When I read this is where the never-ending wars are going, as this president brings barbarity to a new level and will be handing it off to the next monster to assume the office, I felt a complete and utter sense of dejection.
"US intensifies Afghan airstrikes as drawdown nears" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff October 08, 2014
WASHINGTON — As the United States and its allies began launching airstrikes against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria in August, another — less public — air war was also heating up: in Afghanistan.
Related: Setting Sail on Droning Monday
What's that, at least seven countries now under Obummer's drone assaults.
According to the latest Pentagon statistics, US combat aircraft dropped more bombs on Taliban and other militant targets in August than it had in any single month in two years — and nearly triple the monthly average since January.
Isn't the war supposed to be ending?
Officials said they were still compiling the bombing statistics for September but the recent uptick in air attacks in Afghanistan comes as the United States is preparing to pull out about half of its 24,000 troops by the end of the year and curtail most combat operations.
Tell the people standing under them and those in destroyed villages that it is only an "uptick."
The stepped-up campaign was viewed by some analysts as an effort to beat back recent Taliban gains ahead of the US drawdown.
What? I've been told for months, or it's been implied by the propaganda pre$$ anyway, that AmeriKa was winning.
Others saw it as a preview of what might lie ahead as the Afghan government struggles to maintain its own security and needs sustained US help from the air.
How horrifying.
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A Pentagon official, asked about the increase in bombing, predicted that the current level would diminish.
“The drawdown of coalition forces in Afghanistan, combined with the increasing combat capability of Afghan security forces, obviously will reduce the level of coalition air activity there in the coming months,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Edward Sholtis, a spokesman for US Air Forces Central Command in Qatar, said via e-mail. “But for now there’s no significant, sustained dip in the level of air operations in Afghanistan.”
Sholtis did not offer a specific explanation for the stepped-up bombing, but military specialists outlined a variety of possibilities. The ramping up could mark an effort to preempt possible attacks on US forces as they steadily withdraw from bases in more remote parts of the country, according to Anthony Cordesman, a military specialist and Pentagon adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
See: Obama W. Bush
“We are pulling combat forces out of bases,” he said. “We are shutting down combat outposts. That would have been a key month because the tactics were designed to get us out.”
The attacks also coincide with the height of the so-called fighting season — the warmer months when the Taliban and terrorist groups have historically gone on the offensive.
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US Army General John Campbell, the commander of international forces in the country, last week described to reporters at the Pentagon what he called the “Taliban trying to make a statement as they close out the fighting season.”
He contended that any Taliban gains would be temporary.
“There’s nowhere that we have Afghan security forces that the Taliban can get the terrain and hold the terrain,” Campbell said. “The Taliban may take over a district center or something, but only temporarily.”
Why? We are leaving and the Afghan Army won't be taking anything back.
The United States plans to keep some 12,500 troops in the country after January to help support and train the Afghan security forces.
And they had alternatives as Afghan forces are getting hit hard by the Taliban as the peak summer fighting season continues. So much for final withdrawal.
Partly as a result, Campbell said, the number of US aircraft inside Afghanistan available to conduct strikes, gather intelligence, and provide logistical support to the Afghans “will be greatly diminished from what we have today” by the end of the year. Nevertheless, because nearly half of the airstrikes are being conducted by combat aircraft coming from bases or ships elsewhere in the region, the air operations could remain at a high level.
Meaning you can ignore the first sentence of the paragraph.
Indeed, some specialists said the recent reliance on more airstrikes foreshadows the next phase of the war in Afghanistan. “Even though we will have less soldiers and Marines on the ground, I think you are going to see the same tempo of operations, air power-wise,” said retired Lieutenant General Richard Y. Newton, the former vice chief of staff of the Air Force. “I believe that we are going to have ‘1-800-air power’ for the conceivable future in Afghanistan.”
OOOOOOOH!
