Here in Afghanistan (for that is where my assignment has taken me, for the last several days and a few more), internet access is spotty and not exactly zippy. You rarely hear about that because apparently there are other problems too. Anyway, I am sorry I have not been blogging much. Indeed I’m not really blogging now, except to steer you toward two pieces I wrote for the print edition. Both were finished before the current coalition unpleasantness. The first had a long “lead time” imposed by production deadlines for our super-fabulous Newsmakers issue. The other just took a long time to research. Here: