The Pentagon is recommending steady troop levels in Iraq, but Bush is looking at pulling troops from Iraq anyway, because, though it is left unsaid in the articles, it’s good for the elections.
Category: Afghanistan
U.S. Airstrikes Kill 90 Afghans
The UN has confirmed this, and it is another indicator of how ill suited and ill prepared the 4 US fixed wing air forces* for counter insurgency.
They killed 90 civilians, and probably created 3x that number of insurgents.
*USAF, USN, and USMC but particularly the USAF.
And the Wild Blue Yonder Boys Screw Up in Afghanistan
Karzai just condemned a USAF led airstrike in Afghanistan and fired two commanders in the region.
A representative of the Karzai administration nails it:
“This puts us in a very difficult position,” said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. “It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and if they don’t take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban.”
Of course, even when coalition troops engaging in a training exercise are targeted by pilots hopped up on amphetamines, or a pilot joy riding below altitude minimums kills 20 people in a cable car, there is at best a slap on the wrist (note that the latter were Marines, not USAF).
The three US air services need to stop behaving in a way that aids the insurgents.
Russia Accuses US of Illegal Arms Trading
Interestingly, we are not talking about arms control treaties or UN resolutions here.
We are talking about violations of Russian licenses on their designs, which I find interesting because it dovetails into two of my geek areas of interest, defense procurement, and IP law.
It appears that licenses granted by the Soviets, and later the Russians on things like AK’s and RPG’s were for domestic production only, and did not include the right to sell internationally, so the US is breaking the law by selling the weapons to the security apparatus of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Somehow, I imaging that the US trade rep will not address this as strongly as they would bootleg albums from She Who Must Not Be Named being sold by Chinese street vendors.
Friendly Fire Alleged in Deaths of French troops
I’m sure that this will be resolved over the next few months, but the allegation that the French deaths in Afghanistan were the result of a NATO air strike play into everyone’s worst stereotypes.
And in Afghanistan
10 French soldiers killed, and it appears that the Taliban is beginning a major offensive.
No doubt they will get the butts kicked, but it shows just how misguided we were to pull out to invade Iraq.
500
You Know that the ISI will be There
Pakistan is demanding consular access to Aafia Siddiqui, who is accused of trying to murder US personnel at an Afghan police station.
While it’s clear that this is their right under international treaty, my guess is that at least one of the people sent to deal with her will be an agent of the ISI, the notorious Pakistani intelligence organization, which has been linked to support for al Queida and Taliban activities, most recently the bombing of an Indian mission in Pakistan.
They will want to ensure that she knows nothing, or will say nothing, regarding any ISI involvement in her activities.
Signs that You are Losing a Counter-Insurgency Campaign
Item 1: an increasing reliance on air strikes to achieve tactical goals, as is the case in Afghanistan.
Of course, that attack on the forward base indicates that things are not well either.
Drug Warrior Call For War On Drugs in Afghanstan, Damn the Consequences
Thomas Schweich, the former enior counternarcotics official in the United States Embassy in Kabul, is claiming that the Afghan government is hopelessly corrupt and that Afghanistan is nearly a narco-state.
The allegations as reported are alarming, but when you read his essay on the his experiences there, it becomes far less concerning.
It’s clear that this guy is a hard core drug warrior. He opposes payments in lieu of growing poppies, supports aerial spraying of defoliants, military operations for poppy eradication, etc.
This is precisely the sort of crap that pushes peasants to the Taliban, but he sees everything through the lens of “drugs bad”, and ignores secondary effects, so he’s now writing a tell-all.
It is this myopic view that created the disaster of prohibition, and is fostering the disastrous ‘war on drugs” now.
U.S. Troops Retreat from Attacked Afghan Outpost
This is what happens when you divert resources to Iraq:
U.S. troops pulled out of a remote outpost in northeastern Afghanistan, three days after Taliban militants briefly breached the defences and killed nine U.S. soldiers, the biggest single loss of life for American forces in Afghanistan since 2005.
This is not winning, and it wasn’t the military men who took their eye off the ball to go after Saddam Hussein.
