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The real loser in the Pa. Senate primaries was peace

All the hype over electoral politics and personalities including the end of Arlen Specter's storied political career obscured the latest news out of Afghanistan, which is not good.

Exhibit A:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Insurgents launched a brazen pre-dawn assault Wednesday against the giant U.S.-run Bagram Air Field one day after a suicide bomber struck a U.S. convoy in the capital of Kabul, killing 18 people. The Kabul dead included five American troops and a Canadian and was the deadliest attack on NATO in the Afghan capital in eight months.

The back-to-back attacks appeared part of a Taliban offensive that the insurgents announced earlier this month – even as the U.S. and its partners prepare for a major operation to restore order in the turbulent south. The insurgent attacks against both the capital and a major American military installation show the militants are prepared to strike at the heart of the U.S.-led mission.

Exhibit B:

On Tuesday, the toll of American dead in Afghanistan passed 1,000, after a suicide bomb in Kabul killed at least five United States service members. Having taken nearly seven years to reach the first 500 dead, the war killed the second 500 in fewer than two. A resurgent Taliban active in almost every province, a weak central government incapable of protecting its people and a larger number of American troops in harms way all contributed to the accelerating pace of death.

I'd heard that the Taliban was diminished in Afghanistan and wasn't going to pose that much of a threat to American troops and our NATO allies. In fact, you know who it was the told me that? It was Rep. Joe Sestak, the new Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate: