That is why the successes claimed by your government are really defeats, America.
"War’s worst day: 38 die in copter attack; 30 American victims include 22 Navy SEALs; deadliest incident for US in 10-year Afghan war" August 07, 2011|By Ray Rivera and Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times
KABUL - In the deadliest day for US forces in the nearly decade-long war in Afghanistan, insurgents shot down a Chinook transport helicopter yesterday, killing 30 Americans - including Navy SEAL commandos from the unit that killed Osama bin Laden - and eight Afghans, US and Afghan officials said.
Isn't that interesting? Dead men don't talk.
And why should we believe Taliban shot it down? According to what I've heard, U.S. military equipment is shit these days, the byproduct of endless and expanding empire and war profiteering.
The helicopter, on a night-raid mission in the Tangi Valley of Wardak Province, to the west of Kabul, was probably brought down by a rocket-propelled grenade, one coalition official said.
Isn't that "probably" kind of hard?
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, and they could hardly have found a more valuable target: US officials said that 22 of the dead were Navy SEAL commandos from two special teams, including Team 6.
Other commandos from Team 6 conducted the raid in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that killed bin Laden in May. The officials said that those who were killed yesterday were not involved in the Pakistan mission.
President Obama offered his condolences to the families of the Americans and Afghans who died in the attack. “Their death is a reminder of the extraordinary sacrifice made by the men and women of our military and their families,’’ Obama said....
And a reminder of what a waste it is to stay there.
Yesterday’s attack came during a surge of violence that has accompanied the beginning of a drawdown of US and NATO troops, and it showed how deeply entrenched the insurgency remains even far from its main strongholds in southern Afghanistan and along the Afghan-Pakistani border in the east. US soldiers had recently turned over the sole combat outpost in the Tangi Valley to Afghans....
All this after we have been told for a year we are winning -- and are still being told it.
The Tangi Valley is one of several inaccessible areas that have become havens for insurgents, according to operations and intelligence officers with the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, which patrols the area.
The mountainous region, traversed by small footpaths and byways, has long been an area that the Taliban have used to move between Logar and Wardak, local government officials said.
Officers at a forward operating base near the valley described Tangi as one of the most troubled areas in Logar and Wardak provinces. “There’s a lot happening in Tangi, it’s a stronghold for the Taliban,’’ Captain Kirstin Massey, 31, the assistant intelligence officer for Fourth Brigade Combat Team said in an interview last week. “It’s a stronghold for the Taliban.’’
The fighters are entirely Afghans and almost all local residents, Massey said. “We don’t capture any fighters who are non-Afghans,’’ he said.
The redoubts in these areas pose the kind of problems the military faced last year in similarly remote areas of Kunar Province, forcing commanders to weigh the mission’s value given the cost in soldiers’ lives and dollars spent in places where the vast majority of the insurgents are local residents who resent both the NATO presence and the Afghan government.
I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so.
The dilemma is that if NATO military forces do not stay, the areas often quickly slip back under Taliban influence, if not outright control, and the Afghan National Security Forces do not have the ability yet to rout them.
Translation: We are never leaving.
Related: "70,000 US troops would remain in Afghanistan through the end of 2014"
The helicopter hit yesterday was the second to be shot down by insurgents in the past two weeks.
WHAT?
On July 25, a Chinook was shot down in Kunar Province, injuring two people on board. Of 15 crashes or forced landings this year, those two were the only confirmed cases where hostile fire was involved.
Before yesterday, the biggest single-day loss of life for the US military in Afghanistan came June 28, 2005, during an operation in Kunar Province when a Chinook helicopter carrying special operations troops was shot down as it tried to provide reinforcements to forces trapped in heavy fighting....
Although the number of civilian deaths in Afghanistan has steadily risen in the past year, with a 15 percent increase in the first half of 2011 over the same period last year, NATO deaths had been declining....
As we surged?
When the Fourth Brigade Combat Team handed over its only combat outpost in the Tangi Valley to Afghan security forces in April, the US commander for the area said that as troops began to withdraw, he wanted to focus his forces on troubled areas that had larger populations.
But he pledged that coalition forces would continue to carry out raids there to stem insurgent activity....
Local officials in Wardak said that residents of the Tangi Valley disliked the fighting in the area, and that though they had fallen under the Taliban’s sway, the residents were not willing allies.
