Afghanistan - Why are we there?

[Capn_Birdseye]

The official line is we are bringing "democracy" and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempts to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

Oh, I nearly forgot, we're also trying to capture Osama Bin Laden & his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979-1989.

Like Iraq, the war in Afghanistan is "unwinnable", even the British Empire at the height of its supremacy could not tame the country. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops.

But what, precisely, are we trying to "win"?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66% and consitutes 40% of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil, although their measures were harsh, i.e., lopping off bits, often vital bits, of people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics but one of the things they were vehemently against was opium. They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords, that is about the only good thing you can say about them.

Now we are occupying the country things have changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60%. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyound the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what out international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and "value-added" operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government - the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

The fact that one of these is General Abdul Rashid Dostum, who is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minster of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He recently crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing the many to die of heat & thirst. Since we bought "democracy" to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered a Member of Parliament to be tied to the ground whilst he beat him with a hammer and stamped on his body. The sad fact is that Dostum isn't even the worst or biggest drug smuggler in the government!

Why then are US, UK & other forces still dying in Afghanistan?

As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghnistan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers.

Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London & New York - what an achievement, what a war!

(with acknowledgements to Craig Murray, British Ambassador to neighbouring Uzbekistan 2002-2004)

[Ninjahedge]

One thing we must change about our occupational diplomacy abroad.

"Changing" a country does not mean altering its entire political and social makeup. We have to stop thinking we can force democracy on some of these people.

What we have to do is try to bring about a slow change. maybe with the introduction of schools that would not require, but still allow religious practice. A weaning of the youth off of religious dogma that they get in some of these institutions now that does very little to fit them with anyone but one of their own in the future.

We need to study a country first on more than a military and economic level before invading and try to find a way to get under their skin.

Not burn it off and try and replace it with another.

[OmegaNYC]

Why are we in Afghanistan? The question should be: Why isn't enough being done in Afghanistan.

[kliq6]

Why are we in Afghanistan? The question should be: Why isn't enough being done in Afghanistan.

Right on the money, thats is the only palces are troops should be, not Iraq or Iran, there hunting al Queda

[Capn_Birdseye]

Why are we in Afghanistan? The question should be: Why isn't enough being done in Afghanistan.
Define "enough". And enough for what? To support the world's biggest heroin production facility that is actually owned and controlled by members of the corrupt Afghan government! I'm sure the parents of kids in NYC & London will thank you for that! The economy is thriving because of the drug trade, what a indictment on our "achievements" to date.

Anyway history shows that no matter who you are, you are not going to be triumphant in Afghanistan. Our troops are dying defending a corrupt regime that cannot be cleansed because the warlords are part of the problem and (a big) part of the government.

[OmegaNYC]

^^ Enough as is catching this guy:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/04/AQ00100.jpg/200px-AQ00100.jpg

I don't give a damn about Afghanistan, or it's government. I don't give a damn it's the world's largest heroin producing nation in the world. I don't give a crap about any of that. I want this guy dead. Period. Sadly, our sorry excuse of a President, doesn't quite feel that way.

[Capn_Birdseye]

^^ Enough as is catching this guy:

I don't give a damn about Afghanistan, or it's government. I don't give a damn it's the world's largest heroin producing nation in the world. I don't give a crap about any of that. I want this guy dead. Period. Sadly, our sorry excuse of a President, doesn't quite feel that way.
It's been six long years and yet Bin Laden, the terrorist mastermind created by the CIA, hasn't been cuaght, in fact the odds of catching him have grown longer. Is he in Afghanistan at all? Many believe if he is in the region at all he's in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

And here's an interesting thought ...

http://www.watchblog.com/republicans/archives/000853.html

[Luca]

Yeh. Whatever. Tinfoil hat all round.

I don't know what the West (tm) is doing in, Kandahar. Let them be Taliban savages if they want. Napalm poppy fields from the air. Establish safe bases/haven in northern (non-pasthun) territory, arm the locals, make it an enclave of relative civilization (shower it with money). Only women and small children can move in from other areas. Use said bases to raid / bomb to smithereens anything potentially linked to Al Qaeda, includign most of Waziristan. Deport / do not alow into the West (tm) anyone potnetially linekd to Al Qaeda.

Do something very simialr with Kurdistan. Ply the Turks witrh aid, an a solid promise that their Eastern border will not be changed.

This should take about 6 months to do right.

[Capn_Birdseye]

Ply the Turks witrh aid, an a solid promise that their Eastern border will not be changed.
The Turks have just elected an Islamic government. Still want to ply them with aid?

[Luca]

The Turks have just elected an Islamic government. Still want to ply them with aid?

You need to do your research a bit deeper. They are more islamicist in name than deed.

[Capn_Birdseye]

You need to do your research a bit deeper. They are more islamicist in name than deed.
Watch this space. Why do you think the EU turned down their proposed membership? Remember the Trojan horse story from Greek mythology?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/05/02/wturkey02.xml

[ablarc]

Remember the Trojan horse
Indeed.

"Hitler is just kidding." --Chamberlain paraphrased.

[Eugenious]

You need to do your research a bit deeper. They are more islamicist in name than deed.

Turkey is a true democracy and the currently re-elected government did more for reform and secularism than you may imagine. The people voted for them for a reason. Turkey has a large secular society and they are not going anywhere. If EU is tryly multi-cultural and multi-religious they will admit Turkey which will bring Turkey closer to the west and give the world a great example of tolerant Islam and how it can coexist with western values.

[ablarc]

Turkey is a true democracy and the currently re-elected government did more for reform and secularism than you may imagine. The people voted for them for a reason. Turkey has a large secular society and they are not going anywhere. If EU is tryly multi-cultural and multi-religious they will admit Turkey which will bring Turkey closer to the west and give the world a great example of tolerant Islam and how it can coexist with western values.
It's not the government you need to worry about; it's the people. The people are susceptible to the message of militant Islam, and they'll put pressure on the government:


"A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine." - Thomas Jefferson

[Capn_Birdseye]

Worth a read Eugenious:

http://www.islam-watch.org/Mac/Turkey-Islamofascism-Rise-West.htm

[ablarc]

Read the Koran.

http://www.islam-watch.org/AmilImani/Moderate-Islam-No-Islam.htm

[Capn_Birdseye]

A very interesting piece Ablarc ...

[ablarc]

A very interesting piece Ablarc ...
It amazes me constantly that more folks in the West haven't read the Koran, since it's so central to what's happening to us in history. If you choose a talented translation you'll find it's a jolly good read --full of blood and thunder.

I'm sure the President hasn't read it; if he had, he'd stop referring to Islam as a "religion of peace" and recognize --as the Muslim author of the piece points out-- that it's the so-called "moderate" Muslims who are the deviant fringe. The message is the same as Salman Rushdie's: to be both a good Muslim and a moderate is impossible; you are either one or the other.

Islam is inherently political and commanded to violence; "My kingdom is not of this world" is inimical to its nature. Islamofascism has exactly the same short and long term goals as National Socialism. I wonder how many folks in the free world made excuses for Nazism in 1938. "Wait, let's not judge this philosophy until all the facts are in; it's just another way of seeing things, and we need to treat it with understanding."

Indeed we do need to understand it. The key to that is to read the Koran and to read it without denial. It reveals the entire scenario of what devout Islam has in store for us --just as the complete plan was laid out in "Mein Kampf."

Some folks thought he was kidding.

[eddhead]

^^ Ok, so I have not read the Koran which makes me less than qualified to opine, but the one thing that strikes me when people point out the extreme text, is that it is probably no different in tone than the Old Testament. Read that one lately?? Talk about a 'good read...' God sure did undergo a change in perspective when his son was born...

Not withstanding the tone of the Old Testament, we do not make the same assumptions about Judeo-Christian beliefs as we do about Islam. I mean I understand the history and all but somehow we are able to rationalize western religous doctrine in peacefull terms despite the Old Testament while we refer to Islam in violent terms because of the Koran.

Seems a bit contradictory to me.

[ablarc]

one thing that strikes me when people point out the extreme text, is that it is probably no different in tone than the Old Testament.
This is true. The operative word is "Old Testament." Christ says he brought his gospel of peace to mark a new era. There is not a single exhortation to violence in the New Testament. In fact, a devout Christian must eschew violence altogether. Faced with aggression, only pacifism and resignation squares with true Christianity. Turn the other cheek. Put the ear back on the high priest's servant, Peter.


Read that one lately?? Talk about a 'good read...'
Yup. For a Christian, the Old Testament is a historical document whose specific ethical dictates apply to the pre-Christian world --specifically the chosen people, the Children of Israel. With the coming of Christ, everyone got chosen and the rules changed; there is no longer a home team.


God sure did undergo a change in perspective when his son was born...
Absolutely true. That's why it's a mistake to lump together the New and Old Testaments. "Old" means old and "New" means new. New comes after old and supersedes it.


Not withstanding the tone of the Old Testament, we do not make the same assumptions about Judeo-Christian beliefs as we do about Islam.
There you are lumping together. "Judeo-Christian" is a historian's term. "Judeo" and "Christian" are different. Judaism is a tribal religion like Shinto, in which God roots for his favorite team, and everyone else is out in the cold --in fact, the enemy. The Old Testament is a guide to being a good Jew. It's OK to kill Philistines; they're at it in Gaza as we speak.

Christianity represents a sea-change: evil itself is now the enemy, and all are called upon to obey Jesus' message of peace and love. Evil is to be fought spiritually only --through prayer and good example. The fact that almost no Christian is actually capable of doing this (how many of us wouldn't fight an attacker?) doesn't alter the substance of the message. Now read the Koran and see what's called for there.


I mean I understand the history and all but somehow we are able to rationalize western religous doctrine...
Lumping again. If you mean Christian doctrine, anyone who accepts a draft call or joins the army is rationalizing doctrine --New Testament doctrine. Old Testament doctrine doesn't apply as specific commands ("exterminate the Philistines of Jericho"), but only as useful lessons in human behavior; Christians eat pork and shellfish.


...in peacefull terms despite the Old Testament while we refer to Islam in violent terms because of the Koran.
Feel free to see the Old Testament as exhorting to violence (it does), but be aware that Christ's coming was supposed to end all that. If it didn't it's because people can't live up to it as a group (no surprise there), but they sure can as individuals.


Seems a bit contradictory to me.
Not at all. You resolved it yourself when you parsed the Old Testament from the New.

I think we all know which the Koran resembles.

[Jasonik]

Speech on the House floor September 25, 2001

Mr. Speaker:

Last week was a bad week for all Americans. The best we can say is that the events have rallied the American spirit of shared love and generosity. Partisanship was put on hold, as it well should have been. We now, as a free people, must deal with this tragedy in the best way possible. Punishment and prevention is mandatory. We must not, however, sacrifice our liberties at the hand of an irrational urgency. Calm deliberation in our effort to restore normalcy is crucial. Cries for dropping nuclear bombs on an enemy not yet identified cannot possibly help in achieving this goal.

Mr. Speaker, I returned to Congress 5 years ago out of deep concern about our foreign policy of international interventionism, and a monetary and fiscal policy I believed would lead to a financial and dollar crisis. Over the past 5 years I have frequently expressed my views on these issues and why I believed our policies should be changed.

This deep concern prompted me to seek and receive seats on the Financial Services and International Relations Committees. I sought to thwart some of the dangers I saw coming, but as the horrific attacks show, these efforts were to no avail. As concerned as I was, the enormity of the two-prong crisis that we now face came with a ferocity no one ever wanted to imagine. But now we must deal with what we have and do our best to restore our country to a more normal status.

I do not believe this can happen if we ignore the truth. We cannot close our eyes to the recent history that has brought us to this international crisis. We should guard against emotionally driven demands to kill many bystanders in an effort to liquidate our enemy. These efforts could well fail to punish the perpetrators while only expanding the war and making things worse by killing innocent non-combatants and further radicalizing Muslim peoples.

It is obviously no easy task to destroy an almost invisible, ubiquitous enemy spread throughout the world, without expanding the war or infringing on our liberties here at home. But above all else, that is our mandate and our key constitutional responsibility- protecting liberty and providing for national security. My strong belief is that in the past, efforts in the US Congress to do much more than this, have diverted our attention and hence led to our neglect of these responsibilities.

Following the September 11th disasters a militant Islamic group in Pakistan held up a sign for all the world to see. It said: AMERICANS, THINK! WHY YOU ARE HATED ALL OVER THE WORLD. We abhor the messenger, but we should not ignore the message.

Here at home we are told that the only reason for the suicidal mass killing we experienced on September 11th is that we are hated because we are free and prosperous. If these two conflicting views are not reconciled we cannot wisely fight nor win the war in which we now find ourselves. We must understand why the hatred is directed toward Americans and not other western countries.

