Many Democrats, including at the White House, are attacking the GOP for rarely mentioning the war in Afghanistan during the national convention.

I didn't hear this from an insider but my best guess is the issue was ignored because it's a mess. We are losing soldiers at an alarming rate. And contrary to the Democrats, who seemed to have a messy Iraq as their only thing going for them against President Bush (with an Unemployment Rate at 5%), the pro-military Republicans have and look for other things to beat a President.

Democrats will argue at their convention that our efforts in Afghanistan gave us OBL, but I am trying to figure out what 100,000 troops on the ground in Afghanistan, including 541 that were killed since last year early May, has anything to do with a small group of SEALs and CIA agents tracking down OBL in Pakistan.  Similarly, I never "got" how going into Iraq with largely regular troops and infantry forces, "distracted" a division of SELs and CIA operatives to work on the OBL Mission... I would guess that a $600 billion annual budget permits us to chew gum while climbing a hill.

OBL in Pakistan aside, we lost at least 541 troops in Afghanistan in the sixteen months since the OBL mission. That's a rate of more than 33 troops per month, while the Bush count during the 87 months we were there under his watch is 7.24 soldiers per month (to a total loss of 630 troops). These stats do not include the endless violence and bloodshed that is taking place in Afghanistan on an hourly basis. No, I will not start posting headlines here because they are endless. But please Google the word Afghanistan and search the last 24 hours of news; It's a total mess.

I doubt the Democrats wanted the Republicans to talk about all this during a convention because it would show what a disaster Obama is overseas -- Israel, Egypt, Libya and Syria. I doubt the American people would welcome using the loss of American and Afghan life as a tool for political campaigns. So perhaps the GOP needs to be saluted, not attacked, for not using Afghanistan as a stick against the President.