AIDS UPDATE: John Donnelly, in the Boston Globe, finds some good news:

Today, the change for the better is astonishing: Idoko now treats nearly 6,000 HIV-positive patients. He has expanded his clinic three times in five years, and his waiting room once again is too crowded. “Now, we are eyeing an abandoned building nearby,” he said last week, chuckling.

The major reason for Idoko’s success is the Bush administration’s AIDS program, which in the last three years has sent billions of dollars to Africa and helped save the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When I moved to Africa three years ago, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was just getting off the ground. As I return to Washington this month, the $15 billion program is just hitting its stride, and many Africans believe it has become the single most effective initiative in fighting the deadly scourge.

“The greatest impact in HIV prevention and treatment in Africa is PEPFAR-there’s nothing that compares,” Idoko said.

Only you wouldn’t know it in America-or Canada, or Europe, for that matter-given the tenor of the AIDS debate in Washington and the nature of the international media coverage.

Read the whole thing. (Via Miss Kelly).

MICKEY KAUS on Social Security reform:

‘Defending’ Social Security and achieving a decent health care system is less likely to ‘galvanize and strengthen progressive reform as a whole’ than it is to either bankrupt the government or require a larger tax burden than citizens are willing to bear. . . .

It’s when you don’t think we should save the “universal” Social Security system that you don’t want to engineer a few moderate Bush-style cuts now in order to make it solvent for the next 100 years, which will only convince everyone there’s no reason to tamper with it! Better to leave the system alone and make truly radical, means-testing cuts later, when a) it will be clear there’s a budget crisis and b) Democrats will be in a position to achieve something big, like national health insurance, in return.

I’m not sure how a budget crisis in Social Security will produce a favorable environment for another big entitlement program, but maybe I’m missing something here.

STRATEGYPAGE ON AFGHANISTAN:

The weekend saw another major Taliban defeat. It began when a force of about a hundred Taliban attacked a town 35 kilometers west of Kandahar. Police held off the attackers as reinforcing soldiers and police moved to hit the Taliban from the rear. NATO warplanes arrived as well, and by the end of the weekend, at least 71 dead Taliban were found in three locations. This battle was part of operations to stop Taliban attacks along the newly rebuilt Kandahar-Kabul highway. The Taliban losses are believed to account for about ten percent of the Taliban combat strength in the area, which is not good for morale. The Taliban have suffered one defeat, like this one, after another all Summer. Moreover, the Taliban have been trying to intimidate the NATO combat troops, without much success. Canadian NATO troops, which the Taliban have been clashing with regularly in the past month, were the ones who hit back at the Taliban this past weekend.

The report also says that Taliban efforts to terrorize Afghan tribes are having mixed results.

Meanwhile, John Tammes has a roundup of other news from Afghanistan that you probably missed.