I cannot make heads or tails out of the front-page Dexter Filkins story in the New York Times. It sounds like a rather serious and somewhat sophisticated effort to negotiate an end to fighting in Afghanistan, but it also sounds like it might be completely hopeless. I guess I am glad that the effort is being made, but wonder why these details are leaking out two weeks before the election. The timing makes me more than a little skeptical, but it’s not like there is nothing going on.