan affairs....

I thought Afghanistan was a sovereign democratic success and Karzai was its officially elected leader. Hmmm.

And what does Karzai say about the Newsweek/Quran episode on which the Bush administration is blaming the recent Afghan riots and deaths?

"It was directed at the peace process that we have of inviting back the thousands of the Taliban to come back to their country," he said. "It was actually against the elections in Afghanistan. So we know what was going on there." Parliamentary elections are due in autumn.

Oh really? Not some traitorous act by the liberal media in the U.S.?

Watch your back Hamid.

While generally praising cooperation between the United States and Afghanistan, Mr. Karzai also said it was time for American military officials to seek Afghan permission before raiding people's houses. A day earlier, in Kabul, he said he would ask Mr. Bush to release all Afghans in United States military detention to Afghan custody.

Hamid, Hamid, Hamid.

A cable sent May 13 by the United States Embassy in Kabul to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice asserted that eradication efforts were slipping partly because, "although President Karzai has been well aware of the difficulty in trying to implement an effective ground eradication program, he has been unwilling to assert strong leadership, even in his own province of Kandahar."

[...]

Mr. Karzai asserted today that in regions where the Afghan government led eradication efforts, poppy fields had been substantially destroyed.

In other areas, he said, this "was supposed to be done by an agency, a department that was financed by the international community, by the United States, by Britain. The failure is theirs, not ours." International efforts, Mr. Karzai asserted, had been "ineffective, and delayed and half-hearted."

The international community had also done too little, he said, to provide Afghan farmers with alternative forms of livelihood.

Poor Hamid. I don't think he's long for this job.