In studying history, I, as many others, have come to the conclusion that war is most often fought for economic reasons. But economic wars are driven by moral and emotional overtones.

Our own revolution was fought to escape from excessive taxation but was inspired and driven by our desire to protect our God-given right to liberty.

The War between the States, fought primarily over tariffs, was nonetheless inspired by the abhorrence of slavery. It is this moral inspiration that drives people to suicidally fight to the death as so many Americans did between 1861 and 1865.

Both economic and moral causes of war must be understood. Ignoring the importance of each is dangerous. We should not casually ignore the root causes of our current fight nor pursue this fight by merely accepting the explanation that they terrorize us out of jealously.

It has already been written that Islamic militants are fighting a "holy war"- a jihad. This drives them to commit acts that to us are beyond comprehension. It seems that they have no concern for economic issues since they have no regard even for their own lives. But an economic issue does exist in this war: OIL!

When the conflict broke out between Iraq and Iran in the early 1980s and we helped to finance and arm Iraq, Anwar Sadat of Egypt profoundly stated: "This is the beginning of the war for oil." Our crisis today is part of this long lasting war over oil.

Osama bin Laden, a wealthy man, left Saudi Arabia in 1979 to join American- sponsored so-called freedom fighters in Afghanistan. He received financial assistance, weapons and training from our CIA, just as his allies in Kosovo continue to receive the same from us today.

Unbelievably, to this day our foreign aid continues to flow into Afghanistan, even as we prepare to go to war against her. My suggestion is, not only should we stop this aid immediately, but we should never have started it in the first place.

It is during this time bin Laden learned to practice terror; tragically, with money from the US taxpayers. But it wasn't until 1991 during what we refer to as the Persian Gulf War that he turned fully against the United States. It was this war, said to protect our oil that brought out the worst in him.

Of course, it isn't our oil. The oil in fact belongs to the Arabs and other Muslim nations of the Persian Gulf. Our military presence in Saudi Arabia is what most Muslims believe to be a sacred violation of holy land. The continuous bombing and embargo of Iraq, has intensified the hatred and contributed to more than over 1,000,000 deaths in Iraq. It is clear that protecting certain oil interests and our presence in the Persian Gulf help drive the holy war.

Muslims see this as an invasion and domination by a foreign enemy which inspires radicalism. This is not new. This war, from their viewpoint, has been going on since the Crusades 1000 year ago. We ignore this history at our own peril.

The radicals react as some Americans might react if China dominated the Gulf of Mexico and had air bases in Texas and Florida. Dominating the Persian Gulf is not a benign activity. It has consequences. The attack on the USS Cole was a warning we ignored.

Furthermore, our support for secular governments in the moderate Arab countries is interpreted by the radicals as more American control over their region than they want. There is no doubt that our policies that are seen by the radicals as favoring one faction over another in the long lasting Middle East conflict add to the distrust and hatred of America.

The hatred has been suppressed because we are a powerful economic and military force and wield a lot of influence. But this suppressed hatred is now becoming more visible and we as Americans for the most part are not even aware of how this could be. Americans have no animosity toward a people they hardly even know. Instead, our policies have been driven by the commercial interests of a few. And now the innocent suffer.

I am hopeful that shedding light on the truth will be helpful in resolving this conflict in the very dangerous period that lies ahead. Without some understanding of the recent and past history of the Middle East and the Persian Gulf we cannot expect to punish the evildoers without expanding the nightmare of hatred that is now sweeping the world.

Punishing the evildoers is crucial. Restoring safety and security to our country is critical. Providing for a strong defense is essential. But extricating ourselves from a holy war that we don't understand is also necessary if we expect to achieve the above-mentioned goals. Let us all hope and pray for guidance in our effort to restore the peace and tranquility we all desire.

We did a poor job in providing the security that all Americans should expect. This is our foremost responsibility. Some members have been quick to point out the shortcomings of the FBI, the CIA and the FAA and claim more money will rectify the situation. I'm not so sure. Bureaucracies by nature are inefficient. The FBI and CIA records come up short. The FBI loses computers and guns and is careless with records. The CIA rarely provides timely intelligence. The FAA's idea of security against hijackers is asking all passengers who packed their bag.

The clamor now is to give more authority and money to these agencies. But, remember, important industries like as our chemical plants and refineries do not depend on government agencies for security. They build fences and hire guards with guns. The airlines have not been allowed to do the same thing. There was a time when airline pilots were allowed and did carry weapons, and yet this has been prohibited by government regulation set to go into effect in November.

If the responsibility had been left with the airlines to provide safety they may have had armed pilots or guards on the planes just as our industrial sites have. Privatizing the FAA, as other countries have, would also give airlines more leeway in providing security. My bill, HR 2896, should be passed immediately to clarify that the federal government will never place a prohibition on pilots being armed.

We face an enormous task to restore the sense of security we have taken for granted for so long. But it can be done. Destroying the evildoers while extricating ourselves from this unholiest of wars is no small challenge. The job is somewhat like getting out of a pit filled with venomous snakes. The sooner we shoot the snakes that immediately threaten us, the sooner we can get safely away. If we're not careful though, we'll breed more snakes and they'll come out of every nook and cranny from around the world and little will be resolved.

It's no easy task, but before we fight we'd better be precise about whom we are fighting and how many there are and where they are hiding, or we'll never know when the war is over and our goals are achieved. Without this knowledge the war can go on for a long, long time, and the war for oil has already been going on for more than 20 years. To this point, our President and his administration have displayed the necessary deliberation. This is a positive change from unauthorized and ineffective retaliatory bombings in past years that only worsened various conflicts.

If we can't or won't define the enemy, the cost to fight such a war will be endless. How many American troops are we prepared to lose? How much money are we prepared to spend? How many innocent civilians, in our nation and others, are we willing to see killed? How many American civilians will we jeopardize? How much of our civil liberties are we prepared to give up? How much prosperity will we sacrifice?

The founders and authors of our Constitution provided an answer for the difficult tasks that we now face. When a precise declaration of war was impossible due to the vagueness of our enemy, the Congress was expected to take it upon themselves to direct the reprisal against an enemy not recognized as a government. In the early days the concern was piracy on the high seas. Piracy was one of only three federal crimes named in the original Constitution.

Today, we have a new type of deadly piracy, in the high sky over our country. The solution the founders came up with under these circumstances was for Congress to grant letters of marque and reprisal. This puts the responsibility in the hands of Congress to direct the President to perform a task with permission to use and reward private sources to carry out the task, such as the elimination of Osama bin Laden and his key supporters. This allows narrow targeting of the enemy. This effort would not preclude the president's other efforts to resolve the crisis, but if successful would preclude a foolish invasion of a remote country with a forbidding terrain like Afghanistan- a country that no foreign power has ever conquered throughout all of history.

Lives could be saved, billions of dollars could be saved, and escalation due to needless and senseless killing could be prevented. Mr. Speaker, we must seriously consider this option. This answer is a world apart from the potential disaster of launching nuclear weapons or endless bombing of an unseen target. "Marque and reprisal" demands the enemy be seen and precisely targeted with minimal danger to others. It should be considered and, for various reasons, is far superior to any effort that could be carried out by the CIA.

We must not sacrifice the civil liberties that generations of Americans have enjoyed and fought for over the past 225 years. Unwise decisions in response to the terror inflicted on us may well fail to destroy our enemy, while undermining our liberties here at home. That will not be a victory worth celebrating. The wise use of marque and reprisal would negate the need to undermine the privacy and rights of our citizens.

As we work through this difficult task, let us resist the temptation to invoke the most authoritarian of all notions that, not too many years ago, tore this nation apart; the military draft. The country is now unified against the enemy. The military draft does nothing to contribute to unity nor, as the Pentagon again has confirmed, does it promote an efficient military.

Precise identification of all travelers on all our air flights is a desired goal. A national ID issued by the federal government would prove to be disastrous to our civil liberties and should not be considered. This type of surveillance power should never be given to an intrusive overbearing government, no matter how well intentioned the motives.

The same results can be better achieved by the marketplace. Passenger IDs voluntarily issued by the airlines could be counterfeit-proof; and loss or theft of an ID could be immediately reported to the proper authorities. An ID, fingerprints, birth certificates, or any other information can be required without any violations of anyone's personal liberty. This delicate information would not be placed in the hands of the government agents but could be made available to law enforcement officers like any other information obtained with probable cause and a warrant.

The heat of the moment has prompted calls by some of our officials for great sacrifice of our liberties and privacy. This poses great danger to our way of life and will provide little help in dealing with our enemies. Efforts of this sort will only punish the innocent and have no effect on a would-be terrorist. We should be careful not to do something just to do something- even something harmful.

Mr. Speaker, I fear that some big mistakes could be made in the pursuit of our enemies if we do not proceed with great caution, wisdom, and deliberation. Action is necessary; inaction is unacceptable. No doubt others recognize the difficulty in targeting such an elusive enemy. This is why the principle behind "marque and reprisal" must be given serious consideration.

In retaliation, an unintended consequence of a policy of wanton destruction without benefit to our cause, could result in the overthrow of moderate Arab nations by the radicals that support bin Laden. This will not serve our interests and will surely exacerbate the threat to all Americans.

As we search for a solution to the mess we're in, it behooves us to look at how John F. Kennedy handled the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Personally, that crisis led to a 5-year tour in the US Air Force for me.

As horrible and dangerous as the present crisis is, those of us that held our breath during some very tense moments that October realized that we were on the brink of a world-wide nuclear holocaust. That crisis represented the greatest potential danger to the world in all of human history.

President Kennedy held firm and stood up to the Soviets as he should have and the confrontation was resolved. What was not known at the time was the reassessment of our policy that placed nuclear missiles in the Soviet's back yard, in Turkey. These missiles were quietly removed a few months later and the world became a safer place in which to live. Eventually, we won the cold war without starting World War III.

Our enemy today, as formidable as he is, cannot compare to the armed might of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1962.

Wisdom and caution on Kennedy's part in dealing with the crisis was indeed "a profile in courage." But his courage was not only in his standing up to the Soviets, but his willingness to re-examine our nuclear missile presence in Turkey, which if it had been known at the time would have been condemned as an act of cowardice.

President Bush now has the challenge to do something equally courageous and wise. This is necessary if we expect to avert a catastrophic World War III. When the President asks for patience as he and his advisors deliberate, seeking a course of action, all Americans should surely heed his request.

Mr. Speaker, I support President Bush and voted for the authority and the money to carry out his responsibility to defend this country, but the degree of death and destruction and chances of escalation must be carefully taken into consideration.

It is only with sadness that I reflect on the support, the dollars, the troops, the weapons and training provided by US taxpayers that are now being used against us. Logic should tell us that intervening in all the wars of the world has been detrimental to our self-interest and should be reconsidered.

The efforts of a small minority in Congress to avoid this confrontation by voting for the foreign policy of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and all the 19th century presidents went unheeded. The unwise policy of supporting so many militants who later became our armed enemies makes little sense whether it's bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. A policy designed to protect America is wise and frugal and hopefully it will once again be considered. George Washington, as we all know, advised strongly, as he departed his presidency, that we should avoid all entangling alliances with foreign nations.

The call for a non-interventionist foreign policy over past years has fallen on deaf ears. My suggestions made here today may meet the same fate. Yet, if truth is spoken, ignoring it will not negate it. In that case something will be lost. But, if something is said to be true and it is not and is ignored, nothing is lost. My goal is to contribute to the truth and to the security of this nation.

What I have said today is different from what is said and accepted in Washington as conventional wisdom, but it is not in conflict with our history or our constitution. It's a policy that has, whenever tried, generated more peace and prosperity than any other policy for dealing with foreign affairs. The authors of the Constitution clearly understood this. Since the light of truth shines brightest in the darkness of evil and ignorance, we should all strive to shine that light.

Can you guess who is the prescient Congressman? (http://www.house.gov/paul/congrec/congrec2001/cr092501.htm)


It's not the government you need to worry about; it's the people. The people are susceptible to the message of militant Islam, and they'll put pressure on the government:
While this is practically true, the radicalization has never been an organic outgrowth of the religion in modern times. It has always been fomented for political ends by, among others - The United States Government itself.

Below are a series of BBC documentaries from 2004 that chart the history of modern militant Islam.

The Power of Nightmares - Part 1: Baby it's Cold Outside (http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=881321004838285177&hl=en-GB)

The Power of Nightmares - Part 2: The Phantom Victory (http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=4602171665328041876&hl=en-GB)

The Power of Nightmares - Part 3: The Shadows in the Cave (http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=4729189253956590972&hl=en-GB)

[ablarc]

While this is practically true, the radicalization has never been an organic outgrowth of the religion in modern times. It has always been fomented for political ends by, among others - The United States Government itself.
Unlike many other religions, Islam is inherently political; it's no perversion of its purpose when it meddles in politics. Its call for temporal action fused with the spiritual resembles the American religious right, an aberration that falsely claims to be Christian.

