{"id":194709,"date":"2008-08-25T05:06:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-25T10:06:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/25\/and-the-wild-blue-yonder-boys-screw-up-in-afghanistan\/"},"modified":"2008-08-25T05:06:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-25T10:06:00","slug":"and-the-wild-blue-yonder-boys-screw-up-in-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/08\/25\/and-the-wild-blue-yonder-boys-screw-up-in-afghanistan\/","title":{"rendered":"And the Wild Blue Yonder Boys Screw Up in Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Karzai just <a href=\"http:\/\/iht.com\/articles\/2008\/08\/23\/asia\/24afghan.php\">condemned a USAF led airstrike in Afghanistan<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2008\/WORLD\/asiapcf\/08\/24\/afghanistan.fighting\/?iref=hpmostpop\">fired two commanders in the region<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>A representative of the Karzai administration nails it:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>&#8220;This puts us in a very difficult position,&#8221; said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. &#8220;It provides propaganda to the Taliban, and if they don&#8217;t take responsibility, it actually helps the Taliban.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Of course, even when coalition troops engaging in a training exercise are <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2003\/jan\/04\/nation\/na-pills4\">targeted by pilots hopped up on amphetamines<\/a>, or a pilot <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cavalese_cable-car_disaster\">joy riding below altitude minimums kills 20 people in a cable car<\/a>, there is at best a slap on the wrist (note that the latter were Marines, not USAF).<\/p>\n<p>The three US air services need to stop behaving in a way that aids the insurgents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Karzai just condemned a USAF led airstrike in Afghanistan and fired two commanders in the region. A representative of the Karzai administration nails it: &#8220;This puts us in a very difficult position,&#8221; said a government official, who asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the matter. &#8220;It provides propaganda to the Taliban, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,1007,1006,982],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-194709","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-aviation","category-military","category-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194709"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194709"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194709\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194709"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194709"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194709"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}