Judging by the number of New York Times articles the Globe picked up today they should have called today's edition the Boston Sunday Times.
I'm just giving the stuff to you, readers. Can't even stand the stuff anymore. Every morning I am left with a soul-crushing emptiness after reading my newspaper.
"Forces make key gains in Taliban stronghold; Fighting grew in intensity across a large area" by Dexter Filkins, New York Times | February 14, 2010
KABUL, Afghanistan - American, Afghan, and British troops seized crucial positions across the Taliban stronghold of Marja yesterday, encountering intense but sporadic fighting as they began the treacherous ordeal of house-to-house searches.
Sigh. That's not going to win anyone over and it never does.
But I'm sure the NYT and appropriate government s***-slingers will spin the turd into a happy face.
More than 6,000 US, Afghan, and British troops came in fast in the early hours yesterday, overwhelming most immediate resistance.
And imagine how I feel when I come to the second paragraph and once more find a rewritten, reedited update in the web version. I'm not even angry -- despite the playful color-coded vulgarities -- I'm just SAD, readers.
The NEWSPAPER is SHIT and it's time to FLUSH IT!
But as the troops began to fan out on searches, fighting with Taliban insurgents grew in frequency and intensity across a wide area.
That is so odd because the tone of my printed piece is that the whole thing went off without a hitch.
What a NICE PIECE of DISINFORMATION filling the head of that ENGROSSED SUNDAY READER out here in parts beyond Boston!!
Yeah, I MEAN ME!!!
Oh, sorry, flash of anger after the sobbing sadness.
The pattern suggested that the hardest fighting lay in the days to come.
I confess to you, readers, I am worn down. I've been on here blogging for over three years now and this madness has just continued! I holler and scream for it to stop and it hasn't. In fact, it's gotten even worse after "change," and if we have "change" again it will get worse again. I apologize to you, my dear followers, for being so fed up with it all.
I read that sentence above and the first thing that hits me is WE HAVE BEEN THERE NINE YEARS!!! If hard fighting is coming it is TIME to f***ing leave NOW!!!!! But that isn't going to happen, and there goes the old man again on a Sunday.
I may pipe down, readers, but I WILL RESIGN and ACCEPT THIS ABOMINABLE ATROCITY!
May God judge me on that.
One American and one British Marine were reported killed by small-arms fire, but none from the Afghan Army, whose soldiers make up the majority of those in the fight.
Three US soldiers were killed and seven wounded when they were attacked by a suicide bomber on a motorcycle during a foot patrol in neighboring Kandahar Province.
Oh, killed by one of their own anti-Taliban Taliban, 'eh? Blowback, backfire, whatever, who cares, shouldn't be there, if they were all called home like I want wouldn't have happened. Tired of repeating myself.
A second British soldier was killed by a homemade bomb in southern Afghanistan in a blast unrelated to the operation in Marja.
NATO officials said that no civilian casualties had been reported. In the chaos, the assertion was impossible to verify.
This is totally different from my printed piece. It's discouraging, readers. In the printed piece the NYT says the three Americans died by roadside bomb.
So the military gave Filkins a rewritten copy of his article, didn't they?
American commanders said the troops had achieved every first-day objective. That included advancing into the city and seizing intersections, government buildings, and one of the city’s main bazaars in the center of town....
What I'm getting is scraps sprinkled all over the rewrite.
I'm sorry, readers, but I'm not wasting the time with the hand typing, etc, anymore.
The point has been made, and you can NEVER REALLY TRUST what you are READING in an AmeriKan newspaper -- otherwise, there would be no reason for the damn games!
Some Marines held meetings with local Afghans almost immediately to reassure them and to ask for help in finding Taliban and hidden bombs.
Mohammed Dawood Ahmadi, a spokesman for Helmand Province’s governor, said Afghan and NATO forces had set up 11 outposts across Marja and two in the neighboring town of Nad Ali. “We now occupy all the strategic points in the area,’’ he said.
From those posts, Marines and soldiers began to go on patrols, searching door to door for weapons and fighters.
Yeah, I'm sure that is really going to go over well with a population that has already objected to this type of intrusion in their conservative culture.
But WTF do we care?
We are AmeriKa, come here to kick ass, take names, and liberate the fuck out of you even as we kick the door down, take away your men and throw them into torture chambers, and violate their women -- which enrages them against us even more. This phase of the operation, considered the most dangerous, is expected to last at least five days.
On the first full day of operations, much of the expected resistance failed to materialize.... [but the fighting was relatively desultory].
Really at ODDS with his UPDATE, huh?
Certainly there was none of the eyeball-to-eyeball fighting that typified the battle for Fallujah in Iraq in 2004, to which the invasion of Marja had been compared.
Yes, NO MENTION of the USE of WMD WHITE PHOSPHOROUS to "illuminate" in BOTH CASES!
YOUR GOVERNMENT is a WAR CRIMINAL, AmeriKa!!
No wonder they are vetoing resolutions against Israel.
“Actually, the resistance is not there,’’ Abdul Rahim Wardak, the Afghan defense minister, said in a news conference in Kabul. “Based on our intelligence reports, some of the Taliban have left the area. But we still expected there to be several hundred. Just yesterday, we received reports that reinforcements had arrived from neighboring provinces.’’
You buying the bull this morning? I'm not. I'm full up.
Dozens if not hundreds of insurgents probably fled Marja in the days leading up to the assault, according to military officers and local residents. US and Afghan commanders hoped to achieve just that result when they took the unusual step of broadcasting their intention to invade Marja days ahead of time [in hopes that Taliban fighters would leave the city and thus make it easier to hold the place]....
So your Sunday reader would be thinking everything is going great, huh?
What has been advertised as the most important, and novel, aspect of the Marja operation got underway yesterday. After clearing Marja, US and Afghan officials say, they intend to import an entire Afghan civil administration, along with nearly 2,000 Afghan police officers, to help keep the Taliban from coming back in....
Coming back in? They are the people that live there!
I will add this for you, my dear readers.
Previous operations to clear the Taliban from towns and cities have failed in large part because the Americans and Afghans rarely leave a competent Afghan government or security force behind to hold the place. And so, typically, the Taliban did not stay away for long. This time, in Marja, things are supposed to be different.
Sigh. Yeah, beat your head against a brick wall enough times and eventually that head will go through, right, America? When will you ever learn?
Also see:
Yeah, happy Valentine's day, Afghans!
Update:
US rockets slam into Afghan home, killing 12
Marines encountered "death at every corner" in their second day of a massive offensive to capture this bleak mud-brick city....
Marines confronted a fierce sandstorm as they ducked in and out of doorways and hid behind bullet-riddled walls to evade sniper fire. To the north, U.S. Army troops fought skirmishes with Taliban fighters, calling in a Cobra attack helicopter....
"Our children are very scared by the explosions. When will it end?" asked Zaher, a 25-year-old poppy farmer who like many Afghans goes by one name.
That's what I would like to know.
Ya think?