Retired Major General Walter D. Givhan, who led the effort to rebuild the nascent Afghan Air Force in 2008 and 2009, agreed. “US air power has been a critical part of the support of the Afghan security force,” said Givhan, now senior vice chancellor at Troy University. “We have made a lot of progress building up their air capabilities but they are still nowhere near approaching what we have and we can give them. That difference that air power can make for the Afghan security forces as they are engaging becomes even more important.”
Related: Justice Department Tilton Away From Helicopter Investigation
A number of analysts, however, also warned that more US airstrikes would probably mean more civilian casualties, a highly contentious issue over the years between the United States and its Afghan allies.
Yeah, turns out most of the civilian casualties are incidents involving airstrikes and night raids carried out by US forces.
Unlike in Iraq and Syria, however, the US Central Command said it does not plan to release daily statistics on air attacks in Afghanistan.
A Central Command spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Belcher, said that in Afghanistan the air operations are responding to the constantly changing needs of US and coalition ground troops who are confronting insurgents. The conflict, he said, “doesn’t lend itself to the type of air operations you are currently seeing conducted in Iraq and Syria against preplanned ground targets.”
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Actually, ISIS might be in Afghanistan anyway:
"12 people beheaded in Taliban offensive, Afghan officials say" by Amir Shah and Mirwais Khan | Associated Press September 27, 2014
KABUL — The Taliban beheaded 12 Afghan civilians, mostly family members of local policemen, in an assault that was part of a week-long offensive that has so far killed 60 people and wounded scores in a remote province in eastern Afghanistan, officials said Friday.
However, a Taliban spokesman in Ghazni province denied the reports of beheadings and civilian slayings, insisting the insurgents were only fighting Afghan forces there.
The violence comes amid the annual Taliban offensive, which this year will be an important gauge of how well Afghan government forces are able to face insurgent attacks before the withdrawal of foreign combat troops at the end of the year.
According to the Ghazni provincial deputy police chief, Asadullah Ensafi, the Taliban Thursday captured and beheaded 12 civilians and torched about 60 homes in an attack in the district of Arjistan.
Details were sketchy because of the remoteness of the rugged mountainous area, about 60 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, but Afghan officials said that women and children were believed to be among the casualties. There are no NATO troops in the district.
Beheadings are rare in Afghanistan, though they occasionally occur in the Taliban campaign to intimidate and exact revenge on relatives of Afghan troops and security forces.
‘‘We don’t have the time for this [beheadings] while we are fighting,’’ Taliban spokesman Qari Yousaf told Associated Press by phone. ‘‘These reports are baseless and a lie.’’
Given all the lying war propaganda we have seen the last 12 years or so, I believe him.
The offensive in Ghazni comes as Afghanistan readies to inaugurate the country’s new president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who officially takes over from Hamid Karzai on Monday.
During the past week, the Taliban have been attacking several villages in Ghazni’s Arjistan district, Ensafi said, and battles in the area were still raging Friday, he said.
On Friday morning, the Taliban detonated a car bomb outside an encampment where about 40 Afghan policemen were based in Arjistan, killing at least 8 policemen, said the province’s deputy governor, Mohammad Ali Ahmadi.
Ahmadi, who also confirmed the beheadings, said that attack and the car bombing brought the overall death toll in the Taliban offensive in Ghazni to 60. The victims included both civilians and police officers, he said.
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"Taliban stage attacks day after Afghanistan and US sign security deal" by Azam Ahmed | New York Times October 02, 2014
KABUL — Two suicide attacks targeting military transport vehicles Wednesday killed seven Afghan soldiers and wounded nearly 20 others, officials said, among the deadlier strikes on security forces in the capital since the summer fighting season began.
The attacks came a day after the government signed a crucial security deal with the United States that paves the way for a long-term US troop presence, a pact the Taliban vehemently opposed. The group quickly issued a statement claiming responsibility for the assaults.
“By signing the agreement, the status of the Kabul administration, in particular the status of soldiers and police, is clear,” the Taliban said in a statement. “They are working for the interests of others, and their killing is important.”