World political domination is specifically integral to the creed, and (holy) war is a legitimate tool to its accomplishment. This isn't radicalism; this is mainstream, orthodox piousness. Bin Laden isn't doing anything the Koran doesn't mandate.


Below are a series of BBC documentaries from 2004 that chart the history of modern militant Islam.
I've seen these. I remember the motivation given here was the moral revulsion of devout Muslims at the lascivious corruption, spiritual decay and licentiousness of the West (short skirts).





Btw, I agree with almost everything Ron Paul says in the above article. (Hard to imagine how one couldn't.)

[Eugenious]

Islam and democracy
The lesson from Turkey

Jul 26th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Islamist parties that follow the rules should be allowed to win elections


APhttp://www.economist.com/images/20070728/3007LD3.jpg


THE decisive victory by Turkey's ruling Justice and Development (AK) Party in the general election of July 22nd shows every sign so far of having been an excellent result. Big political rows, threats of military intervention, talk of invading northern Iraq, resurgent nationalism and discouraging relations with Europe and America: all that plus a mildly Islamist government in a fiercely secular republic could have been a recipe for trouble, coups, internal strife, you name it. But in fact Turkey has seen a thoroughly democratic election, not too much violence, a big turnout and a clear result (see article (http://www.economist.com/opinion/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9558347&CFID=16205732&CFTOKEN=1373742)).

Among other things this seems a strong rebuke by voters to the army, which had hinted at interfering in the AK's choice of a presidential candidate. Though Turks still respect their army, most do not feel it should intervene in politics. They are also rewarding a government that has delivered good results and punishing opposition parties that offered incoherent and unconvincing policies. That is exactly how democracy should work. The army has absolutely no cause to intervene, though if the government is wise it will continue to be cautious about an Islamist agenda. Many Turkish voters may want to end the ban on the veil, but they show little appetite for more radical moves away from secularism.

Is there a lesson in Turkey for the future of democracy in the wider Muslim world? Yes, but approach with care. There are many paths to democracy, and the right choice varies from place to place. Turkey has an exceptional history. Simplifying mightily, its bumpy path to democratisation goes roughly as follows: set up an empire; inherit a caliphate; fight on the losing side in a world war; in desperation dissolve the caliphate and submit to the autocratic rule of a moderniser who pushes Islam ruthlessly to the margins; then wait the better half of a century for the emergence of an Islamist party that looks mild and moderate enough to be trusted with the reins of government. In short, squeeze Islam out of political life for decades before gingerly allowing a tamed version back in.

Learning from calamity The trouble with this approach (apart from the long wait) is that things can go calamitously wrong both at the squeezing-out stage and at the letting-in stage. For an example of the first, look at Iran, Turkey's neighbour. From the 1920s on Reza Shah strove consciously to imitate the secular reforms of Kemal Ataturk by modernising his own country's economy and society at a furious rate and forcibly reducing the role of Islam. Iranians did not take kindly to this force-fed modernisation. The ironic upshot, one less effectual shah later, was the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, in which the clerics the shahs had tried to squeeze out of the picture seized ultimate power for themselves, and have kept it ever since.

For an example of how things can go wrong at the letting-in stage, remember Algeria in 1992. In this case a secular leadership lost its nerve at the point when it had to decide whether the opposition Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) was in fact moderate enough to be allowed to take office after a landslide win in parliamentary elections. In the end the ruling party and army decided against. They cancelled the second round of elections, with catastrophic consequences. In the ensuing decade-long civil war some 200,000 Algerians were killed.

At the time, Algeria's decision to bar the Islamists from power was supported by leaders throughout the Arab world. Their argument was that parties such as the FIS were not true democrats. Once in power, it was alleged, they would never let it go: it would be “one man, one vote, one time”. In the case of the FIS, Algerians were prevented from putting the party's intentions to the test. But it is striking that precisely the same accusation has long been levelled at the AK in Turkey. Its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, did indeed once say that democracy was a train, from which you could alight once you reached your destination. As prime minister, however, he and his party appear to have got the gist of what democracy really means. There is now no serious doubt that the AK would surrender power if it were to be defeated at the ballot box.

Why so? Some will say that the answer resides in Turkey's secular constitution and the presence of a fiercely secular army that is ready to step into politics the moment politicians threaten to cross the line. That may be too cynical. Another real and arguably stronger discipline on the AK arises from the experience of democracy itself. Mr Erdogan's party knows that its continuing political success and underlying legitimacy depend on listening closely to the desires of voters, which in turn requires it to moderate its Islamist ambitions and obey the rules of the democratic game.

If there is a broader lesson the Islamic world can draw from Turkey's success, it therefore lies in this. Islamist parties that declare themselves willing to abide by the rules ought to be allowed to participate fully in electoral politics. Though this prescription may sound obvious, it has yet to be swallowed in the places where it is needed most. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood remains squeezed out of formal politics despite its growing popularity. High time now to let it in.

[Jasonik]

...In short, squeeze Islam out of political life for decades before gingerly allowing a tamed version back in.

Learning from calamity The trouble with this approach (apart from the long wait) is that things can go calamitously wrong both at the squeezing-out stage and at the letting-in stage. For an example of the first, look at Iran, Turkey's neighbour. From the 1920s on Reza Shah strove consciously to imitate the secular reforms of Kemal Ataturk by modernising his own country's economy and society at a furious rate and forcibly reducing the role of Islam. Iranians did not take kindly to this force-fed modernisation. The ironic upshot, one less effectual shah later, was the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979, in which the clerics the shahs had tried to squeeze out of the picture seized ultimate power for themselves, and have kept it ever since.

The above is a profoundly misleading statement of cause and effect regarding the history of 20th century Iranian (Persian) ruling power (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pahlavi_dynasty). Operation Ajax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax) alone deeply complicates and contradicts the implication of the above passage.


...Islamist parties that declare themselves willing to abide by the rules ought to be allowed to participate fully in electoral politics. Though this prescription may sound obvious, it has yet to be swallowed in the places where it is needed most. In Egypt, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood remains squeezed out of formal politics despite its growing popularity. High time now to let it in.

About the Muslim Brotherhood Today (http://www.ikhwanweb.com/SectionsPage.asp?SectionID=116)

[Jasonik]

Revealed: British plan to build training camp for Taliban fighters in Afghanistan

By Jerome Starkey in Kabul
Monday, 4 February 2008
(http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/revealed-british-plan-to-build-training-camp-for-taliban-fighters-in-afghanistan-777671.html)
The Afghan government claims they prove British agents were talking to the Taliban without permission from the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, despite Gordon Brown's pledge that Britain will not negotiate. The Prime Minister told Parliament on 12 December: "Our objective is to defeat the insurgency by isolating and eliminating their leaders. We will not enter into any negotiations with these people."

The British insist President Karzai's office knew what was going on. But Mr Karzai has expelled two top diplomats amid accusations they were part of a plot to buy-off the insurgents.

The row was the first in a series of spectacular diplomatic spats which has seen Anglo-Afghan relations sink to a new low. Since December, President Karzai has blocked the appointment of Paddy Ashdown to the top UN job in Kabul and he has blamed British troops for losing control of Helmand.

It has also soured relations between Kabul and Washington, where State Department officials were instrumental in pushing Lord Ashdown for the UN role.

President Karzai's political mentor, Sibghatullah Mojaddedi, endorsed a death sentence for blasphemy on the student journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh last week, and two British contractors have been arrested in Kabul on, it is claimed, trumped up weapons charges. The developments are seen as a deliberate defiance of the British.

An Afghan government source said the training camp was part of a British plan to use bands of reconciled Taliban, called Community Defence Volunteers, to fight the remaining insurgents. "The camp would provide military training for 1,800 ordinary Taliban fighters and 200 low-level commanders," he said.

The computer memory stick at the centre of the row was impounded by officers from Afghanistan's KGB-trained National Directorate of Security after they moved against a party of international diplomats who were visiting Helmand.

A ministry insider said: "When they were arrested, the British said the Ministry of the Interior and the National Security Council knew about it, but no one knew anything. That's why the President was so angry."

Details of how much President Karzai was told remain murky. Some analysts believe Afghan officials were briefed about the plan, but that it later evolved.

The camp was due to be built outside Musa Qala, in Helmand. It was part of a package of reconstruction and development incentives designed to win trust and support in the aftermath of the British-led battle to retake the stronghold last year.

But the Afghans feared the British were training a militia with no loyalty to the central government. Intercepted Taliban communications suggested they thought the British were trying to help them, the Afghan official said.

The Western delegates, Michael Semple and Mervyn Patterson, were given 48 hours to leave the country. Their Afghan colleagues, including a former army general, were jailed. The expulsions coincided with a row within the Taliban's ranks which saw a senior commander, Mansoor Dadullah, sacked for talking to British spies. One official claimed the camp was planned for Mansoor and his men.

The computer stick contained a three-stage plan, called the European Union Peace Building Programme. The third stage covered military training.

Curiously, the European Union says the programme did not exist and there were no EU funds to run it.

Afghan government officials insist it was bankrolled by the British. UK diplomats, the UN, Western officials and senior Afghan officials have all confirmed the outline of the plan, which they agree is entirely British-led, but all refused to talk about it on the record. President Karzai's office claimed it was "a matter of national security".

The memory stick revealed that $125,000 (£64,000) had been spent on preparing the camp and a further $200,000 was earmarked to run it in 2008, an Afghan official said. The figures sparked allegations that British agents were paying the Taliban.

President Karzai's spokesman, Humayun Hamidzada, accused Mr Semple and Mr Patterson of being "involved in some activities that were not their jobs."

The camp would also have provided vocational training, including farming and irrigation techniques, to offer people a viable alternative to growing opium. But the Afghan government took issue with plans to provide military training, to turn the insurgents into a defence force.

Afghan government staff also claimed the "EU peace-builders" had handed over mobile phones, laptops and airtime credit to insurgents. They said the memory stick revealed plans to train the Taliban to use secure satellite phones, so they could communicate directly with UK officials.

Mr Patterson, a Briton, was the third-ranking UN diplomat when he was held. Mr Semple, an Irishman, was the acting head of the EU mission. Officially, the British embassy remains tight-lipped, fuelling speculation that the plan may have been part of a wider clandestine operation.

A spokesman repeated the line used since Christmas: "The EU and UN have responded to inquiries on this. We have nothing further to add."

But privately, the UN maintains it had no role in setting up the camp. Meanwhile, Mr Semple's EU boss, Francesc Vendrell, admitted he had very little idea what was going on.

Yet the British ambassador, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, cut short his Christmas holiday to meet President Karzai and "spell out the Foreign Office paper-trail" which diplomats claim proves his government had agreed. They met twice, but it was not enough to stop Mr Semple and Mr Patterson being forced to leave.

Gordon Brown has also said Britain would increase its support for "community defence initiatives, where local volunteers are recruited to defend homes and families modelled on traditional Afghan arbakai".

Background to the proposal

* December 11

British and Afghan troops take Musa Qala, a Taliban stronghold in Helmand, after President Hamid Karzai reveals that a senior Taliban commander swapped sides.

* December 23-24

The acting head of the EU mission, Michael Semple, and the third-ranking UN diplomat in Afghanistan, Mervyn Patterson, hold talks with local dignitaries and Taliban sympathisers in Helmand. Afghan secret police arrest their colleague, General Stanikzai, and seize a memory stick containing plans for training camps.

* December 25

Semple and Patterson are given 48 hours in which to leave Kabul.

* December 27

The two diplomats fly out of the Afghan capital, despite international appeals to let them stay.

©independent.co.uk

[lofter1]

While we were all watching the Olympics the horrors of the war continued ...

60 Children Among Afghan Dead, U.N. Finds

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/27/world/asia/27herat.html?hp)
CARLOTTA GALL
August 26, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — A United Nations human rights team has found “convincing evidence” that some 90 civilians — among them 60 children — were killed in air strikes on a village in western Afghanistan on Thursday night, a statement issued by the United Nations mission in Kabul said, making it almost certainly the deadliest case of civilian casualties caused by any United States military operation in Afghanistan since 2001.

The United Nations the team visited the scene and interviewed survivors and local officials and elders, getting a name, age and gender of each person reported killed. The team reported that 15 people had been injured in the air strikes, which occurred in the middle of the night.

The numbers closely match those given by a government commission sent from Kabul to investigate the bombing, which put the total dead at up to 95.

Mohammad Iqbal Safi, the head of the parliamentary defense committee and a member of the government commission, said the 60 children were between three months old and 16 years old, all killed as they slept. “It was a heart breaking scene,” he said.

The death toll may even rise higher since heavy lifting gear is needed to uncover all the remains, said one Western official who had seen the United Nations report.