Kind of easy when AmeriKa has killed your neighbor's kid and carted of the men to a prison.
“They do not like having military in that area - no matter whether they are Taliban or foreigners,’’ said Hajji Mohammad Hazrat Janan, the chairman of the Wardak provincial council.
“When an operation takes place in their village,’’ he said, “their sleep gets disrupted by the noise of helicopters and by their military operation. And also they don’t like the Taliban, because when they attack, then they go and seek cover in their village, and they are threatened by the Taliban.’’
However, when local residents are hurt by the NATO soldiers, then, he said, they are willing to help the insurgents.
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"Taliban land stinging blow to elite unit" August 07, 2011|By Solomon Moore, Associated Press
KABUL - The fatal downing of a US military helicopter in Afghanistan yesterday was a stinging blow to the lauded, tightknit SEAL Team 6, months after its crowning achievement: taking out Osama bin Laden.
None of the 22 SEAL personnel killed in the crash were part of the team that killed bin Laden in a May raid in Pakistan, but they belonged to the same unit. Their deployment in the raid in which the helicopter crashed would suggest that the target was a high-ranking insurgent figure.
Special operations forces, including the SEALs and others, have been at the forefront in the stepped up strategy of killing key insurgent leaders in targeted raids, and they will be relied on more as regular troops pull out.
Also see: What Works for AmeriKa in Afghanistan
The Taliban said they downed the CH-47 Chinook with a rocket, killing 30 American service members, seven Afghan commandoes, and an Afghan civilian interpreter. The copter, a twin-rotor troop and cargo transporter, was taking part in a raid on a house where insurgents were gathered in the province of Wardak overnight.
With the AmeriKan media repeating the shoot down story I'm starting to wonder.
The casualties are believed to be largest loss of life in the history of SEAL Team 6, officially called the Navy Special Warfare Development Group, or DEVGRU. The team is considered the best of the best among the already elite SEALs, which numbers 3,000 personnel.
On June 28, 2005, 16 Navy SEALs and Army special operations troops were killed when their helicopter was shot down in eastern Kunar Province while on a mission to rescue four SEALs under attack by the Taliban....
Afghanistan has more US special operations troops, about 10,000, than any other theater of war. The forces, often joined by Afghan troops, carry out as many as a dozen raids a night and have become one of the most effective weapons in the coalition’s arsenal, also conducting surveillance and infiltration.
Instigation, huh?
From April to July this year, special operations raids captured 2,941 insurgents and killed 834, twice as many as those killed or captured in the same three-month period of 2010, according to NATO.
Yeah, we're winning.
The coalition plans to increase its reliance on special operations missions as it reduces the number of combat troops.
Night raids have drawn criticism from human rights activists and infuriated President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, who says they anger the population. But NATO commanders have said the raids are safer for civilians than relatively imprecise airstrikes.
Why is it an either/or?
The loss of so many SEALs at once will have a temporary impact on the tempo of missions they can carry out, but with an ongoing drawdown of special operations forces from Iraq, there will be more in reserve for Afghan missions....
Yeah, THEY AIN'T COMING HOME! They are GOING to Afghanistan!
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"US troops killed when copter shot down were aiding Army Rangers" August 08, 2011|By Patrick Quinn, Associated Press
KABUL - The heavy loss shows that clandestine tactics carry huge risks....
As US forces removed the wreckage yesterday, nearby Afghan and NATO forces battled insurgents as they carried out clearing operations in the areas around the crash site, a region that is close to the capital.
The province, which borders Kabul, has increasingly come under Taliban control in recent months....
And yet we have been told time and again we are driving them out, blah, blah, blah.
TIRED of the LIES YET, America?
Special-operations troops are expected to remain in the country after 2014 for counterterrorism missions and advisory support....
Also yesterday, France said of two of its soldiers were killed and five others injured in a clash with insurgents in Afghanistan’s northeastern Tagab valley.
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"Special forces’ role only to grow; Missions target Afghan insurgents" by Deb Riechmann, Associated Press / August 9, 2011
KABUL - The operation in which 30 American troops were killed by a Taliban rocket is a window on the war to come....
The sheer number of these missions is evidence that progress in the nearly decadelong war depends more on efforts to kill or capture insurgents than the strategy of building support for the Afghan government at grass-roots levels....
Translation: We have ALREADY LOST HEARTS and MINDS!
