Remember Afghanistan? When you've dug yourself into a hole, the first step is to stop digging. Because of the war in Iraq, we're not only less safe at home, we're also less safe in Afghanistan. So far in 2005, we've lost 74 soldiers in Afghanistan this year. We lost twelve in 2001. Read It: What does that mean? For the sake of any conservatives who might come across this post, I'll explain that point further. That's six times as many coalition casualties. Six times twelve equals seventy-two. Add two and you get seventy-four. Got it? O.K. You still don't get it. If you take six cartons of eggs, and add two more eggs, that equals the number of casualties in Afghanistan this year so far. No, I'm not arguing that soldiers and eggs are equal--I'm just trying to help you understand...No this doesn't have anything to do with stem cell research...O.K. forget about the eggs... ...Now if you have four cases of Coors Light, and you and your buddy drink 22 beers, that number of full cans equals the number of soldiers killed to bring Bin Laden to justice and eliminate the threat of Al Quaeda in Afghanistan--except for the fact that their deaths didn't accomplish that by anyone's reckoning. ...Those 74 people who died in Afghanistan aren't numbers, eggs, or beercans. They're fathers, sons, husbands, and neighbors. If that doesn't get through to you, nothing will. I'm convinced that the neocons who run this country don't care whether three thousand die or three million--as long as it's someone else's loved ones headed to the meat grinder in the Great War on Terror, or whatever they're calling it today. Why are they dying in increased numbers? Because of the war in Iraq. Foreign militants with links to al-Qaeda - some believed to have experience in Iraq - are trying to encourage Afghan insurgents to adopt more Iraq-style tactics against US forces, well-placed sources in eastern Afghanistan have told the BBC. Read it: ...Did Bush ever pronounce "Mission Accomplished" in Afghanistan? Will he ever answer the question "what noble cause did they die for"? Will he ever smoke Osama out of his hole? Not likely.