MORE PATCHWORK – AT 10:16 A.M. ET:  Having watched their boss, the prophet Barack, humiliate the Afghan president in public, two members of the Cabinet are trying to make amends.  It's pathetic: 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Pentagon chief and the top U.S. diplomat say Afghan leader Hamid Karzai has a positive relationship with the Obama administration despite recent tensions.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton say Karzai and the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan meet regularly and have a positive relationship. Clinton says Karzai's living under extraordinary stress.

And we certainly didn't help matters with our hectoring of him in public.

Oh, there's this, from Fox:

The president of Afghanistan, Hamid Karzai, has cast doubt over NATO’s planned summer offensive against the Taliban in the southern province of Kandahar, as more than 10,000 American troops pour in for the fight.

Karzai threatened to delay or even cancel the operation — one of the biggest of the nine-year war — after being confronted in Kandahar by elders who said it would bring strife, not security, to his home province.

Visiting last week to rally support for the offensive, the president was instead overwhelmed by a barrage of complaints about corruption and misrule. As he was heckled at a shura of 1,500 tribal leaders and elders, he appeared to offer them a veto over military action. “Are you happy or unhappy for the operation to be carried out?” he asked.

The elders shouted back: “We are not happy.”

“Then until the time you say you are happy, the operation will not happen,” Karzai replied.

COMMENT:  We'd all better get our acts together over there.  The lives of American troops are involved.  We can start by sending a list of countries to the president, divided into "allies" and "enemies," and ask him to memorize the list.

April 11,  2010