Saturday’s crash of the CH-47 Chinook helicopter was the deadliest loss for US forces in the war and raised anew questions in the United States about why US troops are still fighting the unpopular conflict.
Oh, I think we all know why troop$ are $till fighting.
US leaders vowed yesterday not to let the loss rewrite the war strategy....
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Related:
SEAL from Cape devoted to the end
Kevin Houston, 36, a graduate of Barnstable High School who was living in Chesapeake, Va., died Saturday during a Navy SEAL mission in the rugged mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
And what is this, some WORDS of TRUTH in the Globe?
"A ‘sign of weakness’ in the propaganda of war" August 02, 2011|By H.D.S. Greenway
WHEN THE mayor of Kandahar, Ghulam Haider Hamidi, was assassinated last week, it was disappointing to hear US Ambassador Ryan Crocker describe the killing as a “sign of weakness’’ on the part of the Taliban. Surely, such an experienced and respected diplomat knows better.
His reasoning went as follows: Although the spate of assassinations was deplorable - Hamidi was the third high-ranking government official to die at the hands of the Taliban in recent weeks - the killings were a sign of desperation. NATO successes on the battlefield had deprived the Taliban of safe havens in Afghanistan’s southern provinces, and the enemy was no longer able to stand up and fight. Thus, the Taliban was resorting to assassinations because it could no longer mount the same military operations against NATO as in the past. The ability to kill off three senior officials on the government side was really a sign of Taliban weakness.
How many times have we heard this before? Didn’t then Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismiss the Iraqi insurgency as a last-gasp effort just when it was going into high gear?
How many times, in nearly nine years of covering the Indochina wars, did I hear Americans say: The North Vietnamese are desperate and on their last legs. There were the usual stories, often encouraged by American propagandists, of North Vietnamese soldiers being chained to their machine guns to stop them from running away - as if our Vietnamese adversaries ever lacked motivation.
Of course, as ambassador, Crocker’s job is to keep up morale. The entire American house of cards in Afghanistan is built on an illusion of progress. Progress is slow, and reversible, but “we are winning’’ is the line emanating from headquarters....
Crocker is familiar with the Russian and British experience in wars against the Pashtuns, the ethnic group with which we are now at war. Crocker is also familiar with the concept of guerrilla wars, what we now like to call “asymmetrical’’ warfare. If you lack the firepower and airpower of your adversary, you use stealth and guile to make up for it. You refrain from frontal attacks. You melt away into the population where the enemy is strong, and you attack where he is vulnerable. Over the long haul you win by not losing. The foreigner will eventually tire and go home.
When contemplating war against the Pashtuns, I often turn to the writer John Masters, who served as a British officer in a Gurkha regiment fighting Pashtuns on the frontier in the late 1930s. “The core of our problem in the army was to force battle on an elusive and mobile enemy,’’ Masters wrote. “The enemy, while he retained any common sense, tried to avoid battle and instead fight us with pinpricking hit-and-run tactics… When he flitted and sniped, rushed and ran away, we felt as if were using a crowbar to swat wasps.’’ And so it is today. Our crowbars pound and kill thousands, but our enemy remains the illusive wasp.
No one ever doubted that American forces, with their unprecedented firepower, would be masters of the ground on which they stood. Perhaps, with several million soldiers, the United States could control every province of Afghanistan. If the US was willing to keep them there for 20 or 30 years it could, perhaps, bend Afghanistan to its will. But America is not about to commit those resources. America wants out.
Therefore we may comfort ourselves by saying we are winning the war against the Pashtun insurgents whom we lump together as Taliban. Once, when the war was young, Afghans did not feel they were under a foreign occupation. Now too many of them do. Time is not on our side, and the danger is that we may begin to believe our own propaganda.
That is the problem with our leaders.
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Related:
"This colossal human cost of the wars has been almost totally overlooked by Americans.
Um, SPEAK FOR YOURSELF! What do you think I have been SCREAMING ABOUT for FIVE YEARS HERE!!???
There is little acknowledgment of this destruction and the chronically desperate conditions it caused....
And for that I blame the newspapers.
A relative mourns after a NATO raid east of Kabul in February. Afghan officials accused NATO forces of killing a family of six in the air strike. (Associated Press)
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I'd rather just leave them alone. If they want our help and money, fine.
