Category: Afghanistan

Now Afghanistan Has Its Own Pentagon Papers

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Courtesy of Wikileaks, which received something on the order of 90,000 US documents about Afghanistan, pretty much the whole of military logs from January 2004 until December 2009, which it then released to the New York Times, der Speigel, and The Guardian, some weeks ago, and has now made publicly available on their site.

Much like the Pentagon Papers, the revelations this far are also generally known:

These are all well known facts, though these have not been presented in US government documents before, which is also much like the Pentagon Papers.

Needless to say, the Obama White House, notwithstanding its promises for more openness has gone full throated in its denunciation of the release of data, saying that the release of the documents could, “could endanger lives and U.S. security,” even though the facts are so well known that even I have blogged about most of them.

There is no danger to any lives or US security, but it does make it more difficult for Barack Obama to prosecute this deepening fiasco, he will see increasing push-back from his own party on this, and this likely seen as a serious political, threat: It is clear that Obama is terrified of being cast as a peacenik in the 2012 elections.

OK, Good News For Me

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The US Army is upping its order of ground penetrating radars for deployment in Afghanistan:

To counter the threat, the Army is nearly doubling the number of NIITEK-produced Husky Mounted Detection Systems in theater.

The main component of the Husky is ground-penetrating radar called the VISOR 2500. One of the enduring frustrations with IEDs in Afghanistan is that often components are nonmetallic and nonmagnetic, making them difficult to detect using conventional methods. NIITEK says the radar system allows soldiers to detect threats through the ground that metal detectors wouldn’t pick up.

The most recent contract, awarded June 2, cost the Army $106.5 million for the 76 systems to be installed on Husky tactical support vehicles, as well as for spare parts, maintenance support and training for soldiers.

Yes, I work there, and no, I am not going into any details about what I do there, but obviously this means that there is work to be done.

Torturing Duncan Black

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Mr. Black, better known by his nom de blog Atrios, coined the term, “Friedman Unit ,” to describeThomas “The Mustache of Pablum” Friedman’s penchant for saying that the whichever war we are involved in will be won in the next 6 months.

A few months later Friedman would say that the next 6 months were “crucial.”

Rinse…lather…repeat…

Well, now Michael O’Hanlon is torturing the young lad:

At this moment, as we enter into perhaps the most crucial six months of the entire war, I hope and pray that President Obama will decide we cannot afford to be without the leadership of such an amazing American.

(emphasis mine)

Mr. Black wants someone to, “Make it stop.”

Your mouth to God’s ear, Mr. Black.

Normally, I Don’t Buy the Obama and the Eleventy Dimensional Chess, But………

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It is clear to me that Obama’s decision to fire Stanley McCrystal is the right thing on many levels, both on a political and a policy leve, and not just because this action is essential to the maintenance of good order and discipline in the military.

It is clear that anything else would have undercut both Obama’s credibility and the idea of civilian control of the military.

That being said, it was a lot more, it:

  • Got rid of a corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy (Tillman, torture at the Camp Nama prison camp, his earlier insubordination, etc.)
  • He put someone in charge whom the Republicans are TREMENDOUSLY invested in (Petraeus), and so inoculated himself somewhat from any potential downsides.
  • He has given some ownership of the Afghanistan war to another corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy, and if Davey (Petraeus) is kept busy, he won’t be leaking stories to undermine the timeline.
  • It is clear that this is a temporary appointment, so Obama can replace Petraeus at any time because it’s clear that being head of CENTCOM and Afghanistan is too much
    • At that time, he can appoint someone who won’t lobby to undermine the time-line.
  • Petraeus will be too busy to engage in political machinations over the next few months.

All in all, I give this an 8 out of 10. It works on just about every level, except, of course, for the fact that we remain in the “Graveyard of Empires.”

General McChrystal Should Not Be Fired

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He should be the subject of a formal criminal inquiry.

Simply put, the statements, both by him and by his subordinates with his tacit approval are completely antithetical to the idea of civilian control of the military.

To the degree that his profile in Rolling Stone, when he was informed of both content and quotes therein ahead of publication, and he voiced no objections, is simply completely beyond the pale for the lowliest private at a wedding toast, much less a general being interviewed by a major national magazine:

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

…………

…But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.” Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.” Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’ ”

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on shit.”

At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. “Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” he groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

This is on top of his lying and cover-up in the Pat Tillman affair, the torture under his command in Iraq at the Camp Nama prison camp, and his earlier insubordination at his speech in London about a year ago.

The only way that firing McCrystal would be an appropriate response is if he were fired out of a cannon.

His senior staff should be fired, McCrystal should be brought up on charges.

Of course, Barack Obama, because he wants everyone to like him, will instead engage in some theater like rejecting McCrystal’s resignation, but this is wrong for the military, wrong for the Afghan campaign, and wrong for the country.

Well, I’ll be hearing Olbermann’s Special Comment in a few minutes.

Elections Have Consequences, Lib-Dems in UK Coalition Edition

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I’m pretty sure that one of the conditions for the Liberal Democrats to enter into a coalition with the Tories was that a hard date be set for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the recent statement by the Defens(c)e Minister would appear to confirm this:

Senior British officials, including new Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Afghanistan May 22 with a warning that Britain wants to withdraw its troops as soon as possible.

Hague, Defence Secretary Liam Fox and International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell are set to meet President Hamid Karzai in their first visit to the country since a new coalition government took power in London this month.

…………

In an interview with The Times newspaper before arriving in Kabul, Fox made clear the visit would focus on speeding up the withdrawal of British troops from Afghanistan, and that no new troops would be deployed.

“We need to accept we are at the limit of numbers now and I would like the forces to come back as soon as possible,” he was quoted as saying.

“We have to reset expectations and timelines.

“National security is the focus now. We are not a global policeman. We are not in Afghanistan for the sake of the education policy in a broken 13th-century country. We are there so the people of Britain and our global interests are not threatened,” Fox said.

Another contributing factor is that the Afghanistan adventure is phenomenally unpopular in Britain, so a continued trip down the path in the Hindu Kush is politically suicidal, notwithstanding any “special relationship”.

Afghan Prosecutor Issues Arrest Warrant for US Officer for Murder

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It is alleged that a special forces officer in Kandahar authorized a militia that he armed and trained to break some of their compatriots out of jail, and in the process, they murdered the police chief of Kandahar, Matiullah Qateh:

The militia, which Ranjbar claimed is armed and trained by US special forces, also allegedly killed Kandahar’s head of criminal investigations and two other officers, when they attempted to free one of their members from a courthouse.

“We lost one this country’s best law enforcement officers for the [attempted] release of a mercenary,” said Ranjbar, interviewed for a film to be shown on Channel 4 News tomorrow.

He accused American officials of refusing to hand over evidence or to permit his investigators to interview the special forces commander, known to Afghans only as “John or Johnny”, who he alleges sanctioned the raid.

If the facts are as alleged, the charge would be felony murder under most statutes, though, under the status of forces agreement, this officer would be subject to trial and sentencing by a US court martial, where, I am sure justice would sought with the same vigor that was applied to the Calavese cable car disaster of 1998.*

It gets even more complex, because this militia is also tied to the corrupt, drug running brother of the Afghan President, Ahmed Wali Karzai, is also tied to the militia, and is publicly calling for amnesty for the shooting.

This is a natural, and foreseeable, consequence of employing mercenaries as a matter of course in a war zone.

*A 6 month sentence for negligently killing 20 people.†
†Actually, the pilot was acquitted, despite flying lower and faster than regulations required. They eventually got him on obstruction of justice for wiping the video tapes at the end of the flight.

The Similarities to Afghanistan Are Striking

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This is not a substitute for sane or sensible policy

The army will be deploying the XM-25 Individual Airburst Weapon to Afghanistan, and many good things are expected of it.

I am not at all surprised that they have decided that a personal grenade launcher would be necessary for the conflict.

The Soviets came to the same conclusion when they were in Afghanistan, which is why the AGS-17 Plamya (Russian: Пламя) is a Soviet-designed automatic grenade launcher used in Afghanistan to such a degree that the unmounted infantry squad was largely built around the weapon in the same way that a squad is built around the LMG in US service.

The degree to which our experience in Afghanistan is a rerun of the failed Soviet script is striking.

Our Man in Kabul

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It appears that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is mad enough to say to members of parliament that if things don’t go his way, he might join the Taliban:

At one point, Mr. Karzai suggested that he himself would be compelled to join the other side —that is, the Taliban—if the parliament didn’t back his controversial attempt to take control of the country’s electoral watchdog from the United Nations, according to three people who attended the meeting, including an ally of the president.

Mr. Karzai blamed the lawmakers’ resistance to his move on a foreign conspiracy, they said. The Afghan president’s latest remarks came less than 24 hours after he assured U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that he was committed to working with the U.S. That phone call was precipitated by a similar—but less vitriolic–anti-Western diatribe Mr. Karzai delivered earlier last week.

So he’s complaining that the Electoral Complaints Commission is appointed by independent judges and the UN, and that parliament is refusing to reorganize it so that he can appoint its members, and stack future elections.

It should be noted that the commission invalidated almost a million votes during his reelection bid, and found pervasive fraud by him and his allies, so I guess that he does not want a repeat of this.

Still, his statements make him both part of the problem, and probably completely f%$#ing nuts.

When juxtaposed with his ruinously corrupt drug running brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, the head of Kandahar’s provincial council, whose actions are so suspect that US forces have threatened to kill him the next time he is seen meeting with a Taliban representative, it’s really a heady brew.

Credit Where Credit is Due

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Notwithstanding what appears to be no small amount of stonewalling on the Pat Tillman death, it appears that Stanley McChrystal is being remarkably forthright on issues involving excessive use of force at check-points in Afghanistan:

Q: “On Escalation of force, have you considered engaging the local community on the issue? We could explain at the brigade/battalion level what behavior we find threatening, and how we are trained to react when we feel threatened. We could negotiate with the community leaders over mutually agreeable actions and reactions that are better understood by both and gives part ownership of the issue to the community and empowers them in line with our approach to reintegration.”

GEN McChrystal: “That’s a great point. I don’t know if we have, but we certainly ought to be doing that. We have so many escalation of force issues, and someone gets hurt in the process, and we say, ‘They didn’t respond like they were supposed to.’ Well, they may not have known how they were supposed to respond, so as they approached an area or checkpoint or whatever, they may have taken actions that seemed appropriate to them, and when a warning shot was fired they may have panicked. I think this is a great thing to do, to engage people and tell them the kind of behavior on their part that would lower the chance that they would run into problems.

“I do want to say something that everyone understands. We really ask a lot of our young service people out on the checkpoints because there’s danger, they’re asked to make very rapid decisions in often very unclear situations. However, to my knowledge, in the nine-plus months I’ve been here, not a single case where we have engaged in an escalation of force incident and hurt someone has it turned out that the vehicle had a suicide bomb or weapons in it and, in many cases, had families in it. That doesn’t mean I’m criticizing the people who are executing. I’m just giving you perspective. We’ve shot an amazing number of people and killed a number and, to my knowledge, none has proven to have been a real threat to the force.”

(emphasis mine)

What he is saying here is that none of the shootings have prevented an actual threat to the forces.

He is very careful not to criticize the troops, but it appears to me that he is criticizing the rules of engagement, which, given the generally opaque response of the chain of command in such incidents, is remarkably frank.

Are the Recent Taliban Arrests Another ISI Black Op?

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Kai Eide, the former special representative in Afghanistan is saying that the recent spate of arrests by Pakistani security forces was likely a deliberate effort to sabotage ongoing negotiations with the Taliban:

The UN’s former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, has strongly criticised Pakistan’s recent arrest of high-ranking Taliban leaders.

Mr Eide told the BBC the arrests had completely stopped a channel of secret communications with the UN.

Pakistani officials insist the arrests were not an attempt to spoil talks.

I don’t believe the denials.

The Pakistani state security apparatus is horrified at the thought of a government in Kabul that is at all friendly to India, and the people that they arrested were the ones who were involved in the negotiations, as Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist with an extensive background in the region notes:

While the Obama administration is watching the battlefield in Afghanistan, hoping for a quick weakening of the Taliban, regional powers are ratcheting up tensions in and outside that country. Pakistan and Iran in particular want to ensure that by the time the United States is ready to talk to the Taliban, the region’s future will already be shaped by local powers, limiting Washington’s options. Afghanistan’s ethnic and sectarian divisions are being exacerbated in the process.

…………

Events are reminiscent of the 1990s, when the bloody Afghan civil war was fueled by an alignment of India, Iran and Russia, which backed the Northern Alliance against the Taliban regime supported by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia.

…………

Yet Pakistan’s military clearly wants a role in shaping Afghanistan. Islamabad had given the Taliban leadership sanctuary since 2001, but in recent weeks the military has arrested several key Taliban leaders who went around the generals and the intelligence service and were using Saudi Arabia as an intermediary to talk to Kabul. Still left alone, however, are Taliban hard-liners who could promote Pakistan’s security needs in future dialogues with Kabul.

On a visit to Islamabad last week, Karzai acknowledged that Pakistan has legitimate security concerns in Afghanistan but also demanded that those arrested Taliban members be extradited to Afghanistan. Privately, senior Afghan officials were incensed, claiming that Pakistan was “sabotaging and undermining” their efforts to talk to the Taliban.

Unfortunately, the Pakistani state security apparatus continues to prepare for a cataclysmic confrontation over Kashmir, which will never happen, because India and Pakistan are now nuclear powers, and this world view continues to make them unreliable allies in the region.

Dutch Ruling Coalition Collapses Over Afghanistan Commitment

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The Labor Party has pulled out of government over a proposal to extend the tour of Dutch forces in the region, leaving Christian Democratic Alliance head, and Prim Minister Jan Peter Balkenende no choice but to dissolve government.

What is interesting here is that the troops were supposed to return in 2008, but have remained deployed because no replacements could be found amongst other NATO members, and Labor pulled out as a result.

This means that elections will be held a year ahead of time, probably in May, and that the main issue is likely to be the deployment of Dutch troops to Afghanistan, and given the nature of the electorate in Holland, and Europe generally, I think that the parties who favor immediate withdrawal are likely to gain the upper hand.

This may have political significance to other nations deploying troops to the campaign.

Marja Offensive Hits a Hitch

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At the core of General Stanley McChrystal’s tactics in winning meaningful and lasting control of the Marja province is the rapid and aggressive delivery of benefits to the civilian population.

This means things like roads, schools, doctors, farm aid, and jobs.

It’s a good idea, the problem is that the UN has just said that it will take no part in the provision of such aid in Marja province, and we can be relatively sure that the NGO’s will follow their lead:

Senior United Nations officials in Afghanistan on Wednesday criticized NATO forces for what one referred to as “the militarization of humanitarian aid,” and said United Nations agencies would not participate in the military’s reconstruction strategy in Marja as part of its current offensive there.

“We are not part of that process, we do not want to be part of it,” said Robert Watkins, the deputy special representative of the secretary general, at a news conference attended by other officials to announce the United Nations’ Humanitarian Action Plan for 2010. “We will not be part of that military strategy.”

The American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has made the rapid delivery of governmental services, including education, health care and job programs, a central part of his strategy in Marja, referring to plans to rapidly deploy what he has referred to as “a government in a box” once Marja is pacified.

………

“The distribution of aid by the military gives a very difficult impression to the communities and puts the lives of humanitarian workers at risk,” Mr. Watkins said.

While it’s standard at this point to make jokes about the impotence of the UN, this is a very real problem, particularly when the many of military reconstruction teams, “See their role as providing services in exchange for intelligence-gathering and political activity directed against the insurgents.”

If the UN and the NGOs do what McChrystal wants, they are painting big targets on the back of every aid worker in the country, and those aid workers don’t have flak jackets and weapons, and they are not trained in combat, nor should they be.

So, I guess it’s back to Halliburton and Blackwater Xe to deliver those services.

Another Failure of Obama’s Antiterror Policy

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They have captured the Taliban’s military chief and 2nd in command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar in Karachi, Pakistan:

The Taliban’s top military commander was captured several days ago in Karachi, Pakistan, in a secret joint operation by Pakistani and American intelligence forces, according to American government officials.

The commander, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, is an Afghan described by American officials as the most significant Taliban figure to be detained since the American-led war in Afghanistan started more than eight years ago. He ranks second in influence only to Mullah Muhammad Omar, the Taliban’s founder and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before the Sept. 11 attacks.

(emphasis mine)

After 911, he was running around for about 6½ years under Bush. Obama got him after only a bit more than 1 year.

<tinfoil hat>I’m beginning to wonder if Bush and His Evil Minions™ made a political decision not to capture bin Laden because it kept people scared, and scared voters are Republican voters.</tinfoil hat>

Because It’s Not a War on Islam

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Well, they have just discovered that sniper scopes purchased for the Marine Corps contain verses from the Christian bible:

Following an ABC News report that thousands of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with secret Bible references, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said the Corps is ‘concerned’ and will discuss the matter with the weapons manufacturer.