That much is clear.
The first attacker, wearing an explosive vest, boarded a full bus in the Karte Char neighborhood of Kabul. The blast killed seven soldiers and wounded 15 people, including civilians, said Hashmatullah Stanikzai, the spokesman for the police in Kabul.
The second attack also targeted a bus, this one in the Deh Sabz area, injuring four soldiers and no civilians, Stanikzai said.
Heavy violence has been the hallmark of the fighting season, with the army and the police sustaining substantial casualties from a withering Taliban assault. Afghan officials have said that the past six months, starting in late March, were the deadliest for police officers in the 13-year war in Afghanistan. Historically, police casualties have typically been double the level of those of the army.
Much of the fighting in recent months has taken place outside the major cities of Afghanistan, although Kabul has not been spared. Two weeks ago, a suicide car bomber killed three coalition soldiers and wounded five others at the gates of a US military base in the city.
The summer’s violence, which took root across the country, even in the once relatively secure north, has challenged assumptions that the Afghan forces can manage the fight against the Taliban on their own.
That means we have been lied to yet again!
While the signing of the security agreement with the United States sets the stage for the continued training of the Afghan army, fewer US forces will participate than before.
The attacks Wednesday came on the heels of the inauguration of a new president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai, who was elected in a drawn-out process that required sustained international involvement to resolve. One of Ghani’s chief tasks will be to bolster the security forces.
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"5 aid workers abducted in western Afghanistan
KABUL — The International Committee of the Red Cross in Afghanistan is trying to gain the release of five staffers who were abducted in western Herat province, a spokesman said Saturday. The employees were traveling by road on Friday when they were detained by a local armed group, an ICRC spokesman said. The aid workers were delivering sheep to local villages when they were stopped by the gunmen (AP)."
"Bomb attack kills 2 at intelligence office
KABUL — A suicide bomber in a truck blew himself up at an intelligence headquarters in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing at least two people and setting off an intense firefight with security forces. After the bombing outside the headquarters of the National Directorate of Security in Jalalabad, militants battled with security forces for an hour before authorities were able to put down the attack, a spokesman for the Nangarhar governor said."
Also see: "The Taliban on Thursday struck a government compound in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least 12 people."
"Afghans say Taliban is close to seizing district" by Rod Nordland and Taimoor Shah | New York Times September 07, 2014
KABUL — Local Afghan officials say more than 200 police officers and soldiers have been killed during a fierce Taliban offensive in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan that has lasted all summer and now threatens to overwhelm a key district.
Officials at the national level have played down the violence and even, in some cases, flatly denied that there is a problem. But local military, police, and government officials, including two Afghan generals, have said in recent days they are unsure their forces can continue to hold out against the offensive.
The fighting has been underway since June in the Sangin district in northern Helmand and more recently in neighboring Musa Qala, unless they get more support from national authorities and international forces.
Like Iraq, Obummer will be sending the troops back in!
The authorities are particularly worried about Musa Qala, a traditional Taliban stronghold and a source of revenue from the opium poppy trade.
Related: The New York Times Smokes Opium
“The situation is deteriorating, and the Taliban are almost in the bazaar,” the governor of Musa Qala district, Haji-Mohammad Sharif, said Friday night when reached by telephone in the government center in Musa Qala. “If the situation remains the same, the district will soon fall to the hands of the Taliban.”
The fighting has been particularly heavy in Musa Qala over the past 10 days, while a simultaneous Taliban ground assault has been underway in Sangin. That was a renewal of an offensive the insurgents began in Sangin in June, with both sides committing large numbers of ground forces to the fight.
This looks like the local population kicking out their AmeriKan-trained puppets.
What do you mean the "Afghan people don’t want us there?"
The Afghan National Army launched a counteroffensive in Sangin in July and August that pushed the insurgents away from the district capital, but in late August, the Taliban renewed their attack.