"ROADSIDE INFERNO -- Fuel tankers burned on the outskirts of Kabul yesterday as an Afghan carried his belongings past the blaze. Police said about five fuel tankers carrying fuel for NATO and US forces in the country caught fire inside a depot in the capital. No casualties were reported, and it was not immediately clear whether insurgents caused the fire (Boston Globe August 5 2011)."
And whose fault is all of this?
"Defenses aim to stop militants at Afghan border; Pakistan’s cooperation still an issue" August 01, 2011|By Thom Shanker and Jack Healy, New York Times
KABUL - US and allied forces in Afghanistan are strengthening a layered defense along the border with Pakistan to seize Haqqani network militants as they try to make their way to Kabul to carry out spectacular attacks, according to senior military officers.
Related:
"Haqqani.... credited with introducing suicide bombing to the region.... cultivated as a "unilateral" asset of the CIA and received tens of thousands of dollars in cash for his work.... He may have had a role in expediting the escape of Osama Bin Laden.... In July 2008, CIA officials confronted Pakistan officials with evidence of ties between Inter-Services Intelligence and Haqqani. Haqqani has been accused of involvement in the 2008 Indian embassy bombing in Kabul.... The Haqqani Network is based in Pakistan and is believed to have links to Al Qaeda."
Yeah, right, it's Pakistan's fault.
Commanders continue to debate whether Pakistan is unable - or unwilling - to eliminate the haven within its borders used by the Haqqani network, a powerful insurgent group that officials in the United States say is nurtured by Pakistani security and intelligence officers to maintain influence in Afghanistan....
Yuh-huh.
Separately, Deputy Attorney General Rahmatullah Nazari said yesterday that as many as 40 people were allegedly involved in scams to bilk hundreds of millions of dollars from the Kabul Bank, and nearly half the cases will be sent to the Afghan court system soon.
Related:
Afghan Exodus
Checking Out at the Afghan Airport
Making Some Afghan Withdrawals
After American taxpayers gave them a $1 billion dollar bailout?
The charges are the first to be referred to Afghan courts in connection with the bank’s near-collapse last year because of mismanagement and questionable lending. A USAID inspector general report estimated that $850 million in loans were diverted to bank insiders.
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"Afghans said to deter US from tracking aid; Report faults Karzai, others" July 21, 2011|By Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Afghan officials are thwarting US efforts to protect American aid from being stolen or diverted to Taliban insurgents, a new report said yesterday, specifically naming President Hamid Karzai as part of the problem....
Related:
"Senior Obama administration officials say some of [money] may be going to the Taliban, as part of a protection racket in which insurgents and local warlords are paid to allow the trucks unimpeded passage.... “willful blindness’’ on the part of a US military that “likes having its trucks showing up and doesn’t want to get into the details of how they got there.... US military officials say they are satisfied with the results.... regularly paying local warlords and the Taliban"
PAKISTAN TALIBAN ARMED WITH WEAPONS FROM USA, GERMANY AND INDIA
Sure is a GOOD WAY to keep a WAR GOING though!!!!
Amid a growing financial scandal, and after billions in aid have been sent to his country, Karzai has barred US Treasury officials who were working as advisers at the central bank, according to the report from the top US auditor for reconstruction in the war-ravaged nation.
The Treasury advisers will not return because working conditions at the bank have become too hostile, it said....
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"Study confirms US funds in Afghanistan diverted to Taliban" July 25, 2011|By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post
A year-long military-led investigation has concluded that US taxpayer money has been indirectly funneled to the Taliban under a $2.16 billion transportation contract that the United States has funded in part to promote Afghan businesses.
The unreleased investigation provides seemingly definitive evidence that corruption puts US transportation money into enemy hands, a finding consistent with previous inquiries carried out by Congress, other federal agencies, and the military. Yet US and Afghan efforts to address the problem have been slow and ineffective, and all eight of the trucking firms involved in the work remain on the US payroll. In March, the Pentagon extended the contract for six months....
The military summary included several case studies in which money was traced from the US Treasury through a labyrinth of subcontractors and power brokers....
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It would be a JOKE if it were not fatal.
"Explosions kill 21 in Afghanistan" July 30, 2011|Associated Press
KABUL - Two roadside bombs killed 19 civilians yesterday in southern Afghanistan as noncombatants are increasingly falling victim to the fighting between Taliban insurgents and the US-led coalition. A bomb also killed two NATO service members, the alliance said....