“We are aware of the issue and are concerned with how this may be perceived,” Capt. Geraldine Carey, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps, said in a statement to ABC News. “We will meet with the vendor to discuss future sight procurements.” Carey said that when the initial deal was made in 2005 it was the only product that met the Corps needs.

However, a spokesperson for CentCom, the U.S. military’s overall command in Iraq and Aghanistan, said he did not understand why the issue was any different from U.S. money with religious inscriptions on it.

(emphasis mine)

Ummm………Because inscribing Christian verses on weapons that you kill Muslims with will make it that much more difficult for US troops to train with Muslim troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and because it’s likely to inspire more violence against American troops, because it is another piece of evidence that Islamic radicals will use to show that this is a war against Islam?

That kind of fits the definition of, “Contrary to good order and discipline,” doesn’t it.

The Marines get it, the US Army doesn’t.

Interestingly enough, it’s the the Army, along with the US Air Force in which the bulk of complaints about discrimination by aggressive Evangelicals have been reported.

It appears that this has been common knowledge among gun enthusiasts for about 4 years, but the military never noticed what the Trijicon corporation was doing.

Fighting Terrorism With Lesbian Pr0n

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The Wall Street Journal has a bomb shell of s story.

It appears that insurgents in Afghanistan have hacked into the video feeds of US drones:

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

(link to SkyGrapper software mine)

I am surprised by this. Not so much by the idea that anyone in a situation to be surveilled and attacked by the US might attempt to use SIGINT to defend themselves, that it just basic common sense, but by the fact that the US military has been using an unencrypted feed to transmit data.

And, of course, we have the accusation that it was Iran who actually hacked the feeds, or developed the method to hack the feeds, because, much like in the case of the the Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFP) used by insurgents in Iraq, it is claimed that only the Iranians have the technical know-how to use such a system.

Of course, in the case of the EFPs, this accusation relied on a number of lies, in particular the idea that EFP construction was so technically challenging that only the Iranians could do it, despite the fact that the IRA was using EFPs in Ireland over 30 years ago, and that they actually discovered workshops where IEDs were manufactured…………It turns out all you need to make an EFP is a simple lathe and some copper.

The idea that once someone discovered the video feeds were unencrypted, and my guess would be that this has been known since the Kosovo campaign, because the Serbs were typically all over this kind of stuff.

In any case, the military is now claiming that this breach has been fixed, implying that encryption has been added.

I’m wondering what took so long. The satellite TV providers have been encrypting their signals with minimal computational overhead for decades.

Of course, I have an improvement on this idea, and it involves lesbian pr0n. (You were wondering when we would be getting to the pr0n, weren’t you)

In addition to using encryption, the video feed should use steganography to embed the signal inside an unencrypted non-tactical video feed.

The unencrypted video should be lesbian pr0n,* because the then the insurgents would in order to extract the true signal, be forced to watch nekkid women (Oh my God, tits!) deriving sexual satisfaction (Oh my God, female orgasm!) without benefit of a penis (Oh my God…………You get the idea), and it just screws with their heads (both upper and lower).

One of the reasons for the pr0n,† is because any relatively competent state actor would be able to decrypt a video feed in a relatively short period of time by gang tackling the signal with a video game based massively parallel super-computer.

*It was actually Bill Volk who made the suggestion.
†Beside the fact that I am a smart ass.

Not Like Vietnam At All…………

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After all, we aren’t seeing bogus body counts.

In the Vietnam war, there was a statistical anomaly: numbers ending in 5 and 10 were conspicuously absent, to the tune of millions of times beyond what random chance, IIRC, and it was a lecture almost 30 years ago it was greater than 5σ.

Well, we have another magic number in Afghanistan, 30* (also here and here):

Just how often has the U.S. and NATO killed the Taliban in groups of 30 during 2009? The answer may surprise you:

