Hello dear readers: Well, we here at Nukes & Spooks want to thank our loyal readers who have stuck with us through a pretty dull February, posting wise. But we promise an exciting March. There are big changes afoot at the Pentagon, for example, in response to the Obama administration announcements that it was 1. drawing down most U.S. forces in Iraq in 19 months, and 2. sending 17,000 more to Afghanistan. It now falls on the Pentagon to execute this major shift from Iraq to Afghanistan, and this month we expect to hear just how they plan to do that. How will it shift the training? Move the equipment? Adjust its resources? Change its focus for the past six years? All of that should lead to more interesting and frequent postings.

But I digress. Today’s posting is about the first of many changes we are hearing, literally, at the Pentagon. Anyone who has been around the military longer than a minute has almost certainly heard a soldier, sailor, airman or Marine turn a seemingly normal sentence into a string of acronyms. The newest jumble of letters these days is AFPAK, as in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This may seem small but it really reflects the shift in how military circles talk about the war in Afghanistan. The two countries – and how the U.S. deals with the terrorism link in that part of the world – are indelibly linked the military now recognizes.

Some believe Osama bin Laden is now hiding in Pakistan. Critics say that the U.S.’s botched effort in Afghanistan has done nothing more than push terrorism from Afghanistan, which has no nukes, to Pakistan, which does. Either way, everyone now agrees, one cannot talk about one country without the other.

It began nearly a year ago when Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified on Capitol Hill and linked the two countries. And the idea has been picking up steam since. Indeed, this past Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was asked about Afghanistan, and he answered by talking about Pakistan, saying military sanctuaries there pose the biggest threat to Afghanistan.

The threat is from “safe havens on the Pakistani side of the border, not just for al-Qaeda, but for the Taliban” and other groups “working together,” Gates said. “After all, 20 years ago I was on the other side of that border as deputy director of the CIA, fighting the Soviets. And we had the safe haven in Pakistan, and let me tell you, it made a big difference.”

That is, AFPAK is not just military speak, a maddening effort to make sure the rest of us have no idea what they are talking about. It reflects a whole new way the military is looking at the war in Afghanistan.