Gearing up for Iraq

IRAQ, on the other hand, is one military target that does have an address. But before gearing up for the next war against it, the Bush Administration had better make sure it doesn't lose the war in Afghanistan. President Hamid Karzai's shaky regime in Kabul is caught between unfriendly and friendly

The assassination of Vice President Abdul Qadir, the leading Pashtun in the coalition and the second Cabinet member to be killed, has sharpened the ethnic tensions that threaten national unity. There is not much America can do about those violent feuds. What needs serious attention, though, is how this superpower behaves after it makes mistakes that hurt the people it is trying to befriend. In the latest and most sanguinary accidental attack, civilians in southern Afghanistan were devastated by what they charged was an air assault on a wedding party and nearby villages that left 48 dead and 117 wounded.

It took almost a week before Lieutenant General Dan McNeill, the allied commander, admitted there were civilian casualties-no number mentioned-- and that no ordnance was found in the area to support the claim that American planes were responding to antiaircraft fire. The American command eventually announced a full-scale investigation.