  • Adnkronos, 12/07/2009: “Up to 30 suspected militants were killed in a NATO airstrike on a Taliban hideout in eastern Afghanistan close to the Pakistani border on Monday. The airstrike targeted the village of Sangar Dara in the mountainous Watapur district of Kunar province , the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said.”
  • SF Chronicle, 12/04/2009: “Air strikes in two areas of the Mohmand border region killed 30 suspected militants, a military statement said. It said the strikes were “highly successful” but provided no further details, including whether any civilians were hurt.”
  • Xinhua, 11/04/2009: “The military said that the troops have killed 30 more militants during the last 24 hours, bringing the total fatalities to 400, as the operation in the country’s tribal area steadily progressed towards the Taliban strongholds in South Waziristan.”
  • Xinhua, 08/31/2009: “At least 30 bodies of suspected Taliban fighters were recovered in northwest Pakistan’s insurgency-hit Swat valley on Monday, witnesses said. The Pakistani army said they were killed in fighting with the security forces.”
  • Calgary Times, 07/04/2009: “The attack included an attempted suicide truck bombing of the base in the Zirok district of southeastern Paktika province, local officials said. As many as 30 Taliban insurgents might have been killed when troops called in air strikes, they said.”
  • Khaleej Times, 06/24/2009: “Thirty Taliban militants were killed in clashes with NATO and Afghan forces in separate incidents in southern Afghanistan, officials said Wednesday.”
  • Straits Times, 06/15/2009: “Security officials in the region said that about 30 militants were killed in Mohmand agency, close to the provincial capital Peshawar.”
  • Monsters and Critics, 05/28/2009: “In another incident, the Afghan Defence Ministry said Thursday that its troops, backed by international forces, killed 30 suspected militants in neighbouring Khost province Wednesday after the militants attacked their joint base.”
  • Monsters and Critics, 05/14/2009: “At least 30 Taliban fighters were killed Thursday when government artillery fire destroyed their hideout in north-west Pakistan, residents and officials said, as concerns about the fate of thousands of refugees in the region grew amid an escalating humanitarian crisis. Up to 30 suspected militants were in the compound when it was hit, and the Taliban have moved the dead and injured to an undisclosed location, he said.”
  • Reuters, 01 April 2009: “U.S. and Afghan forces have killed 30 Taliban fighters, including a local commander, in an operation in Afghanistan’s southern province of Helmand, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.”
  • IRNA, 02/17/2009: “Suspected US drone fired missiles on a training camp of Taliban militants in a Pakistani tribal region on Monday, killing around 30 people, witnesses and official sources said.”
  • New York Times, 01/01/2009: “On Wednesday, the Taliban came for revenge. A group of about 30 Taliban fighters swooped in on Mullah Salam’s house and opened fire. They killed at least 20 of his bodyguards, Afghan officials said. The Taliban claimed that they killed 32. Two of the attackers died.”

It appears that this is a holdover from Rumsfeld days:

We don’t know much about how it works, but in 2007, Marc Garlasco, the Pentagon’s former chief of high-value targeting, offered a glimpse when he told Salon magazine that in 2003, “the magic number was 30.” That meant that if an attack was anticipated to kill more than 30 civilians, it needed the explicit approval of then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld or President George W. Bush. If the expected civilian death toll was less than 30, the strike could be OKd by the legal and military commanders on the ground.

We let me quote a decent man who had a complete sh$# for a son, George Romney, Mitt’s dad, who described the misinformation handed to him by the military on Vietnam as “brainwashing.”

He was right, and Obama has allowed himself to buy into this crap.

*Yeah, there is also that whole #3 person on the chain of command of al Qaeda, who has a life span that rivals that of Ensign Liebowitz of star ship security on a landing party with Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.

Did Nancy Pelosi Just Call Barack Obama a Bitch?

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Why yes, I think that she did just call Barack Obama a bitch.

On a slightly more precise level, what she has said is that if Barack Obama wants Democrats in the house to support him on Afghanistan, that Pelosi will not use her position as speaker to whip votes:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said President Barack Obama must press his own arguments for sending 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan because she won’t ask House Democrats to pay for the military escalation.

“The president is going to have to make his case,” Pelosi told reporters today in Washington.

The speaker said persuading House Democrats to approve a $106 billion spending bill in June to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was “definitely” the hardest vote of her tenure as speaker. She said she told Democrats her request for their support was the last time “I would ever ask them to vote for it.”

House Democratic leaders will provide briefings on funds for the additional troops, and members “will have the information” they need to make a decision, she said. “But this, for members, is a vote of conscience.”

I’m sure Steny Hoyer, 2nd in command as House Majority Leader, will continue to whip the vote, but this is a big deal.

I expect the bill to pass anyway, since the Republicans will always vote pro war, but much like during our private little war in South East Asia in 1968, it’s the Democrats who are opposing it, and much like that private little war in South East Asia in 1968, they are correct in their opposition to the this private little war in South Asia.