Obama Pushing McCain On Afghanistan
Well, Barack Obama just gave a speech on Iraq and Afghanistan. His basic thesis is that the real war we need to fight is in Afghanistan, and that the war in Iraq is a distraction.
Interestingly, we are now seeing McCain flip-flopping on Afghanistan. He has previously been adamant that it was an obligation of our NATO allies, and of Pakistan, and the US resources would go elsewhere, but now is calling for, “at least three additional brigades” to Afghanistan.
The only way to do that is to pull out of Iraq, because we have no troops available. That is what the chairman of the JCS said not so long ago.
Let’s hope that Obama’s staff picks up on this, and hammers him with it.
“Lack of Recall” on Pat Tillman Coverup
The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has now released its report on the propaganda and misinformation on the Jessica Lynch rescue and the Pat Tillman death, and it basically comes down to Omertà, the Mafia code of silence:
“A near universal lack of recall” by Bush administration officials has thwarted a congressional investigation into whether the administration deliberately misrepresented the details of the friendly fire death of former NFL player Patrick Tillman in Afghanistan and the capture of Jessica Lynch in the first days of the Iraq invasion.
In a report released Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform expressed skepticism about the widespread lack of memory of the two events, which were the subject of widespread media coverage and can be counted among the best known incidents of the wars.
About Tillman’s death, “The committee interviewed several senior White House officials, including Communications Director Dan Bartlett, Press Secretary Scott McClellan and chief speech writer Michael Gerson,” the committee said. “Not a single person could recall when he heard about the fratricide or what he did in response.”
I hope that at some point someone there cuts a deal with prosecutors, because a bunch of these folks should be spending the next decade or so in prison.
What’s Going on in Afghanistan
VetVoice notes that there have been 556 Americans killed in Afghanistan since 2001, and that 64 of these deaths , or about 1 out of 8 Afghanistan deaths over the past 6½ years have been in the past 6 weeks.
Well….I’m sure that the Pakistani intelligence services will pick up the slack….not.
Afghanistan is Getting Much Worse
This was not a lucky shot or roadside bomb…this was a deliberate can extensively planned assault that killed 9 US troops.
They assaulted this base base with a large number of insurgents over a period of hours (see also here).
This sort of large and well organized operation shows a capability that the Taliban has not demonstrated before, and I can’t help but think that this is a prelude to a more ambitious operation.
White House Blocking Search for Bin Laden
You can read the story. They claim that there are issues of risks to the soldiers and diplomatic repurcussions, but I think that the real reason that they are holding off from authorizing special forces to try to find and apprehend/kill bin Laden is that they want it closer to the November elections.
First Gitmo Habeas Suit Filed
It’s been filed by Abdul Rahim Abdul Razak al Ginco who is demanding that the US government show cause as to why he is detained.
According to the article, before he was detained and tortured by us as a potential terrorist, he was detained and tortured by the Taliban as a US spy in Afghanistan.
I think that we will be discovering that we tortured a bunch of innocent people, and now Bush and His Evil Minions™ are afraid that if we let them go, they will be angry at us…well, duh.
Afghanistan Gets Hot
Following the massive Taliban prison break, we are seeing intense combat through the south of the country.
If half the troops in Iraq were there, we’d be doing much better.
And In the Corruption Cesspool That is the War on Terror
Saudi financier Gaith Pharaon, “an FBI fugitive indicted in both the BCCI and CENTRUST case”, was awarded a $80 million contract for Jet fuel to Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Interestingly, Pharaon was also an investor in President George W. Bush’s first business venture, Arbusto Energy.
Funny how that all works out, isn’t it.
Poppy Cultivation Makes for Tough Choices in Afghanistan
Found in a rather odd place, specifically an Aviation Week defense blog, is the realization by experts that the poppy eradication program is bolstering the Taliban.
Seeing as how the current plan is to threaten people and burn their crops if they are caught with poppies again, I can’t imagine why this would be a problem.
This really needs to be addressed on the demand end, but with the biggest market for Heroine, the USA, hopelessly mired in a punitive “war on drugs”, that ain’t happening in the foreseeable future.