An Afghan army general familiar with the situation in Sangin spoke on the condition of anonymity because, he said, higher authorities did not want the seriousness of the situation publicized. He said the insurgents had launched 788 attacks in the past three months in Sangin and in two neighboring districts, Now Zad and Kajaki.
Yeah, don't tell us what is really going on. Thanks.
In all, the general said, 71 Afghan National Army soldiers have been killed and 214 wounded since June, while 159 police have been killed and 219 wounded in the fighting.
The 230 dead among Afghan security forces in Sangin this summer exceeds the total killed in Sangin among the British Royal Marines and the US Marines in the entire war, about 150 in all. And both Britain and the United States lost more troops in Sangin than in any other Afghan district.
Omar Zwak, the spokesman for the governor of Helmand province, offered a sharply lower estimate of the death toll Saturday, saying the number of dead and wounded was 900, including civilians, and about 150 of those were the Afghan police or soldiers. Zwak also said that while Taliban insurgents had been on the verge of attacking the Musa Qala government center in recent days, they had been beaten back, which the local governor disputed.
In the Musa Qala district, the governor there said, 50 police officers were killed or wounded, which is in addition to those killed in the Sangin fight. Both Musa Qala and Sangin have been heavily contested throughout the war because they are in green areas particularly suited to opium cultivation, with many places for insurgents to hide.
And NATO is protecting them.
“Sangin is a key crossroads, the last place where the insurgent can grow, harvest, and process poppy,” Lieutenant General Richard P. Mills said in 2010 when he was the Marines’ commander in Helmand. “It is the last bit of important terrain in Helmand, and he is fighting hard to hold it.”
The last of the US Marines left the area in May, with commanders declaring Sangin and Musa Qala largely pacified. But the Taliban began probing attacks in Musa Qala soon afterward and a full-scale offensive in Sangin the following month.
That offensive euphemism still being used?
“If our forces do not get enough support and enough weapons and ammunition, the battle will get out of control in Sangin, and once the enemy [takes] control of the district, it will be even harder to get them out,” said General Juma Gul Himat, chief of Helmand police.
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"Taliban suicide bomber targets military convoy in Kabul" by Jason Straziuso | Associated press September 17, 2014
KABUL — A Taliban attacker detonated his car bomb next to an international military convoy on Tuesday, killing three members of the NATO-led force and wounding nearly 20 troops and civilians, officials said.
Security forces in full battle gear administered CPR to wounded comrades shortly after the early morning blast that rattled nearby neighborhoods and sent a plume of smoke high into the sky. The attack occurred only a couple of hundred yards from the US Embassy, on a main Kabul road that leads to the airport.
The statement from the military coalition known as ISAF said five soldiers were wounded in addition to the three killed, but did not disclose their nationalities. The Polish Defense Ministry said one Polish soldier, Sergeant Rafal Celebudzki, was killed in the blast, and two other Poles were wounded.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, which occurred next to an ISAF base that houses many Americans.
The three military deaths — and a fourth in the country’s east — brought the total number of international troops killed in Afghanistan this year to 59, at least 42 of whom were American.
The US and NATO military commitment to Afghanistan is winding down, with all combat troops scheduled to be out of the country by the end of the year.
What do you do when a newspaper distorts, obfuscates, or flat-out lies, 'eh?
Cut 'em a pass because it is the conventional narrative of current propaganda?
But violence remains. Afghan Interior Minister Omar Dawoodzai said on Tuesday that more than 1,500 Afghan police have been killed in violence in the past six months. Nearly 1,000 Afghan civilians have also been killed, he said.
The car bomb attack turned several vehicles into twisted metal, and bloodied and dazed Afghan passers-by. Some people scooped up the wounded into their arms and carried them to medical workers. Ashmat Stanikzai, a spokesman for the Kabul police, said 13 Afghans were wounded. More than a dozen vehicles were damaged, the police said.
In the aftermath of the blast, Afghan and foreign troops secured the area as fire and rescue vehicles moved in. Investigators inspected an empty black SUV, its windows smashed and exterior pockmarked with shrapnel.