“This is a matter of grave concern to the United Nations,” Kai Eide, the United Nations special representative for Afghanistan said in a statement. “It is vital that the International and Afghan military forces thoroughly review the conduct of this operation in order to prevent a repeat of this tragic incident,” he said.

The United Nations report adds pressure to the United States military, which has to date said only that 25 militants and five civilians were killed in the air strikes, which were aimed at a Taliban named Mullah Saddiq. The military announced it was conducting an investigation after the high civilian death toll was reported.

The bombing occurred around midnight, the United Nations statement said. “Foreign and Afghan military personnel entered the village of Nawabad in the Azizabad area of Shindand district,” it said. “Military operations lasted several hours during which air strikes were called in.” “The destruction from aerial bombardment was clearly evident, with some 7-8 houses having been totally destroyed and serious damage to many others,” it said.

The parliamentarian, Mr. Safi, said the villagers were preparing for a ceremony the next morning in memory of a man who had died some time before. Extended families from two tribes were visiting the village and there were lights of fires as the adults were cooking food for the ceremony, he said.

How the military came to call in air strikes on a civilian gathering still remains unclear. Two parliamentarians, Mr. Safi and Maulavi Gul Ahmad, who is from the area, said the villagers blamed tribal enemies for giving the military false intelligence.

“According to the villagers their enemies give false report to Americans that foreign fighters were gathering in the village,” Mr. Safi said.

Mr. Ahmad directly blamed the United States Special Forces, who are training the Afghan National Army and were present in the joint operation. “I can’t blame the Afghan National Army for the incident as they had no authority for leading the operation,” Mr. Ahmad said.

The government commission met with the commander of the United States forces in Herat province but he declined to answer their questions, saying the United States military was conducting its own investigation, government officials said.

Russia, at odds with the United States and much of the West over its recognition of two breakaway regions in the Central Asian country of Georgia, said it would raise the issue on Tuesday afternoon at the Security Council.

Abdul Waheed Wafa contributed reporting.

[STT757]

Why are we in Afghanistan? The question should be: Why isn't enough being done in Afghanistan.

Absolutely 100% agree, Iraq has been one big distraction from the real war. The amount of troops in Iraq compared to Afghanistan is totally backward.

The 10th Mountain Division and it's four Brigades, the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the 82nd Airborne Division and the 101st Airborne Division should be parked on the Afghan/Pakistan border. Instead they are rotating on 15 month deployments to Iraq.

[lofter1]

A new world for some kids in Afghanistan ...

Skateboarding in Afghanistan
Provides a Diversion From Desolation

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/26/sports/othersports/26skate.html?em)
By ADAM B. ELLICK
January 26, 2009

KABUL, Afghanistan — It looked like an ordinary neighborhood playground: six children tumbling off their skateboards to the tune of laughter. But only hours before, just 20 yards away, the body of a suicide car bomber was sprawled beside a glistening pool of blood.

Afghan youth have learned to recover almost instantly from such routine violence. One person determined to inject some normalcy into their lives is Oliver Percovich. A 34-year-old from Melbourne, Australia, he plans to open this country’s first skateboarding school, Skateistan, this spring. He sees sport as a way to woo students into after-school activities like English and computer classes, which are otherwise reserved for the elite.

“Teenagers are trying to dissociate from old mentalities, and I’m their servant,” Percovich said. “If they weren’t interested, I would’ve left a long time ago.”

Now, when he pulls his motorcycle into a residential courtyard here, a dozen youngsters pounce before it comes to a stop, yanking six chipped skateboards with fading paint off the back. The children, most participating in a sport for the first time in their war-hardened lives, do not want to waste any time.

Their skateboard park is a decrepit Soviet-style concrete fountain with deep fissures. The tangle of novice skaters resembles bumper cars more than X Games.

But Percovich has raised the money needed to build an 8,600-square-foot bubble to house the nonprofit Skateistan complex, and the Kabul Parks Authority has tentatively donated land. He is still waiting for official permission to begin the project. And since a spate of kidnappings and the car bombing in late November, he has reduced his daily sessions at the fountain to once or twice a week.

Among those who look forward to his visits is Maro, an elfin 9-year-old girl who was terrified of skateboarding at first.

“It gives me courage, and once I start skating, I completely forget about my fears,” she said.

All the children spoke through an interpreter.

Maro’s glittery Mickey Mouse shirt indicated middle-class status. She stood out from the street children in muddied clothes who shared the skate space. Because the sport is so new and unusual here, Percovich said, it may help mend the nation’s deep social and ethnic divisions.

But for Hadisa, a 10-year-old girl from a conservative family, skateboarding has not been accepted. She said two older brothers beat her with wires for skating with poorer children in September. Several friends said they had seen blood flowing from her leg.

“I’m not upset with my brothers for beating me,” Hadisa whispered on a recent day when she did not skate because her oldest brother was nearby. “They have the right.”

But some girls cannot skate enough because their window for participation is short. When Afghan girls reach puberty, they must be veiled and can no longer associate with men outside the family. Percovich said his indoor skate park could be part of the solution, with boys and girls in separate classes.

“If my family doesn’t let me skate when I grow up, and they tell me I need to be at home, then I have to respect my family,” Maro said. “And I won’t be able to skate.”

Maro’s grandfather, Abdul Hai Muram, a retired political commentator, stroked her ponytail as he considered her future. He said he wanted her to be able to play outside when she turned 15 but worried about society’s reaction.

“Families are still careful and thoughtful about letting their daughters out,” Muram, 65, said. “We’re entitled to be very strict and afraid because negative consequences from the Taliban time are still out there, and men do whatever they want to women.”

He added, “It may take 10 years for things to be normal for women.”

Perhaps no one is more excited for the skateboard park than Mirwais, a 16-year-old boy who can do an ollie, an aerial trick that is the foundation for more advanced moves. Mirwais, who dropped out of school after second grade, first noticed the skate sessions from an adjacent parking lot, where he washed cars for $4 a day to support his family of eight. Percovich said Mirwais was often high from sniffing glue.

Now Mirwais looks more tidy and earns $8 a day working for the Skateistan project, repairing boards, running errands and assisting at the informal skate sessions.

“I want to improve as much as I can, and continue to support my family with skating,” he said. “It’s my future.”

Still, many middle- and upper-class youngsters complain that Mirwais ridicules them using foul language, evidence of the challenge with mixing social classes and ethnic groups here.

But Percovich is determined to overcome the obstacles. He arrived here rather impulsively in early 2007 because his girlfriend at the time had taken a job in Kabul. He gave up his bakery business, stuffed some clothes — and his skateboards — into a bag and left Australia.

Unable to find work, Percovich did what he has done since he was 6. He rode his skateboard, undaunted by the military convoys, pushcarts, donkeys, a suffocating film of dust and occasional car bombings.

“Whenever I turned up, kids gathered around and asked, ‘What is that?’ ” he said, referring to his skateboard. “They’d ask to have a go, and I realized quite fast it’s an excellent way to interact with youth.”

Afghanistan has the highest proportion of school-age children in the world, 1 in 5, according to the United Nations. For a vast majority of these seven million youngsters, sports are virtually nonexistent.

Most public schools, stretched to provide basic materials like desks, do not have playgrounds. Boys play pickup soccer or volleyball games on dusty fields. But sports are an afterthought for most girls, who are discouraged from public gatherings.

About 20 embassies and nongovernmental organizations rejected Percovich’s financing proposal for a skateboarding school. After breaking up with his girlfriend, he said, he was down to $1,500 and had maxed out his credit card to pay the rent.

“I was banging my head against the wall, saying, ‘What am I doing with no money?’ ” Percovich said. “But in the afternoon, I was laughing and skating with kids running toward me saying, ‘Oli, Oli, Oli.’ ”

Even his successes have been somewhat frustrating. Last March, an Australian retailer donated 30 skate sets — including boards, shoes and body pads — but Percovich could not afford the $5,000 for shipping. The equipment remains in Melbourne.

Percovich’s break came last October, when the Canadian, Norwegian and German governments pledged a combined $120,000. The Kabul Parks Authority chose a site in a poor area of the city, about eight miles from the fountain.

Andreas Schüetzenberger, whose German company, IOU Ramps, has built 300 skate ramps in places like Israel and Mongolia, plans to install the platforms at no cost once Skateistan is built.

Percovich also recruited Titus Dittman, who delivered one ton of secondhand skate equipment this month. In 1982, Dittman transformed a parking lot in Germany into one of the world’s most well-known cult skate scenes, Monster Mastership, which has since become the World Skateboarding Championships.

The goals for Skateistan are a bit more grounded.

“Afghan kids are the same as kids all over the world,” Percovich said. “They just haven’t been given the same opportunities. They need a positive environment to do positive things for Afghanistan and for themselves.”

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[Jasonik]

Be sure to watch the Times' heartwarming video (http://video.nytimes.com/video/2009/01/25/sports/othersports/1231544948551/skateistan-.html?scp=1&sq=skateistan&st=cse) of the Skateistan project.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/01/26/sports/26skate.large2.jpg

[lofter1]

A Coffin, a Flag, a Photograph


For the first time in 18 years, the Pentagon granted the news media access
on Sunday night to cover the arrival of a coffin to Dover Air Force Base from overseas.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/06/us/06cofin.4801.jpg
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
The remains of Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers arrived at Dover Air Force Base
on Sunday in the first such ceremony open to the news media in 18 years.

THE NEW YORK TIMES (http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/05/a-coffin-a-flag-a-photograph/?ref=world)
APRIL 5, 2009, 11:58 PM

For the first time in 18 years, the Pentagon granted the news media access on Sunday night to cover the arrival of a coffin to Dover Air Force Base from overseas.

The coffin, draped in a flag and bearing the body of Air Force Staff Sgt. Phillip Myers of Hopewell, Va, was unloaded from a government aircraft by the military honor guard. Sergeant Myers, 30, was killed by an improvised explosive device near Helmand Province in Afghanistan on April 4, according to the Defense Department.

A ban on news coverage of returning war dead, which had been in place since the Persian Gulf War in 1991, was lifted by the Obama administration following a review of the policy by Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

In the hours leading up to the transfer of Sergeant Myers’s corpse, Air Force officials received the consent of his family members — per the new policy — to grant members of the news media permission to be on hand.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2009/04/06/us/04coffin.4804.jpg
Brendan Smialowski for The New York Times
News coverage was allowed under a new policy by
the Obama administration; the family gave permission.

Dover Air Force base, in Delaware, houses the largest military mortuary in the country and is the Pentagon’s point of entry for service men and women killed abroad.

Sergeant Myers, a member of the 48th Civil Engineer Squadron, was awarded a Bronze Star for bravery on March 19 during an Airmen’s Call at the Royal Air Force station in Lakenheath, England — a base from which the U.S. Air Force operates — according to the Pentagon. On Sunday night, his body arrived on a flight from the Air Force base in Ramstein, Germany, where it had been flown from Afghanistan.

The ban has been the subject of debate for years. Supporters cite the privacy of family members and say that, in its absence, casualties could become politicized; critics point to the First Amendment and have accused the government of trying to keep the public in the dark about the human toll of war.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[NYatKNIGHT]

A helicopter attack team comes across insurgents setting up an IED on a road in Afghanistan.

CNN Video (http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2009/08/10/von.afghan.insurgent.usdod)

[ZippyTheChimp]

Whoa. Technology.

A few months ago, CBS 60 Minutes ran a story on the use of drone aircraft in combat missions. Very surreal seeing the pilot commute to work from suburban Las Vegas.

Story and video (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/05/08/60minutes/main5001439.shtml)

[lofter1]

Two Wrongs Make Another Fiasco

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/11/opinion/11rich.html?ref=opinion)
By FRANK RICH
OP-ED COLUMNIST
October 11, 2009

NOTE: The original column contains numerous links to stories that fill out Rich's argument.

THOSE of us who love F. Scott Fitzgerald must acknowledge that he did get one big thing wrong. There are second acts in American lives. (Just ask Marion Barry, or William Shatner.) The real question is whether everyone deserves a second act. Perhaps the most surreal aspect of our great Afghanistan debate is the Beltway credence given to the ravings of the unrepentant blunderers who dug us into this hole in the first place.

Let’s be clear: Those who demanded that America divert its troops and treasure from Afghanistan to Iraq in 2002 and 2003 — when there was no Qaeda presence in Iraq — bear responsibility for the chaos in Afghanistan that ensued. Now they have the nerve to imperiously and tardily demand that America increase its 68,000-strong presence in Afghanistan to clean up their mess — even though the number of Qaeda insurgents there has dwindled to fewer than 100, according to the president’s national security adviser, Gen. James Jones.

But why let facts get in the way? Just as these hawks insisted that Iraq was “the central front in the war on terror” when the central front was Afghanistan, so they insist that Afghanistan is the central front now that it has migrated to Pakistan. When the day comes for them to anoint Pakistan as the central front, it will be proof positive that Al Qaeda has consolidated its hold on Somalia and Yemen.

