In addition, these leaders are saying that all 45 of the local polling sites were shut down and some 23,900 ballots were sent in to be counted—all for Karzai. “Not a single person in Shorabak District cast a ballot—not a single person,” Bariz told The New York Times.

And unfortunately the election dispute is hardly the only pressing problem in the country as terrorists are still gaining ground and staging major attacks. A bomb in Kabul on Wednesday killed 24, including a high ranking intelligence official.

Read More:

Huffington Post: The Afghanistan election on the ground

Asia Times: In Afghanistan, war trumps elections

AP: World envoys ask what next after Afghan elections

This move reflects a shift in strategy, similar to what we saw in Iraq, where soldiers are now concentrating on protecting the Afghan people rather than finding and wiping out insurgents. Now the military will only release general estimates. “We send the wrong message if all we talk about is the number of insurgents killed. It doesn’t demonstrate anything about whether we have made progress,” Navy Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, who decided on the new policy, told the Los Angeles Times.

Smith has asked commanders to issue fewer news releases and to focus on improvements in security where international forces are operating, according to the Times.

Throughout the Vietnam War, the American military was notorious for inflating Vietcong bodycounts in an attempt to boost perceptions of success in that conflict.

But the Obama administration must also worry about perceptions of success.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said this month that U.S.-led forces must show progress by next summer to avoid the public perception that the conflict has become unwinnable.

This policy change in the Pentagon comes as the Obama administration is adjusting the U.S. role in Afghanistan. A troop “surge” is expected to boost the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 68,000 by year’s end.

Read the Los Angeles Times article: U.S. stops giving militant death tolls in Afghanistan

The Taliban released a video over the internet yesterday of a U.S. soldier who was kidnapped outside his U.S. base in Afghanistan nearly three weeks ago.

The soldier, who the Pentagon confirmed today, is Pvt. Bowe Bergdahl of Idaho. Just 23-years old, Bergdahl is very emotional, pleading for American troops to return home. At the prompting of his captors, he says, “To my fellow Americans who have loved ones over here, who know what it’s like to miss them, you have the power to make our government bring them home.”

He later continues, saying, “Please, please bring us home so that we can be back where we belong and not over here, wasting our time and our lives and our precious life that we could be using back in our own country. Please bring us home.”

According to Britain’s The Guardian, Captain Jon Stock, a U.S. military spokesman in Kabul condemned the video as propaganda and a breach of the rules of war (because the Taliban obviously abide by those rules).

“The use of the soldier for propaganda purposes we view as against international law,” Stock told Reuters. “We are continuing to do whatever possible to recover the soldier safe and unharmed.”

Stock also confirmed Bergdahl was the US soldier who went missing outside a US base in southern Paktika province on June 30.

However, the circumstances of Bergdahl’s abduction remain unclear. American military sources have said he was snatched from outside the base perimeter along with three Afghan nationals. But, in the video, Bergdahl said he was captured after falling behind on a patrol.

Britian’s Daily Mail reports that Obama administration officials ordered the military to “pull out all the stops to win the safe return of the soldier last night amid fears the propaganda coup could have a devastating effect on US morale and hurt Mr Obama’s new strategy focusing on Afghanistan rather than Iraq.”

BBC News reports:

[The Obama] administration has… shifted a considerable amount of its attention further east – many have described the conflict in Afghanistan as “Obama’s war”.

But in light of the recent uptick in violence in Iraq, there were growing concerns that the new president risked making the same mistake as his predecessor, albeit in reverse.

George W Bush was criticised for not paying enough attention to Afghanistan after the fall of the Taleban and while he tried to fix Iraq, al-Qaeda regained strength both in Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Barack Obama cannot afford to lose Iraq,” warned Kenneth Pollack recently.

Mr Pollack, a Middle East expert at the Brookings Institution, added that there was a feeling that the administration’s policy on Iraq was adrift.

He said the regional consequences of instability in Iraq would undermine whatever else Washington was trying to achieve in the Middle East, from peace between Israelis and Arabs to dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Click here to see full article: Has Obama taken his eye off Iraq?