Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Farah Fallout

"the bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies"

Yeah, that ain't winning any hearts and minds....


"Karzai brother ambushed in Afghanistan; He survives attempt on life; Taliban lay in wait for him" by Abdul Waheed Wafa and Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times | May 19, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan - A brother of President Hamid Karzai said he narrowly escaped assassination yesterday morning by Taliban attackers lying in wait for his motorcade while traveling from the eastern city of Jalalabad to the capital.

I'm really not interested in Karzai's drug-running brother; however, the MSM purpose is accomplished with the headline for those who only glance at the paper.

Meanwhile in Washington, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said the United States could not succeed in Afghanistan if the American military keeps killing Afghan civilians, and the military provided its most detailed accounting yet of the airstrikes that killed an undetermined number of Afghan civilians in Farah Province nearly two weeks ago....

Then we have lost.

There is no way to avoid them other than COMING HOME, folks!!!!

The United States cannot succeed in Afghanistan if the American military keeps killing Afghan civilians, Admiral Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said yesterday.

Pretty self-evident, ain't it? Nice grasp of the obvious, Admiral.

In remarks to scholars, national security experts, and the media at the Brookings Institution, Mullen said that the American air strikes that killed an undetermined number of civilians in Afghanistan's Farah province two weeks ago had put the US strategy in the country in jeopardy.

Yeah, things like this will: AmeriKan Liberation in Afghanistan: Weeping Villagers and Mass Graves

"We cannot succeed in Afghanistan or anywhere else, but let's talk specifically about Afghanistan, by killing Afghan civilians," Mullen said, adding that "we can't keep going through incidents like this and expect the strategy to work." At the same time, Mullen said, "We can't tie our troops' hands behind their backs."

Translation: expect more bombs and more dead women and children, Afghanis!

Mullen's comments on the civilian casualties from the Farah air strikes, which have caused an uproar in Afghanistan, reflect deep concern within the Pentagon about the intensifying criticism from Kabul against the American military. Mullen, who noted that commanders in the region had in recent months imposed more restrictive rules on airstrikes to avoid civilian casualties, offered no new solutions in his remarks. He only said, "We've got to be very, very focused on making sure that we proceed deliberately, that we know who the enemy is."

Check Tel Aviv, Washington, and London!

The new American account of the battle in Farah Province says that at midafternoon on May 4, after a battle between Afghan police and army forces and Taliban fighters had raged for hours, Marines Special Operations forces called in airstrikes.

Oh, the NEW LIE, huh?

Enjoy the fiction, readers:

Three F-18 fighter-bombers, flying in succession over several hours, dropped five laser-guided and satellite-guided bombs against Taliban fighters who were firing at the American and Afghan forces, said the official, Colonel Gregory Julian, in an e-mail message late Sunday.

Villagers, however, have reported that an even heavier bombardment came after 8 p.m. when they said the fighting appeared to be over and the Taliban had left the village.

It's called MAKING the PEOPLE PAY!!

Think GAZA, readers.

The military has disputed this version of events, saying the Taliban fighters continued to fire at American and Afghan troops, requiring additional airstrikes.

I know who I'm believing, and it ain't my lying military!

These came from a B-1 bomber, which dropped three 500-pound satellite-guided bombs on a tree grove, four 500-pound and 2,000-pound satellite-guided bombs on one building, and one 2,000-pound satellite-guided bomb on a second building, Julian said.

Translation: they FLATTENED the PLACE!!!!

The civilian casualties from the Farah air strikes caused an uproar in Afghanistan and have intensified criticism of the American military just as the Obama administration is ramping up there to fight the Taliban insurgency, now more than seven years old. Villagers have said they sought safety from the initial airstrikes in a compound of buildings, but it was not clear whether these were the same buildings the American aircraft later bombed.

Villagers said the bombs were so powerful that people were ripped to shreds. Survivors said they collected only pieces of bodies. In all, Julian said, eight targets were attacked over a seven-hour period, but he denied reports from villagers that a mosque had been damaged in the strikes.

The SACRILEGEOUS OFFENCES NEVER END, do they, 'murka?

Julian and other American military officials have said that the Taliban deliberately fired at American and Afghan forces from the rooftops of buildings where civilians, including women and children, had sought shelter, to provoke a heavy American military response.

Fuck you, mass-murdering mouthpiece!

Julian said at the peak of the fighting that day, some 150 Afghan soldiers and 60 Afghan police officers, along with their American trainers, as well as two Marine Special Operations teams that made up a quick-reaction force, were battling about 300 militants, including a large number of foreign fighters.

How could they possibly know that?

No verification needed like our civilian slaughter, MSM?

And WTF? Our Marines and Afghan allies couldn't whip those folk?

Had to have outnumbered them.

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