To appreciate this crowd’s spotless record of failure, consider its noisiest standard-bearer, John McCain. He made every wrong judgment call that could be made after 9/11. It’s not just that he echoed the Bush administration’s constant innuendos that Iraq collaborated with Al Qaeda’s attack on America. Or that he hyped the faulty W.M.D. evidence to the hysterical extreme of fingering Iraq for the anthrax attacks in Washington. Or that he promised we would win the Iraq war “easily.” Or that he predicted that the Sunnis and the Shiites would “probably get along” in post-Saddam Iraq because there was “not a history of clashes” between them.

What’s more mortifying still is that McCain was just as wrong about Afghanistan and Pakistan. He routinely minimized or dismissed the growing threats in both countries over the past six years, lest they draw American resources away from his pet crusade in Iraq.

Two years after 9/11 he was claiming that we could “in the long term” somehow “muddle through” in Afghanistan. (He now has the chutzpah to accuse President Obama of wanting to “muddle through” there.) Even after the insurgency accelerated in Afghanistan in 2005, McCain was still bragging about the “remarkable success” of that prematurely abandoned war. In 2007, some 15 months after the Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf signed a phony “truce” ceding territory on the Afghanistan border to terrorists, McCain gave Musharraf a thumb’s up. As a presidential candidate in the summer of 2008, McCain cared so little about Afghanistan it didn’t even merit a mention among the national security planks on his campaign Web site.

He takes no responsibility for any of this. Asked by Katie Couric last week about our failures in Afghanistan, McCain spoke as if he were an innocent bystander: “I think the reason why we didn’t do a better job on Afghanistan is our attention — either rightly or wrongly — was on Iraq.” As Tonto says to the Lone Ranger, “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Along with his tribunes in Congress and the punditocracy, Wrong-Way McCain still presumes to give America its marching orders. With his Senate brethren in the Three Amigos, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, he took to The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page to assert that “we have no choice” but to go all-in on Afghanistan — rightly or wrongly, presumably — just as we had in Iraq. Why? “The U.S. walked away from Afghanistan once before, following the Soviet collapse,” they wrote. “The result was 9/11. We must not make that mistake again.”

This shameless argument assumes — perhaps correctly — that no one in this country remembers anything. So let me provide a reminder: We already did make that mistake again when we walked away from Afghanistan to invade Iraq in 2003 — and we did so at the Three Amigos’ urging. Then, too, they promoted their strategy as a way of preventing another 9/11 — even though no one culpable for 9/11 was in Iraq. Now we’re being asked to pay for their mistake by squandering stretched American resources in yet another country where Al Qaeda has largely vanished.

To make the case, the Amigos and their fellow travelers conflate the Taliban with Al Qaeda much as they long conflated Saddam’s regime with Al Qaeda. But as Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post reported on Thursday, American intelligence officials now say that “there are few, if any, links between Taliban commanders in Afghanistan today and senior Al Qaeda members” — a far cry from the tight Taliban-bin Laden alliance of 2001.

The rhetorical sleights of hand in the hawks’ arguments don’t end there. If you listen carefully to McCain and his neocon echo chamber, you’ll notice certain tics. President Obama better make his decision by tomorrow, or Armageddon (if not mushroom clouds) will arrive. We must “win” in Afghanistan — but victory is left vaguely defined. That’s because we will never build a functioning state in a country where there has never been one. Nor can we score a victory against the world’s dispersed, stateless terrorists by getting bogged down in a hellish landscape that contains few of them.

Most tellingly, perhaps, those clamoring for an escalation in Afghanistan avoid mentioning the name of the country’s president, Hamid Karzai, or the fraud-filled August election that conclusively delegitimized his government. To do so would require explaining why America should place its troops in alliance with a corrupt partner knee-deep in the narcotics trade. As long as Karzai and the election are airbrushed out of history, it can be disingenuously argued that nothing has changed on the ground since Obama’s inauguration and that he has no right to revise his earlier judgment that Afghanistan is a “war of necessity.”

Those demanding more combat troops for Afghanistan also avoid defining the real costs. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the war was running $2.6 billion a month in Pentagon expenses alone even before Obama added 20,000 troops this year. Surely fiscal conservatives like McCain and Graham who rant about deficits being “generational theft” have an obligation to explain what the added bill will be on an Afghanistan escalation and where the additional money will come from. But that would require them to use the dread words “sacrifice” and “higher taxes” when they want us to believe that this war, like Iraq, would be cost-free.

The real troop numbers are similarly elusive. Pre-emptively railing against the prospect of “half measures” by Obama, Lieberman asked MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell rhetorically last week whether it would be “real counterinsurgency” or “counterinsurgency light.” But the measure Lieberman endorses — Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s reported recommendation of 40,000 additional troops — is itself counterinsurgency light. In his definitive recent field manual on the subject, Gen. David Petraeus stipulates that real counterinsurgency requires 20 to 25 troops for each thousand residents. That comes out, conservatively, to 640,000 troops for Afghanistan (population, 32 million). Some 535,000 American troops couldn’t achieve a successful counterinsurgency in South Vietnam, which had half Afghanistan’s population and just over a quarter of its land area.

Lieberman suggested to Mitchell that we could train an enhanced, centralized Afghan army to fill any gaps. In how many decades? The existing Afghan “army” is small, illiterate, impoverished and as factionalized as the government. For his part, McCain likes to justify McChrystal’s number of 40,000 by imbuing it with the supposedly magical powers of the “surge” in Iraq. But it’s rewriting history to say that the “surge” brought “victory” to Iraq. What it did was stanch the catastrophic bleeding in an unnecessary war McCain had helped gin up. Lest anyone forget, we still don’t know who has “won” in Iraq.

Afghanistan is not Iraq. It is poorer, even larger and more populous, more fragmented and less historically susceptible to foreign intervention. Even if the countries were interchangeable, the wars are not. No one-size surge fits all. President Bush sent the additional troops to Iraq only after Sunni leaders in Anbar Province soured on Al Qaeda and reached out for American support. There is no equivalent “Anbar Awakening” in Afghanistan. Most Afghans “don’t feel threatened by the Taliban in their daily lives” and “aren’t asking for American protection,” reported Richard Engel of NBC News last week. After eight years of war, many see Americans as occupiers.

Americans, meanwhile, want to see the fine print after eight years of fiasco with little accounting. While McCain and company remain frozen where they were in 2001, many of their fellow citizens have learned from the Iraq tragedy. Polls persistently find that the country is skeptical about what should and can be accomplished in Afghanistan. They voted for Obama not least because they wanted a new post-9/11 vision of national security, and they will not again be so easily bullied by the blustering hawks’ doomsday scenarios. That gives our deliberating president both the time and the political space to get this long war’s second act right.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[johntedder]

We didn't invade Afghanistan to rebuild their country. We invaded because the Taliban would not turn Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda members over to us. We wanted to deny Al Qaeda a training ground and a safe place to plot against us.

Let's fight the most primitive means of warfare, suicide bombers and roadside bombs, with the greatest technology that the world has ever seen.
We have Reaper and Predator aircraft that are launched in Afghanistan but operated remotely from bases in the United States.The assembly lines should be running twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week making these unmanned aerial vehicles. Don't send more ground troops.

http://www.teddersrandomnotes.com/blog/2009/10/16/the-courageous-decision (http://www.teddersrandomnotes.com/blog/2009/10/16/the-courageous-decision)

In "To Beat the Taliban, Fight from Afar" in the October 14, 2009 New York Times, Robert A. Pape suggests that we rely on air and naval power from a distance and work with local security forces on the ground. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/opinion/15pape.html?ref=global That's how we beat the Taliban in 2001. We had some troops on the ground, but we mainly worked with local Afghan fighters by providing air strikes against the Taliban.

[Ninjahedge]

Won't work. As proven with WWII, you can't win a war with the enemy dug in by flying planes over them.

Afghanistan is very inhospitable, and too large to control like an occupied territory. Making VERY EXPENSIVE remote drones is not a viable, or cost effective solution.

Also, be careful when you post. If you have more to add, you can just hit "edit"... ;)

[johntedder]

Sorry about the double posting. I'm not sure how it happened. I didn't do it intentionally. Maybe the admin can delete the first comment.

The difference between now and WW2 is that the UAVs can stay in the air for 24 hours at a time. The November Esquire magazine has a great article about the Reaper and Predator and their pilots. Here is a quote from the article, "An F-16 burns a thousand gallons of fuel an hour and can stay over a target for about an hour before it must swap out with another plane or refuel midair. A Predator carries a hundred gallons of fuel with which it can stay over a target for twenty-four hours."

A Predator costs about $4 million and a Reaper $11 million compared to $16 million for an F-16.

The fact that these planes can stay over the enemy for so long and the enemy doesn't even know they are there, make all the difference.

http://teddersrandomnotes.com/blog

[Ninjahedge]

JT, I am aware of that, but those things do not come free. Not only that, they are considerably lighter and less stocked to hold as much munitions. I am not doing a DIRECT comparison. You could say Iwo Jima was much smaller than Afghanistan, but the key here is, aerial bombardment and surveillance of a country that large and that rugged is VERY difficult and not very effective.

It would be like trying to kill roaches by using a hammer on your wall. You may be able to tag one each time you hit, but there are MANY of them and it is not the most effective way of routing out ALL of them.


As even military leaders have said, the most effective way is diplomacy. Erase their support base. If the people are protected long enough to set up their OWN authorities, then it becomes much harder for recruitment, training and support of a radical faction group.

Right now there are too many, and no actual governmental authority worth its weight in jellybeans to counter this pretty well established group.....

[johntedder]

I am tired of reading about young American kids being killed in Afghanistan. Let the Afghans step up and fight for their own country. In 2001, we defeated the Taliban and chased them into Pakistan using a few special forces types on the ground and air power. The Afghans did the rest of the work for us. What happened to those people? Did they all retire after 2001?

Let the Afghans be the boots on the ground. We can be their eyes, ears and power in the sky. We don't have to eliminate every single Taliban. We just have to stop them from taking control again.

Pakistan is a similar story. Let the Pakistan army be the boots on the ground. We can do the same for them as we can do for Afghanistan.
Let the Pakistanis die for their own country too.

We have been in Afghanistan for eight years. Where is their army?

http://teddersrandomnotes.com/blog

[Ninjahedge]

They did not retire.

WE went in and WE deposed teh current government. WE then went and put "their" leader up at the front.

They did not have the resources to fight the Taliban. The Taliban were stationed there and attacked us, WE did the right thing and attacked them, with 99% of the world behind us.

Then we went all fruity in the head and started preaching yellowcake, WMD's and Uranium Enrichment with Iraq, all BS. Jr was led to believe, quite easily, that the country that Daddy left be was gonna start behaving badly. So our Isralei interests, our Oil interests, and quite a few others got Rummie and Cheney up there to convince everyone that it was all over in Afghanistan and that everyone had to go to Iraq.

WE SCREWED UP. We should fix it. Just like our financial situation, we bit off more than we could chew and now everyone is complaining about it when the SAME PEOPLE BASHED ANYONE QUESTIONING IT 4 YEARS AGO!!!!

Somehow it was OK during Bush, but as soon as Obama is the leader, something must be done and he is at fault for all the deaths?

We do need to get out, but we do not leave it as a hotbed for eventual trouble later on.

[kakonsteraro]

they have no reason in afganistan. They are hunting the taliban ...so. theyve destroyed another country and destabilized the whole middle east now. Bush isnt the brightest bulb in the box...obviously.

[lofter1]

Let's all give thanks to Donald Rumsfeld, idiot par excellence (and don't forget his boss[es]) ...

Army History Finds Early Missteps in Afghanistan

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/world/asia/31history.html?ref=world)
By JAMES DAO
December 31, 2009

In the fall of 2003, the new commander of American forces in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David W. Barno, decided on a new strategy. Known as counterinsurgency, the approach required coalition forces to work closely with Afghan leaders to stabilize entire regions, rather than simply attacking insurgent cells.

But there was a major drawback, a new unpublished Army history of the war concludes. Because the Pentagon insisted on maintaining a “small footprint” in Afghanistan and because Iraq was drawing away resources, General Barno commanded fewer than 20,000 troops.

As a result, battalions with 800 soldiers were trying to secure provinces the size of Vermont. “Coalition forces remained thinly spread across Afghanistan,” the historians write. “Much of the country remained vulnerable to enemy forces increasingly willing to reassert their power.”

That early and undermanned effort to use counterinsurgency is one of several examples of how American forces, hamstrung by inadequate resources, missed opportunities to stabilize Afghanistan during the early years of the war, according to the history, “A Different Kind of War.”