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"Taliban kill 21 during attempt to assassinate Afghan official; Violence was in relatively quiet province; militants used 7 suicide bombers" July 29, 2011|By Alissa J. Rubin and Taimoor Shah, New York Times
KABUL - The Taliban launched one of its most audacious surprise attacks yesterday, sending a squad of at least seven suicide bombers into the capital of a relatively stable southern province with the aim of assassinating the provincial governor and an influential powerbroker. Neither was killed, but security and health officials said at least 21 civilians had died in the mayhem, half of them children.
Related:
"Now stop and think here for a moment. All revolutions depend on public support. Revolutionaries try to first win the people before they take on the government. So, no revolutionary goes out and murders civilians in cold blood. Did Washington and his men just mow down a marketplace of their fellow colonials for the heck of it? No, they did not. Washington and the Founding Fathers knew that their revolution to build a new country needed the support of those who would live in that country. This is true for every revolution in history. Therefore, these acts of terror being blamed on the insurgency must all be fakes, committed by intelligence agencies working for the governments to be blamed on the insurgents in order to destroy public support for the revolution." -- Wake the Flock Up
The Taliban attack in Tarin Kot, the capital of Oruzgan Province, appeared to be carefully coordinated....
Yup, the STENCH of ANOTHER FALSE FLAG!
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"Suicide bomber kills Kandahar mayor; Taliban say it was retaliation to aid squatters" by July 28, 2011|By Alissa J. Rubin and Taimoor Shah, New York Times
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - An insurgent suicide bomber hiding explosives in his turban assassinated the mayor of Kandahar yesterday, the third killing of a high-profile official in the country this month. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on the mayor, who held dual citizenship in Afghanistan and the United States.
The killing came two weeks after a suicide bomber used the same disguise to attack senior mullahs at a memorial for the former provincial chairman of Kandahar, Ahmed Wali Karzai, who was also assassinated, heightening concerns that the tenuous security gains in the violent south are faltering despite months of intensified fighting by NATO and Afghan forces....
After being told we are winning!
Related: CIA Killing Karzai's Cabinet
Ahmed Wali Karzai, a half brother of President Hamid Karzai, was assassinated by a close associate on July 12.
Yeah, and the killer had CIA contacts!
Also see: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Karzai's Kin
Oh, so this was about shutting up Ahmed?
Five days later, a senior adviser to Hamid Karzai was assassinated. The adviser, Jan Mohammed Khan, was a power broker in southern Afghanistan.
The American ambassador, Ryan C. Crocker, said the assassinations reflected the Taliban’s desperation because of the success of the NATO military campaign. “Clearly these are horrific attacks, but they can be signs of weakness,’’ Crocker said.
Then by the same reasoning, AmeriKa is getting desperate.
Nonetheless, the Taliban have shown a keen ability to conduct sophisticated attacks, like the one on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul a month ago, which involved at least eight suicide bombers and ended only after several hours of fighting....
Related: Spending the Night in Kabul
On Tuesday, the mayor sent several bulldozers to the neighborhood where he was trying to reclaim land. The bulldozers had begun to raze buildings, including one that was occupied.
So OUR GUYS are ACTING LIKE ISRAELIS, huh?
NO WONDER we have LOST the PEOPLE!!
Also see: Banks Acting Like Israel
Are the Taliban BULLDOZING HOMES?
“Accidentally yesterday, one of the bulldozer’s brakes failed and it smashed one of the homes where two children were killed,’’ Wesa said at a news conference. “We don’t believe the place was a home. We think someone just brought children there in order to save the house from destruction.’’
Isn't that like blaming the rape victim?
*******************************
Soon after the death of the children - three children and a woman were killed, according to some reports - people complained to Shah Wali Karzai, the new leader of Hamid Karzai’s Popalzai tribe, which is powerful in Kandahar. The mayor agreed to meet with the protesters this week and was preparing to do so when he was killed.
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"Afghan insurgents abduct, hang 8-year-old boy; Police officer’s son killed for father’s refusal" July 25, 2011|By Rahim Faiez, Associated Press
KABUL - Insurgents in southern Afghanistan hanged the 8-year-old son of a police officer six days after they abducted him, the Afghan government said yesterday, calling it part of a pattern of retaliatory killings and abductions involving children.
The boy’s captors had demanded that his father, a police officer, supply them with a police vehicle and he refused, according to a statement from President Hamid Karzai’s office. In apparent retaliation, the militants hanged the boy Friday and dumped his body into a stream in Helmand Province.