Afghan Army can't even do that.
In a separate attack in the country’s east, ISAF said Tuesday that one of its troops died after being shot by an individual wearing an Afghan army uniform. That raises the possibility that the service member died from a so-called insider attack carried out by an Afghan soldier, a serious problem over the last couple of years.
The spike in violence comes as the country’s two presidential contenders continue negotiations to form some sort of national unity government. Afghans first voted in this year’s presidential election in April, and voted again in a two-man runoff election in June.
President Hamid Karzai hosted the two candidates on Monday — Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai — in hopes of helping them reach agreement on a power-sharing government. The meeting ended without a deal.
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Other than that, most of the coverage was regarding the rigged elections and the fact that Abdullah wasn't going to stand for getting ripped off again despite the work of John Kerry (the international community will withdraw financial support if they fail to strike a deal).
"President Obama and US Secretary of State John Kerry have been in frequent contact as they press former finance minister Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah to find a power-sharing deal that is acceptable to both sides. Abdullah and Ahmadzai emerged as the two top vote-getters in April’s election, winning 45 percent and 31.5 percent of the vote respectively and setting them up for a runoff. Ahmadzai was then announced as the winner of the second-round vote with 56.4 percent."
Then I hit a real snag for some reason, and you can't really blame a guy who for a second time was the real winner but was cheated of victory by vote fraud, although the inauguration would probably go ahead without Abdullah’s participation, Western diplomats said, it would be a bad omen for the unity government and prospects for its success. Imagery is everything!
The important thing is the security pact was signed, sealed, and delivered on time and the US got the guy it wanted. Looks like 4,000 to 5,000 additional troops from Britain, Germany, Italy, and Turkey are to stay in Afghanistan, too. That did not please some people, but at least the women will now be taken care of and protected under the new regime, although that can not be said for certain members of the AmeriKan media (as the U.S. government defends the New York Times) while the candidates curry favor with the US.
"Marine who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan, 28" by Martha Waggoner | Associated Press August 17, 2014
RALEIGH, N.C. — A decorated retired Marine whose career as a sniper was derailed by a video that showed him urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters has died, his attorney said Friday.
Corporal Robert Richards, 28, was found dead Wednesday by his wife at their Jacksonville home, attorney Guy Womack said. Neither foul play nor suicide is suspected.
Even though dead men tell no tales and this guy was young.
The death was most likely from Mr. Richards changing medications he took because of injuries he suffered in a roadside bombing during one of his three tours in Afghanistan, Womack said.
Weak.
Mr. Richards was demoted from sergeant after a video showed four Camp Lejeune Marines — in full body armor — urinating on three Afghans in 2011. One Marine looked down at the bodies and joked, ‘‘Have a good day, buddy.’’
The video was posted on YouTube in early 2012. It was condemned internationally and caused outrage in the Middle East.
Not just there.
It was ‘‘a temporary lapse of discipline, and it should in no way define the service and honor of the snipers,’’ Womack said.
Mr. Richards’s sniper unit killed 12 Taliban fighters, some of whom the Marines knew were part of a cell making roadside bombs and training others, Womack said. About a month earlier, the Taliban cell had planted a bomb that blew the legs off a Marine.
One of the Marines in the video testified that their operation was designed to pursue bomb-making specialists believed responsible for killing a corporal whose leg was later found hanging from a tree.
The Marines were reacting to those events when they urinated on the bodies, Womack said.
When you gotta go, you gotta go.
‘‘He never said it was OK,’’ Womack said. ‘‘Marines shouldn’t do that. At the same time, it really wasn’t the crime of the century. ‘‘
That would be 9/11.
Mr. Richards almost died when a roadside bomb exploded near him during his second tour, Womack said. Shrapnel went through his throat and an emergency tracheotomy on the battlefield saved his life, the attorney said. He also almost lost a foot and suffered back injuries. He was awarded a Purple Heart.