This year, a resurgent Taliban prompted the current American commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, to warn that the war would be lost without an infusion of additional troops and a more aggressive approach to counterinsurgency. President Obama agreed, ordering the deployment of 30,000 more troops, which will bring the total American force to 100,000.

But as early as late 2003, the Army historians assert, “it should have become increasingly clear to officials at Centcom and D.O.D. that the coalition presence in Afghanistan did not provide enough resources” for proper counterinsurgency, the historians write, referring to the United States Central Command and the Department of Defense.

“A Different Kind of War,” which covers the period from October 2001 until September 2005, represents the first installment of the Army’s official history of the conflict. Written by a team of seven historians at the Army’s Combat Studies Institute at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and based on open source material, it is scheduled to be published by spring.

The New York Times obtained a copy of the manuscript, which is still under review by current and former military officials.

Though other histories, including “In the Graveyard of Empires” by Seth G. Jones and “Descent Into Chaos” by Ahmed Rashid, cover similar territory, the manuscript of “A Different Kind of War” offers new details and is notable for carrying the imprimatur of the Army itself, which will use the history to train a new generation of officers.

The history, which has more than 400 pages, praises several innovations by the Pentagon, particularly the pairing of small Special Operations Forces teams with Afghan militias, which, backed by laser-guided weapons, drove the Taliban from power.

But, once the Taliban fell, the Pentagon often seemed ill-prepared and slow-footed in shifting from a purely military mission to a largely peacekeeping and nation-building one, fresh details in the history indicate.

“Even after the capture of Kabul and Kandahar,” the historians write, “there was no major planning initiated to create long-term political, social and economic stability in Afghanistan. In fact, the message from senior D.O.D officials in Washington was for the U.S. military to avoid such efforts.”

In one telling anecdote from 2004, the history describes how soldiers under General Barno had so little experience in counterinsurgency that one lieutenant colonel bought books about the strategy over the Internet and distributed them to his company commanders and platoon leaders.

In another case, a civil affairs commander in charge of small-scale reconstruction projects told the historians that he had been given $1 million in cash to house and equip his soldiers but that bureaucratic obstacles prevented him from spending a penny on projects. It took months to reduce the red tape, the historians say.

The historians also say that such anecdotes underscore the resourcefulness of commanders faced with unclear guidance and inadequate resources. But limited manpower still had an impact on operations, the history indicates.

When the Taliban was on the run in the spring of 2002, Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, the incoming commander of American forces, traveled to Washington seeking guidance. The message conveyed by the Army’s vice chief of staff, Gen. Jack Keane, was, “Don’t do anything that looks like permanence,” General McNeill recalled. “We are in and out of there in a hurry.”

Largely as a result of that mandate, General McNeill took only half of his headquarters command from the XVIII Airborne Corps at Fort Bragg, N.C. But as the conflict became more complicated, requiring diplomatic and political operations as well as military ones, General McNeill lacked enough planning personnel, the history suggests. He was replaced in 2003 by an even smaller headquarters unit, the history says.

The lack of resources was also apparent in the training of Afghan security forces, the history shows.

Early in the war, the training program was hampered by poor equipment, low pay, high attrition and not enough trainers. Living conditions for the Afghan army were so poor that Maj. Gen. Karl W. Eikenberry likened them to Valley Forge when he took command of the training operation in October 2002.

“The mandate was clear and it was a central task, but it is also fair to say that up until that time there had been few resources committed,” Mr. Eikenberry, now the ambassador to Afghanistan, told the historians, referring to the army training program.

The historians say resistance to providing more robust resources to Afghanistan had three sources in the White House and the Pentagon.

First, President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had criticized using the military for peacekeeping and reconstruction in the Balkans during the 1990s. As a result, “nation building” carried a derogatory connotation for many senior military officials, even though American forces were being asked to fill gaping voids in the Afghan government after the Taliban’s fall.

Second, military planners were concerned about Afghanistan’s long history of resisting foreign invaders and wanted to avoid the appearance of being occupiers. But the historians argue that this concern was based partly on an “incomplete” understanding of the Soviet experience in Afghanistan.

Third, the invasion of Iraq was siphoning away resources. After the invasion started in March 2003, the history says, the United States clearly “had a very limited ability to increase its forces” in Afghanistan.

The history provides a detailed retelling of the battle of Tora Bora, the cave-riddled insurgent redoubt on the Pakistan border where American forces thought they had trapped Osama bin Laden in December 2001. But Mr. bin Laden apparently escaped into Pakistan along with hundreds of Qaeda fighters.

The historians call Tora Bora “a lost opportunity” to capture or kill Mr. bin Laden. But they concluded that even with more troops, the American and Afghan forces probably could not have sealed the rugged border. And they deemed the battle a partial success because it “dealt a severe blow to those Taliban and Al Qaeda elements that remained active in Afghanistan.”

The history also recounts well-known battles like Operation Anaconda, in eastern Afghanistan in spring 2002. The history ends in the fall of 2005, when many American officials still felt optimistic about Afghanistan’s future. Postponed parliamentary elections were held that fall, but Taliban attacks were also on the rise.

“It was clear that the struggle to secure a stable and prosperous future for Afghanistan was not yet won,” the history concludes.

Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

This is a disastrous turn of circumstances ...

Behind Afghan Bombing, an Agent With Many Loyalties

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/05/world/asia/05cia.html?hp)
By Richard A. Oppel Jr., Mark Mazzetti and Souad Mekhennet
January 5, 2010

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The suicide bomber who killed seven C.I.A. officers and a Jordanian spy last week was a double agent who was taken onto the base in Afghanistan because the Americans hoped he might be able to deliver top members of Al Qaeda’s network, according to Western government officials.

The bomber had been recruited by the Jordanian intelligence service and taken to Afghanistan to infiltrate Al Qaeda by posing as a foreign jihadi, the officials said.

But in a deadly turnabout, the supposed informant strapped explosives to his body and blew himself up at a meeting Wednesday at the C.I.A.’s Forward Operating Base Chapman in the southeastern province of Khost.

The attack at the C.I.A. base dealt a devastating blow to the spy agency’s operations against militants in the remote mountains of Afghanistan, eliminating an elite team using an informant with strong jihadi credentials. The attack further delayed hope of penetrating Al Qaeda’s upper ranks, and also seemed potent evidence of militants’ ability to strike back against their American pursuers.

It could also jeopardize relations between the C.I.A. and the Jordanian spy service, which officials said had vouched for the would-be informant.

The Jordanian service, called the General Intelligence Directorate, for years has been one of the C.I.A.’s closest and most useful allies in the Middle East.

In a telephone interview, a person associated with the Pakistani Taliban identified the bomber as Humam Khalil Mohammed, a Jordanian physician. Western officials said that Mr. Mohammed had been in a Jordanian prison and that he was recruited by the Jordanian spy service.

The bomber was not closely searched because of his perceived value as someone who could lead American forces to senior Qaeda leaders, and because the Jordanian intelligence officer had identified him as a potentially valuable informant, the Western officials said.

The Western officials and others who were interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the matter.

Current and former American officials said Monday that because of Mr. Mohammed’s medical background, he might have been recruited to find the whereabouts of Ayman al-Zawahri, the Egyptian doctor who is Al Qaeda’s second in command.

Agency officers had traveled from Kabul, the Afghan capital, to Khost for a meeting with the informant, a sign that the C.I.A. had come to trust the informant and that it was eager to learn what he might have gleaned from operations in the field, according to a former C.I.A. official with experience in Afghanistan.

The former official said that the fact that militants could carry out a successful attack using a double agent showed their strength even after a steady barrage of missile strikes fired by C.I.A. drone aircraft.

“Double agent operations are really complex,” he said. “The fact that they can pull this off shows that they are not really on the run. They have the ability to kick back and think about these things.”

The death of the Jordanian intelligence officer, Capt. Sharif Ali bin Zeid, was reported in recent days by Jordanian officials, but they did not confirm exactly where he was killed or what he was doing in Afghanistan.

Jordanian intelligence officials were deeply embarrassed by the attacks because they had taken the informant to the Americans, said one American government official briefed on the events.

The official said that the Jordanians had such a good reputation with American intelligence officials that the informant was not screened before entering the compound.

Jarret Brachman, author of “Global Jihadism: Theory and Practice” and a consultant to the United States government about terrorism, said in a telephone interview that Mr. Mohammed had used the online persona Abu Dujana al-Khorasani and was an influential jihadi voice on the Web.

“He’s one of the most revered authors on the jihadists’ forums,” Mr. Brachman said.

“He’s in the top five jihadists. He’s one of the biggest guns out there.”

In many of the posts under his online persona, Mr. Mohammed used elusive language filled with references to literature and the Koran to describe his support for violent opposition to the United States-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“When a fighter for God kills a U.S. soldier on the corner of a tank, the supporters of Jihad have killed tens of thousands of Americans through their connection” to the opposition, he wrote in one posting.

Mr. Brachman said that Al Fajr Media, which is Al Qaeda’s official media distribution network, conducted an interview with Abu Dujana al-Khorasani published in Al Qaeda’s online magazine, called Vanguards of Khorasan.

The name of the bomber was first reported by Al Jazeera, which identified him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi. The television network reported that Mr. Balawi was taken to Afghanistan to help track down Mr. Zawahri.

The attack was also embarrassing for Jordan’s government, which did not want the depths of its cooperation with the C.I.A. revealed to its own citizens or other Arabs in the region.

A statement by the official Jordanian news agency said Captain Zeid was killed in Afghanistan on Wednesday “as he performed his humanitarian duty with the Jordanian contingent of the U.N. peacekeeping forces.”

The United States, and the C.I.A. in particular, are deeply unpopular in Jordan, where at least half the population is of Palestinian origin and where Washington’s support for Israel is roundly condemned.

King Abdullah II and his government, while working closely with Washington in counterterrorism operations and providing strategic support for operations in Iraq, try to keep that work secret.

The Pakistani Taliban had previously said the bomber was someone the C.I.A. had recruited to work with them, who then offered the militants his services as a double agent.

The General Intelligence Directorate has received millions of dollars from the C.I.A. since the American invasion of Iraq, where the Jordanian spy agency played a central role in the campaign against Iraqi insurgents.

In the past, Jordanian officials have privately criticized American intelligence services, saying they relied too heavily on technology and not enough on agents capable of infiltrating operations. In 2006, the Jordanians were credited with helping to locate and kill Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

The C.I.A. declined to comment about the circumstances of the bombing in Afghanistan.

Current and former American intelligence officials said the C.I.A. base in Khost was used to collect intelligence about militant networks in the border region.

The C.I.A. officers on the base used the information to plan strikes against Qaeda and Taliban leaders, along with top operatives of the Haqqani network.

United States officials have been applying pressure to the government of Pakistan to drive out the Haqqani network, whose fighters hold sway over parts of Afghanistan, including Paktika, Paktia and Khost Provinces, and are a serious threat to American forces.

A second former C.I.A. official said that Mr. Zeid’s presence on the Khost base was a sign that the Jordanian intelligence agency was using a spy to infiltrate militant networks in the region, and most likely to penetrate cells of Arab Qaeda militants.

“If the Jordanian intelligence officer had been vouching for this guy, the C.I.A. would definitely have wanted him on the base,” said the former officer.

The remains of the seven C.I.A. officers killed in the attack arrived in a military plane on Monday at Dover Air Force Base, where a private ceremony was held. The event was attended by Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, as well as by family members of the slain officers.

Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Souad Mekhennet reported from Islamabad, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington. Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Michael Slackman from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Nadia Taha contributed research from New York.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

That ^ and now this -- welcome to the endless sh!thole ...

White House Aides Said to Chafe at Slow Pace of Afghan Surge

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/09/world/09military.html?hp)
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and HELENE COOPER
January 9, 2010

WASHINGTON — Senior White House advisers are frustrated by what they say is the Pentagon’s slow pace in deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and its inability to live up to an initial promise to have all of the forces in the country by next summer, senior administration officials said Friday.

Tensions over the deployment schedule have been growing in recent weeks between senior White House officials — among them Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, and Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff — and top commanders, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan.

A rapid deployment is central to President Obama’s strategy, to have a jolt of American forces pound the Taliban enough for Afghan security forces to take over the fight. Administration officials said that part of the White House frustration stemmed from the view that the longer the American military presence in Afghanistan continued, the more of a political liability it would become for Mr. Obama. But beyond the politics, the speeded up deployment — which Mr. Obama paired with a promise to begin troop withdrawals by July 2011 — is part of Mr. Obama’s so-called “bell curve” Afghanistan strategy, whereby American troops would increase their force in Afghanistan and step up attacks meant to quickly take out insurgents.

One administration official said that the White House believed that top Pentagon and military officials misled them by promising to deploy the 30,000 additional troops by the summer. General McChrystal and some of his top aides have privately expressed anger at that accusation, saying that they are being held responsible for a pace of deployments they never thought was realistic, the official said.

