What a COINCIDENCE, huh?
"Suicide blast kills 21 Afghan police; Attack highlights vulnerability of security forces" by M. Karim Faiez and Laura King, Los Angeles Times | February 3, 2009
KABUL, Afghanistan - In an attack that underscored the vulnerability of Afghanistan's struggling security forces, a suicide bomber dressed in police uniform slipped into a police compound and detonated a powerful explosive device yesterday, killing at least 21 officers, authorities said.
Better hustle those U.S. troops into the country, 'eh?
The attack in southern Afghanistan also wounded a dozen police officers, according to the Interior Ministry. Over the last two years, Taliban insurgents have increasingly focused their attacks on Afghan security forces rather than the much better trained, better armed, and better protected Western troops, who number more than 60,000.
The police are considered a far softer target than Afghan national army soldiers, who are often in the company of NATO or US forces. Many police outposts are only lightly defended, with relatively lax security. Nearly 1,000 police officers were killed last year in insurgent attacks.
A key component of Western strategy in Afghanistan is to hand over greater responsibility to the Afghan police and army, because locally recruited forces have a much better rapport with the populace. US troops carry out much of the training.
But as a result of unrelenting Taliban attacks, the police force, which is considered a key line of defense in remote communities, is demoralized, prone both to desertion and to infiltration by the Taliban.
Yesterday's bombing took place in Tirin Kot, the capital of Uruzgan Province. The province is part of a swath of southern Afghanistan where the insurgency is at its strongest.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack and boasted that its bombers could strike anywhere.
So claims the war-promoting Zionist MSM.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said that three other would-be suicide bombers, already outfitted with explosives-filled vests, had been arrested but did not say when.
I'm sorry, but I'm just not believing in "suiciders" anymore.
The police officers, most of whom were reservists, were in the midst of a training exercise when the attacker managed to make his way into their compound and into the center of a large group, said Juma Gul Himat, the provincial police chief.
One wonders how he got through all the security.
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Maybe here is why:
"Pentagon report calls for narrower focus in Afghanistan; Says US should work to root out militants" by Robert Burns and Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press | February 4, 2009
WASHINGTON - A classified Pentagon report urges President Obama to shift US military strategy in Afghanistan, deemphasizing democracy-building and concentrating more on targeting Taliban and Al Qaeda sanctuaries inside Pakistan with the aid of Pakistani military forces....
The Joint Chiefs' plan reflects growing worries that the US military was taking on more than it could handle in Afghanistan....
Then LET'S LEAVE!!!
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported that Afghan authorities announced yesterday that they had broken up a suicide bombing cell responsible for a string of attacks in the capital, including a massive explosion last month that killed an American serviceman and wounded five other US soldiers.
A spokesman for Afghanistan's main intelligence service said that the 17 men arrested in Kabul were believed to be affiliated with a Pakistan-based militant group known as the Haqqani network and that the cell's ringleader was a Pakistani national.
More framing of pakistan, and CUI BONO?
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