Mr. Richards was supposed to get 18 months off from active duty, but he returned early when a platoon commander asked him to join a new sniper unit that had no combat veteran snipers.
‘‘He called it a personal obligation and said he would feel guilty if any of them were to die from their inexperience,’’ Womack said.
Mr. Richards will be buried in Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
???????
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Related: Marines Pissed Off at Officer
Is that why he was eliminated?
Also see:
Northborough grieves over death of soldier in Afghanistan
Northborough mourns soldier killed in Afghanistan
For broken-hearted, healing words of hope
Soldier with Mass. ties killed in Afghanistan
Some were luckier and got out alive:
"Kidnapped German aid worker freed in Afghanistan" Associated Press October 11, 2014
BERLIN — Officials blamed the Taliban for a suicide car bombing that killed at least five people Wednesday in southern Helmand province. The attack targeted a former district police chief, investigators said.
Omar Zwak, spokesman for Helmand’s governor, said the bomber detonated his vehicle near the house of the former police chief in Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital.
Zwak said the former chief and 18 other people were wounded in the attack.
No one has claimed responsibility for the bombing, but the Taliban frequently use roadside bombs and suicide attacks.
Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a German aid worker who was kidnapped in Pakistan more than two years ago has been freed in Afghanistan, the German government and his employer said Friday.
The man, now in the care of the German government, is being given medical and psychological care, the Foreign Ministry said. It said that ‘‘foreign partners’’ helped bring about the man’s release but didn’t elaborate.
Ran$om?
The ministry would not give details on when and how the man was freed.
German aid group Welthungerhilfe confirmed the release of employee Bernd Muehlenbeck and said in a statement that he is ‘‘doing well considering the circumstances.’’ He will return to Germany in the coming days, it added.
Muehlenbeck was kidnapped in the Pakistani city of Multan in January 2012, along with an Italian colleague.
Germany’s Bild daily reported, without citing sources, that he was held by the Taliban and that a German special forces team was sent to Kabul to prepare for his release.
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Another German was freed in the Philippines.
"Taliban mountain ambush kills 14 Afghan troops" | Associated Press October 14, 2014
KABUL — A mountain ambush by Taliban fighters killed at least 14 Afghan security force troops, authorities said Monday, as villagers elsewhere in the country said a NATO airstrike that the coalition said targeted militants actually killed civilians.
Just helping out.
The fighting in Sari Pul province, as well as the disputed NATO airstrike in eastern Paktia province, shows the serious challenges facing the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai.
He wanted the job.
Former president Hamid Karzai repeatedly clashed with NATO forces over civilian casualties from airstrikes, straining relations as public anger against the coalition grew.
The ambush in Sari Pul, where Taliban fighters reportedly have been massing for days, happened Sunday in its Kohistanat district.
There, militants opened fire on an Afghan army unit that was heading back to the capital after several months of deployment, killing 12 soldiers and two police officers, said Kazim Kenhan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief.
Kenhan said 13 troops and four police officers were wounded and six troops are missing after the ambush there, some 210 miles northwest of the capital, Kabul.
‘‘A very intensive gun battle is going on right now and the casualty number might change overnight,’’ Kenhan said Monday.
In Paktia province, hundreds of villagers protested over their allegation that a NATO airstrike killed seven civilians in an operation that NATO said killed ‘‘eight armed enemy combatants.’’
The protesters brought seven corpses to the governor’s office, claiming they were civilians killed Sunday during a NATO airstrike in a mountainous area on the outskirts of the city of Gardez. The villagers said the strike targeted eight people collecting firewood and left one man wounded.
‘‘From the evidence it seems that all seven who have been killed in the airstrike of the coalition forces are civilians, but this needs to be investigated more to find out why and how this incident has happened,’’ said Abdul Wali Sahee, deputy provincial governor of Paktia province.
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Time to hang up the phone before AmeriKa answers.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Therapy horses a calming influence on veterans