The officials declined to be identified because they were discussing internal administration disagreements.

Other White House officials said to be frustrated by the deployment pace include Thomas E. Donilon, the deputy national security adviser, and Denis R. McDonough, the national security chief of staff. “Gates and Mullen made a clear statement that this would be achieved by summer’s end,” a senior administration official said, referring to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mr. McDonough denied that there was any frustration with the Pentagon. “We have every confidence that our colleagues in the military are doing their absolute best to meet the commitment and the plans that the president laid out,” he said Friday night.

On Dec. 1, when President Obama announced the deployment of the 30,000 additional troops, a senior administration official told reporters that the forces were part of a short-term, high-intensity effort to regain the initiative from the Taliban and that they would all be in place by May. Within days, White House and Pentagon officials had amended that to say that the bulk of the forces would be in place by the summer, but that it would take a few months after that to get all the troops in place.

Last month in Kabul, Lt. Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the deputy commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, did not back away from that schedule, but he told reporters of the difficulties he faced even in getting all the forces in by fall. He said that bad weather, limited capacity to send supplies by air and attacks on ground convoys carrying equipment for troops from Pakistan and other countries presented substantial hurdles.

“There’s a lot of risks in here, but we’re going to try to get them in as fast as we can,” he said at the time. “There’s a lot of things that have to line up perfectly.”

On a visit to Afghanistan last month, Admiral Mullen pressed military logisticians on how they would be able to meet the schedule. But even Admiral Mullen, who said he was “reasonably confident” that the logistics would work out, acknowledged the tall order before the military, saying, “I want a plan B because life doesn’t always work out.”

Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary, said Friday that the military was moving as rapidly as it could and that reports of tension with the White House amounted to a “fabricated and contrived controversy.” Mr. Morrell said that “the preponderance of the forces will be there by the middle of the summer and we are moving heaven and earth to get all of them there by the end of the summer.” He added that the Pentagon anticipated “that 92 percent of them will be there by the end of August and we hope to even improve upon that.”

But military officials acknowledged that they were taken aback by the president’s initial insistence that the troops be in place within six months. Last fall, military officials repeatedly said that it would take as long as a year to 18 months for all the troops to be in place.

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[lofter1]

CIA bomber struck moments before pat-down search

The Washington Post (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/09/AR2010010900758.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010010900787)
By R. Jeffrey Smith, Joby Warrick and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, January 9, 2010

The Jordanian doctor arrived in a red station wagon that came directly from Pakistan and sped through checkpoints at a CIA base in Afghanistan before stopping abruptly at an improvised interrogation center. Outside stood one of the CIA's top experts on al-Qaeda, ready to greet the doctor and hear him describe a way to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, the organization's number two and a man long at the top of U.S. target lists.

The Jordanian exited the car with one hand in his pocket, according to the accounts of several U.S. officials briefed on the incident. An American security guard approached him to conduct a pat-down search and asked him to remove his hand. Instead, the Jordanian triggered a switch.

A sharp "CLMMMP" coincided with a brief flash and a small puff of smoke as thousands of steel pellets shredded glass, metal, cement and flesh in every direction.

A moment that CIA officials in Washington and Afghanistan had hoped would lead to a significant breakthrough in the fight against al-Qaeda instead became the most grievous single blow against the agency in the counter-terror war.

Virtually everyone within sight of the suicide bomb died immediately, including the CIA al-Qaeda expert; a 30-year old CIA analyst; an interpreter and two other CIA officers; the two contract guards; the Jordanian's handler and the car's driver. At least six others standing in the carport and nearby were wounded by pellets that had first perforated the vehicle, including the CIA's second-in-command inside Afghanistan, who is now reportedly fighting for his life.

Those at the scene on Dec. 30 had been trying to strike a balance between respect for their informant -- best demonstrated, in the regional tradition, by direct personal contact -- and caution, illustrated by the attentiveness of the security guards, according to CIA officials.

But more than a dozen current and former government officials interviewed for this article said they could not account in full for what they called a breach of operational security: In an age of suicide bombers, advance pat-downs and other precautions are common, and meetings are deliberately kept small and remote. None of these sources would agree to be identified by name, in many cases because of their former or current work as covert operatives.

Several intelligence sources said the principal mistake was in trusting the bona fides of the Jordanian doctor, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, who had never previously been invited to the base. The meeting was arranged with help from an allied intelligence officer from Jordan, who was among those waiting at the site for Balawi to arrive and was himself killed by the pellets.

"You get somebody who has helped you and is incredibly important for the information he's going to potentially provide, these are prize possessions," said a former CIA field officer. "Somebody comes and it's like a celebration that they're coming. It's good to make them feel welcome. It's good to make them feel important."

The man who would prove to be a deadly attacker, the former officer said, "was heralded as a superstar asset. . . . So you get an important visitor coming. So you go out and meet him. . . . Is it bad tradecraft? Of course."

But several other intelligence officials and veterans also said they worried that those at the base in Afghanistan's Khost province -- and those in Washington who helped to plan the meeting -- might have lost perspective amid an urgent clamor to kill al-Qaeda leaders in an agency traditionally more adept at the collection and analysis of intelligence than at assassination.

"The tradecraft that was developed over many years is passe," complained a recently retired senior intelligence official, also with decades of experience. "Now it's a military tempo where you don't have time for validating and vetting sources. . . . All that seems to have gone by the board. It shows there are not a lot of people with a great deal of experience in this field. The agency people are supporting the war-fighter and providing information for targeting, but the espionage part has become almost quaint."

Most of those who died were not case officers practiced at dealing directly with sources and typically placed at greatest risk, but either support officers, such as security guards or interpreters, or targeters and analysts -- those who direct the case officers and produce intelligence reports.

"It's not sloppiness," this former official added. "We just don't have time for it. Who wants to be known as the guy who turned away the tip that could have helped us get Osama bin Laden?"

CIA officials denied that such a breach occurred, noting that the bomber detonated the device at the moment he was about to be searched and when most of the victims were many yards away. "Security precautions were taken," said a senior official. "A tested source was brought in by a trusted friend and he had promising leads. These were all reasons to allow him to come on the base."

'Photograph-type evidence'

The man who instigated the unusual gathering at Forward Operating Base Chapman had been the subject of hopeful speculation for weeks. But until the afternoon of Dec. 30, none of the Americans at the base had laid eyes on him.

A darkly handsome 32-year-old, Balawi had captured the attention of analysts from Kabul to CIA headquarters with his claim of direct knowledge about Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader second only to Osama bin Laden and the brains behind the network's longstanding efforts to obtain nuclear and biological weapons.

After Jordanian authorities incarcerated him briefly in January 2009 because of his extremist Web postings, Balawi had traveled to Pakistan in March, ostensibly for medical studies. He subsequently sent tantalizing information by e-mail to Jordanian intelligence officials, who shared them with the Americans. The messages included descriptions of the results of U.S. missile attacks on al-Qaeda and Taliban training camps and safe houses, including details about victims and facilities that no one knew outside a small circle of intelligence analysts and the terrorists themselves.

Senior CIA officials in Washington who were receiving updates on the man's reports were impressed by "irrefutable proof" that he had been in the presence of al-Qaeda's top leaders, one of the officials said. The proof included "photograph-type evidence," the official said.

In 2008, Balawi had declared on an Internet site that he wished to "be a bomb" so he could destroy Israelis for their treatment of Palestinians. His family has said they were unaware of any help he was providing to the Jordanian government, noting that his prison stay left him agitated and visibly stressed. But Jordanian analysts found his missives to be compelling. "We made an effort to lure him in and verify the information he had," a senior Jordanian government official said.

Ultimately, agency officials decided that a face-to-face meeting was necessary, but the border region is so dangerous that the CIA had no safe houses of its own for rendezvous with informants, according to several intelligence officials who have transited the region.

A CIA official said that senior agency officials in Washington were aware of the plan to meet him and supported it.

The CIA base at Khost is one of only two in Afghanistan that the agency controls directly; the others are all located within larger military bases that provide more layered security under American control. Its strength -- and also its vulnerability -- stems from its location less than 10 miles from the Pakistani border and the tribal region of North Waziristan, where a Taliban faction known as the Haqqani network reportedly is headquartered.

Current and former officials who have visited the base describe it as a targeting center for Predator strikes and other operations inside Pakistan, some involving Pashtun tribesmen loyal to the West who are accustomed to traversing the porous border for intelligence-gathering, bomb-targeting and other missions.

An intelligence official who agreed to speak on background about Balawi's suicide bombing called it "an important base, and [being] chief there is an important assignment. You don't get that one unless you know your stuff -- and the CIA had a world-class expert on al-Qaeda and counter-terrorism operations running the place."

The official was referring to a nearly 20-year agency veteran killed in the attack, a 45-year-old woman with three children. At the CIA's request, the Post has agreed not to use her name in this article.

A former reports officer in the agency's directorate of intelligence, she started tracking al-Qaeda before the Sept. 2001 attacks, spent nearly 10 years in the agency's counter-terrorism center and had several brief tours in Afghanistan before landing in Khost six months ago.

"People in the field are more engaged. She wanted to see that, to see the problems up close, and be on the cutting edge," said a former senior intelligence officer with whom she discussed the assignment.

The others who died included Jeremy Wise, one of the security guards, a 35-year old former Navy SEAL who was remembered at a Virginia Beach memorial service last Thursday as a good-humored father to his young son; Dane Clark Paresi, a 46-year old former Special Forces soldier who saw duty in Iraq and elsewhere in southwest Asia and was the second CIA-contracted security guard; a 30-year-old CIA analyst and Rockford, Ill., native named Elizabeth Hanson, whose academic background was in Russian literature; and CIA officer Scott Roberson, a 39-year-old former Atlanta police detective.

Harold Brown, another CIA officer and 37-year-old Fairfax, Va. father of three, also perished; he arrived in Afghanistan last April for a one-year term. His father said the government never explained the circumstances of his son's death, but that his son was among "the best this country had . . . . And they believed in what they were doing."

Out of sight of Taliban spies

At the Khost base, several officials said, the outer gate is presumed to be closely watched by Taliban spies, so the car carrying Balawi did not stop there. The driver was directed to a relatively empty corner of the compound, away from the main CIA buildings, to the makeshift interrogation center.

CIA officials have been particularly pained by what they call misinformed suggestions that Balawi was able to set off his bomb in the midst of an adoring throng. One emphasized that having different specialists at the meeting was reasonable and that Balawi "was about to be searched and he knew it. Had he been able to get closer -- and he couldn't -- he would have done even more damage."

The same official also cautions against second-guessing the episode from a distance, explaining that "the individuals with the best, first-hand knowledge of exactly what transpired are either dead or wounded."

Staff writer Peter Finn and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

© 2010 The Washington Post Company

[ablarc]

^ A sad tale.

[Ninjahedge]

We got lazy/kocky. Thought we knew everything and started taking things for granted.

It is also why the most experienced train rail workers are usually the most common to die accidentally. They get so used to being around the tracks they forget to "look both ways".

[lofter1]

Forced out for speaking the unvarnished truth?

German President Quits Over Remarks on Military

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/01/world/europe/01germany.html)
By JUDY DEMPSEY
May 31, 2010

BERLIN — President Horst Köhler of Germany resigned on Monday amid a barrage of criticism for remarks he made a week ago during a surprise visit to Afghanistan.

It is the first time that a German president has ever resigned.

Mr. Köhler’s resignation from the largely ceremonial post is a blow for Chancellor Angela Merkel, a close friend and an important conservative political ally.

Mrs. Merkel had lobbied hard for Mr. Kohler to become president, first in 2004 and again in May, 2009.

His resignation comes just a week after another leading conservative politician, Roland Koch resigned as premier of the state of Hesse, saying he had had enough of politics.

Mr. Köhler, a former director of the International Monetary Fund and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, shocked Germans earlier this month when he said that the country’s soldiers serving in Afghanistan or other peacekeeping missions were deployed to protect German economic interests.

Usually, German leaders justify their soldiers’ presence in the American-led coalition by saying they are needed to thwart would-be terrorists who might use Afghanistan as a base for attacks in Europe.

But, in his contentious remarks, Mr. Köhler said: “A country of our size, with its focus on exports and thus reliance on foreign trade, must be aware that military deployments are necessary in an emergency to protect our interests, for example, when it comes to trade routes, for example, when it comes to preventing regional instabilities that could negatively influence our trade, jobs and incomes.”

In a short statement on Monday, Mr. Köhler said he regretted his remarks, saying he could not remain in office in the face of intense criticism and loss of confidence. He was accompanied by his wife, Eva Luise.He praised the German troops serving abroad, adding he deeply regretted his remarks and how they were misunderstood.

“The criticism damaged the respect for my office,” he said. “I announce my resignation, immediately. I hope you understand my decision. It was an honor to serve Germany.”