Officials said the death was the latest in a series of killings of children with suspected ties to Afghan security forces. A government statement referred to the killers as “terrorists,’’ but did not say whether they belonged to the Taliban or another of the insurgent movements fighting foreign forces and their Afghan allies....
The officer, Mohammed Daoud, 36, told officials he had received an anonymous phone call Thursday demanding that he hand over his vehicle. The caller said Daoud’s son, Mohammed Ibrahim, had been kidnapped and would be killed if he did not comply.
?????
Kidnappings have become increasingly common in Afghanistan, both by criminal groups looking for ransoms and insurgents making a political statement. Many abductions are settled out of the public eye, with negotiations and cash payments.
In another development yesterday, Afghan officials said NATO forces battling insurgents along an eastern highway accidentally killed three civilians who were caught in the crossfire....
But the alleged hanging of the 8-year-old bumped that down!
The dead included a woman who was a provincial health official. Wardak government spokesman Shahidullah Shahid said Dr. Aqeela Hekmat and two of her family members were killed in their vehicle, and her husband was injured. Aqeela was the head of gynecology and maternal health for neighboring Ghazni Province.
Nice job, NAT
Provincial Police Chief General Abdul Qayum Baqizai also confirmed three deaths and said it was clear that they were killed by NATO fire. Karzai’s office said it was investigating the allegations.
The incidents were among many reminders over the last week that the war is still on.
As Helmand’s provincial capital of Lashkar Gah marked the official start of its transition from NATO to Afghan control on Wednesday, fierce fighting broke out in the market town of Siraqula....
The transition to Afghan control will allow international military forces to start withdrawing slowly from Afghanistan. NATO intends these transition areas to be the leading edge of an emergent sovereign state capable of quelling the insurgency and providing for its citizens....
It remains unclear, however, whether the modest security gains achieved in the provincial capital will expand to Taliban strongholds in northern Helmand, where US Marines are still trying to pacify prime poppy-growing areas that are the insurgency’s profit center.
LIE!
See: Poppie Production Up in Afghanistan
What do you mean Taliban almost stamped it out? Another reason Afghanistan needed to be invaded.
The Marine patrol base in Salaam Bazaar is in a blocking position at the junction of three roads connecting the northern district centers of Nawzad to the northwest and Musa Qala to the northeast and Gereshk to the south.
Although Marines improved security in many of Helmand’s main population centers last year, motorcycle-borne Taliban still control roads with checkpoints and mines. The result has been a scattered archipelago of Helmand towns that are cut off from one another, a hobbled economy and provincial government institutions that cannot extend essential services.
Excuses, excuses.
And Helmand SURE LOOKS a LOT like the WEST BANK, huh?
With its 100 stalls, Salaam Bazaar was once a regional commercial center for farmers and small businesses until opium and arms dealers took it over and insurgents used it as a base to disrupt traffic on the Gereshk road. In May, Marines set up a patrol base less than a mile from the bazaar and tried to clear it for the second time in a year, but somehow the insurgency learned of the plan.
Residents routinely tell the Marines that they detest the insurgency but fear retribution if they cooperate with NATO forces. And all of them were aware that the Taliban would be around long after the coalition leaves.
Of the 30,000 coalition troops in Helmand, a number of Marines stationed in the province will leave by the end of the year and others may shift to eastern Afghanistan where NATO officials say more international terrorists are based.
Yeah, we're winning.
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"New US envoy speaks to Afghan fears" Associated Press / July 26, 2011
KABUL - America’s new top diplomat in Afghanistan sought yesterday to allay the fears of the Afghan people who worry the United States is abandoning the nation after the drawdown of American forces began.
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFTTT!!!!!!!!!!
Ryan Crocker, a veteran diplomat who served in Iraq, said at his swearing-in ceremony at the US Embassy in Kabul: “There will be no rush for the exits.’’
No kidding.
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Crocker is faced with mending relations with embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who publicly has cast doubt on America’s commitment.
I'm so sick of shit reporting, I really am.
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And I'm sure Afghans want us to stay:
"Guardsman gets life for killing Afghan" July 28, 2011|Associated Press
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. - A US Army National Guardsman was sentenced yesterday to life in prison with the chance of parole for the murder of an Afghan civilian....
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Related: Censorship of war casualties in the US
