The Afghansitan Ant Lion

Ever seen how an ant lion traps his prey? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWkfAyfBDHE

Now, instead of sand, you get selected pieces of "soft " information and pass it around via leaks to reporters and op-ed types who will be glad to serve as trap assistants. The ant lion may be a someone working in the background who can always deny that he had anything to do with the trap.

The problem is that now, there are hundreds of folks who can tell everyone about the trap and the set up.

If we are really going to change how things have been done in the past to screw things up, I think that when a General has a report to send the President that he ought to deliver it in person and on camera and then they sit down and talk about it in public. If there are leaks about the report, then fire the General who can't do the job on his/her own.

Lincoln has to fire a lot of folks until he got two winners, Obama should do the same.

clipped from www.tomdispatch.com How to Trap a President in a Losing War Petraeus, McChrystal, and the Surgettes By Tom Engelhardt Hence, even if McChrystal's name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward's bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed "the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner." The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.