After the resignation Mrs. Merkel canceled a planned visit with the German national soccer squad, in training in northern Italy for the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa, according to Germany’s DPA news agency.

Under German law, a successor must be chosen within 30 days by the so-called Federal Assembly of legislators and representatives chosen by Germany’s 16 states.

When Mr. Köhler was elected to his second five-year term in May, 2009, the assembly consisted of 612 members of the lower house of Parliament and an equal number of state representatives. He secured victory by a single vote, capturing re-election by 613 votes. Despite the ceremonial nature of the office, the election of a president is seen by politicians as a barometer of party solidarity.

Victor Homola contributed reporting.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[MidtownGuy]

Upwards of 3 trillion in mineral wealth (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/afghanistan/7835657/Afghanistan-claims-mineral-wealth-is-worth-3trillion.html) in those dusty mountains including lithium and metals that are in demand for high tech devices.

[lofter1]

Make way for the pillagers ...

World’s Mining Companies Covet Afghan Riches (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/18/world/asia/18mines.html)

This will do wonders for our supposed good intentions in that part of the world.

[lofter1]

Why? According to one Big Republican it's only because Obama, all by himself, wants us to be there ...

RNC Chair Michael Steele Converts Into Anti-War Protester:
Never ‘Engage In A Land War In Afghanistan’

THINK PROGRESS (http://thinkprogress.org/2010/07/02/steele-afghanistan-fail/)
July 2, 2010

At a fundraiser in Connecticut on yesterday, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele made some startling declarations (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/07/steele-afgahnistan-a-war-of-obamas-choosing-that-us-didnt-want-video.php) about the war in Afghanistan that put him on wrong side of the facts and in opposition with his own party’s position. While chiding Obama for not being a good enough “student of history,” Steele declared that the war — started nine years ago (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/world/asia/12afghan.html?_r=1) by President Bush — was “of Obama’s choosing,” explaining that America had not “actively prosecuted or wanted to engage” in it before Obama took office.

Steele went on to echo some progressives (http://pr.thinkprogress.org/2010/06/pr20100624), arguing that the U.S. shouldn’t be in Afghanistan because the war is a lost cause (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/michael_steele_speaks_truth_to.html):


STEELE: Keep in mind again, federal candidates, this was a war of Obama’s choosing. This is not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in. [...]

It was the president who was trying to be cute by half by flipping a script demonizing Iraq, while saying the battle really should be in Afghanistan. Well, if he’s such a student of history, has he not understood that you know that’s the one thing you don’t do, is engage in a land war in Afghanistan? All right, because everyone who has tried, over a thousand years of history, has failed. And there are reasons for that. There are other ways to engage in Afghanistan.

Steele’s suspicion of the war effort completely contradicts his party’s position (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_07/024548.php), but it also conflicts with his own prior statements.. After President Obama was “hammered by opponents on the right” last year for supposedly taking too long to announce his plan for the campaign, Steele called the war a “crucial fight (http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/12/obama-takes-on-dithering-in-afghanistan-speech.php).” Steele even attacked Obama for “sending mixed signals by outlining the exit before these troops even get on the ground undermines their ability to succeed.”

As the Wasington Monthly’s Steve Benen ponders, “What in the world is Steele talking about? (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2010_07/024548.php)” RNC spokesperson Doug Heye quickly tried answer that question, but the statement he released completely dodges (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum-line/2010/07/michael_steele_speaks_truth_to.html) both of Steele’s explosive claims:


The Chairman clearly supports our troops but believes that success of the war effort in Afghanistan requires the ongoing support of the American people.

The responsibility for building and maintaining that strategy falls squarely on the shoulders of the President. Like so many Americans, Chairman Steele wants to hear an explanation from President Obama on what his strategy is for winning the war in Afghanistan. The Petraeus hearings were an opportunity – a missed opportunity – to do that. Instead, all we hear from the President is criticism of his predecessor for doing exactly the same thing.

Steele also seems to be getting his foreign policy advice from the movie Princess Bride, paraphrasing a famous line (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093779/quotes) from the film: “never get involved in a land war in Asia (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfWDilXZQEo).”

Watch it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfWDilXZQEo

UPDATE Bill Kristol, the neoconservative editor of the Weekly Standard, has called for Steele to resign over the comments. "There are, of course, those who think we should pull out of Afghanistan, and they’re certainly entitled to make their case. But one of them shouldn't be the chairman (http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/letter-michael-steele) of the Republican party," Kristol wrote.

[Ninjahedge]

LOVE that movie.

And I can't believe people did not laught him off the "stage" as soon as he said this.

[lofter1]

The other endless war and the trouble with Tea Boys -- definitely a world apart from the Tea Partiers over on this side of the world ...

Boys In Afghanistan, Ctd

THE DAILY DISH (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/09/boys-in-afghanistan-ctd.html)
by Patrick Appel
01 SEP 2010

In response to Conor's post (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/09/boys-in-afghanistan.html), many readers have written in to recommend PBS's Frontline documentary (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/dancingboys/) on the topic, which we linked to (http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2010/04/the-dancing-boys-of-afghanistan.html) several months ago. A soldier writes:



I want to say that the soldiers on the ground know about this and know it is rampant. We used to call it “man love days.” We noted that attacks on our base did not occur during these events as all the men with money (Talibs) were engaging in this kind of activity. It is truly a disturbing sight to see something like this occurring and you can’t do anything about it. We were told it was a “cultural thing” and it wasn’t our business.

Another reader:



I was an aid worker in Afghanistan for a couple of years, so I certainly know the culture they are speaking about.

The bottom line is, women are off limits. You are going to see very few women once they reach the age of puberty, especially if you live in conservative parts of the country. And to mess with a woman is to risk your life: this is a part of the world that practices honor killings. So, you have an environment in which there are communities of men, with sexual urges, but who cannot have affairs with women. So what happens? The introduction of the "tea boy" (this is what I heard this position called in offices -- a young boy who fetches tea, but also provides other services). Someone quoted to me part of a Pashtun song: "There is a boy across the river with an ass like a peach/ but alas, I cannot swim."

Another:



The Kite Runner, Charlie Wilson's War, and Where Men Win Glory: Pat Tillman Story all discuss this type of behavior. Just about every book I've ever read about Afghanistan has touched on the issue of boy lovers.

COPYRIGHT © WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2010

[Ninjahedge]

This has been, oddly enough, the practice of many cultures throughout the ages.

Pretty scary that our "intelligence" allows us the opportunity to do things that even Animals look at as stupid.

[lofter1]

Military Seeks to Buy 10,000 Copies of Book of Secrets

NY TIMES (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/10/us/10books.html?_r=1&hp)
By SCOTT SHANE
September 9, 2010

WASHINGTON — Defense Department officials are negotiating to buy and destroy all 10,000 copies of the first printing of an Afghan war memoir they say contains intelligence secrets, according to two people familiar with the dispute.

The publication of “Operation Dark Heart (http://www.operationdarkheart.com/),” by Anthony A. Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency officer and a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, has divided military security reviewers and highlighted the uncertainty about what information poses a genuine threat to security.

http://images.indiebound.com/177/612/9780312612177.jpg

Disputes between the government and former intelligence officials over whether their books reveal too much have become commonplace. But veterans of the publishing industry and intelligence agencies could not recall another case in which an agency sought to dispose of a book that had already been printed.

Army reviewers suggested various changes and redactions and signed off on the edited book in January, saying they had “no objection on legal or operational security grounds,” and the publisher, St. Martin’s Press, planned for an Aug. 31 release.

But when the Defense Intelligence Agency saw the manuscript in July and showed it to other spy agencies, reviewers identified more than 200 passages suspected of containing classified information, setting off a scramble by Pentagon officials to stop the book’s distribution.

Release of the book “could reasonably be expected to cause serious damage to national security,” Lt. Gen. Ronald L. Burgess Jr., the D.I.A. director, wrote in an Aug. 6 memorandum. He said reviewers at the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency and United States Special Operations Command had all found classified information in the manuscript.

The disputed material includes the names of American intelligence officers who served with Colonel Shaffer and his accounts of clandestine operations, including N.S.A. eavesdropping operations, according to two people briefed on the Pentagon’s objections. They asked not to be named because the negotiations are supposed to be confidential.

By the time the D.I.A. objected, however, several dozen copies of the unexpurgated 299-page book had already been sent out to potential reviewers, and some copies found their way to online booksellers. The New York Times was able to buy a copy online late last week.

The dispute arises as the Obama administration is cracking down on disclosures of classified information to the news media, pursuing three such prosecutions to date, the first since 1985. Separately, the military has charged an Army private with giving tens of thousands of classified documents to the organization WikiLeaks.

Steven Aftergood, who directs the Project on Government Secrecy (http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/govsec/index.html) at the Federation of American Scientists, said the case showed that judgments on what is classified “are often arbitrary and highly subjective.” But in this case, he said, it is possible that D.I.A. reviewers were more knowledgeable than their Army counterparts about damage that disclosures might do.

Mr. Aftergood, who generally advocates open government but has been sharply critical of WikiLeaks, said the government’s move to stop distribution of the book would draw greater attention to the copies already in circulation.

“It’s an awkward set of circumstances,” he said. “The government is going to make this book famous.”

Colonel Shaffer, his lawyer, Mark S. Zaid, and lawyers for the publisher are near an agreement with the Pentagon over what will be taken out of a new edition to be published Sept. 24, with the allegedly classified passages blacked out. But the two sides are still discussing whether the Pentagon will buy the first printing, currently in the publisher’s Virginia warehouse, and at what price.

A Pentagon spokesman, Cmdr. Bob Mehal, said the book had not received a proper “information security review” initially and that officials were working “closely and cooperatively” with the publisher and author to resolve the problem.

In a brief telephone interview this week before Army superiors asked him not to comment further, Colonel Shaffer said he did not think it contained damaging disclosures. “I worked very closely with the Army to make sure there was nothing that would harm national security,” he said.

“Operation Dark Heart” is a breezily written, first-person account of Colonel Shaffer’s five months in Afghanistan in 2003, when he was a civilian D.I.A. officer based at Bagram Air Base near Kabul.

He worked undercover, using the pseudonym “Christopher Stryker,” and was awarded a Bronze Star for his work. Col. Jose R. Olivero of the Army, who recommended Colonel Shaffer for the honor, wrote that he had shown “skill, leadership, tireless efforts and unfailing dedication.”

But after 2003, Colonel Shaffer was involved in a dispute over his claim that an intelligence program he worked for, code named Able Danger, had identified Mohammed Atta as a terrorist threat before he became the lead hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. An investigation by the Defense Department’s inspector general later concluded (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/us/22able.html) that the claim was inaccurate.

In 2004, after Colonel Shaffer returned from another brief assignment in Afghanistan, D.I.A. officials charged him with violating several agency rules, including claiming excessive expenses for a trip to Fort Dix, N.J. Despite the D.I.A. accusations, which resulted in the revocation of his security clearance, the Army promoted him to lieutenant colonel from major in 2005. He was effectively fired in 2006 by D.I.A., which said he could not stay on without a clearance, and now works at a Washington research group, the Center for Advanced Defense Studies.

Even before the Able Danger imbroglio, Colonel Shaffer admits in his book, he was seen by some at D.I.A. as a risk-taking troublemaker. He describes participating in a midday raid on a telephone facility in Kabul to download the names and numbers of all the cellphone users in the country and proposing an intelligence operation to cross into Pakistan and spy on a Taliban headquarters.

In much of the book, he portrays himself as a brash officer who sometimes ran into resistance from timid superiors.

“A lot of folks at D.I.A. felt that Tony Shaffer thought he could do whatever the hell he wanted,” Mr. Shaffer writes about himself. “They never understood that I was doing things that were so secret that only a few knew about them.”

The book includes some details that typically might be excised during a required security review, including the names of C.I.A. and N.S.A. officers in Afghanistan, casual references to “N.S.A.’s voice surveillance system,” and American spying forays into Pakistan.

David Wise, author of many books on intelligence, said the episode recalled the C.I.A.’s response to the planned publication of his 1964 book on the agency, “The Invisible Government.” John A. McCone, then the agency’s director, met with him and his co-author, Thomas B. Ross, to ask for changes, but they were not government employees and refused the request.

The agency studied the possibility of buying the first printing, Mr. Wise said, but the publisher of Random House, Bennett Cerf, told the agency he would be glad to sell all the copies to the agency — and then print more.

“Their clumsy efforts to suppress the book only made it a bestseller,” Mr. Wise said.

Copyright 2010 The New York Times Company

[Ninjahedge]

It is actually VERY scary that people cannot write about whatever they want.

I realize the concern that some things may be compromised, but when they are generally amorphous and not easily defined, what are we saying here?

Freedom only if we say so?