Regardless of Official Word, Things Aren't So Great

The White House claimed early victory over the Taliban and bragged of liberating the oppressed. "We are winning the war on terror," President George W. Bush declared in his State of the Union address.

The CIA, meanwhile, was compiling a downbeat dossier. It depicts the new Afghanistan as rife with competing warlords and bristling with ethnic tension, as well as the usual meddling from Iran. Days ago, there was a mortar attack on a boys' school in Sarobi. Its victims were as young as 8. The countryside beyond Kabul teeters sometimes toward lawlessness.