22 US soldiers killed in two days

[Xenophon]

Once again....when and how?

Since you seem woefully ignorant of recent (and not so recent) history.
IN the late 70's the USSR invaded Afghanistan to protect their Border from Islamic terrorists. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics in retaliation (which had the positive aspect of not costing government money). When Reagan came to office he funded a resistance movement. When the resistance got rid of the Soviets, they made Afghanistan a fundamentalist Islamic state in a more or less permanent posture of Jihad; those are the Taliban. They committed a lot of atrocities including the gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural artifacts (two giant Buddha statues among others).
All the above is far enough back that some might call it ancient history.
Then on September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists attacked the US killing thousands. You can easily find this if you search the web for 9/11. This is the 3000 dead which were referenced.
Al Quaeda, in their typical fashion, taunted the world to let us know they were responsible without actually claiming they had done anything.
It was firmly established that the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan had helped train,fund, and deploy the terrorists. The US got a consensus among the nations of the world and went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and destroy Al Quaeda.
We have yet to leave.

Very cute.

And completly wrong.

The Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 to prop up a failed communist state they had controlled as a puppet, NOT to fight Islamic terorism.

The Soviets never had a problem with islamic terrorist due to their extreme habit of massive retaliation, it was only AFTER the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that islam became a problem for the new Russian federation.

The Taliban was created in 1995 by PAKISTAN to fill a power vacuum as the Northern Alliance (the side the US backed) and the Southern Pashtuns (Islamic fundies) who favored Iran and are ethnically linked to Iran.

The Taliban movement was welcomed at first because it cracked down on lawlessness, its excesses were not understood until it became a national Afghan movement.

When Sudan decided to expell Osmama Bin laden in 1996 the Taliban accepted him as he had formed and lead a group of Islamic fighters against the Soviets (his leadership was so bad he nearly got them all killed, but he was renown for NOT taking any US money or support).

Right before the 9/11 attack Bin Laden's Al Qaeda murdered the head of the Northern Allinace in a suicide attack (2 of them posed as reporters and blew him up with a camera.

After the 2001 terror attack on the USA Bush asked that Bin laden be expelled from Afghanistan, the Taliban was willing to discuss it but not seriously, so the USA turned to the now infuriated Northern Alliance (who were the famous mujadeen of the 1980s) and promised them air support and logistics if they expelled the Taliban.

This was done quickly and in dramatic fashion in early 2002.

It was AFTER all this US forces arrived on the groud and our troubles started.

We are now considered an occupier and the enemy, the US should withdraw immediately.

 

[rayboyusmc]

It might be all over if Bush hadn't deserted Afghanistan for Iraq.

It might never have started if Bush had accepted the offer to have Ossama turned over for trial outside the United States.

What is our mission there? How do we measure our success?

If you can't come up with answers, then get the hell out. At some point a rational person realizes when you need to abandon a plan that isn't working.

Smedley Butler said that War is a Racket: (WAR IS A RACKET - Major General Smedley D. Butler - USMC Retired)

It still is. This is more about money than anything about our security. How many billionaires are retiring on the money earned by the blood of our men and women who have died in Afghanistan? How many more Haliburtons do we the taxpayers have to fund to please the rich politicians?

Pull our troops out. If the Taliban gets too powerful and fuck with US, bomb the shit out of them until they have to start all over.

 

[Freeman]

it's seems like the holy place of neocons here
you guys, do you really believe that this war is legal? since when bush said the truth?

the coalition has massacred more people than any fundamentalists bigots supposed as threat there!

wake up, the british chief army has already talked about "impossibility to defeat taliban",..it's time to " negociate with them"! he said

and Karzai govt called to talk with taliban leaders.

 

[Xenophon]

It might be all over if Bush hadn't deserted Afghanistan for Iraq.

You can send a million soldiers and it will make no difference, Iraq means nothing as far as the Afghan war goes, it was unwinable from the start.

 

[CurveLight]

Once again....when and how?

Since you seem woefully ignorant of recent (and not so recent) history.
IN the late 70's the USSR invaded Afghanistan to protect their Border from Islamic terrorists. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics in retaliation (which had the positive aspect of not costing government money). When Reagan came to office he funded a resistance movement. When the resistance got rid of the Soviets, they made Afghanistan a fundamentalist Islamic state in a more or less permanent posture of Jihad; those are the Taliban. They committed a lot of atrocities including the gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural artifacts (two giant Buddha statues among others).
All the above is far enough back that some might call it ancient history.
Then on September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists attacked the US killing thousands. You can easily find this if you search the web for 9/11. This is the 3000 dead which were referenced.
Al Quaeda, in their typical fashion, taunted the world to let us know they were responsible without actually claiming they had done anything.
It was firmly established that the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan had helped train,fund, and deploy the terrorists. The US got a consensus among the nations of the world and went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and destroy Al Quaeda.
We have yet to leave.

That simply regurgitated talking points from cnn and fox. I believe the Taliban made a public offer to the bush admin that they would help round up bin laden and alkida if they were provided with evidence they were responsible for 9E. No such evidence was produced.

 

[Charles Stucker]

That simply regurgitated talking points from cnn and fox. I believe the Taliban made a public offer to the bush admin that they would help round up bin laden and alkida if they were provided with evidence they were responsible for 9E. No such evidence was produced.

No I simply restated known facts from history. I may have simplified for the audience being addressed, as Xenophon thoughtfully demonstrated, but those are facts.

Presumably the "Lack of evidence" was along the lines of "the Taliban won't acknowledge any evidence we produce" so, big surprise, Bush went ahead and invaded. The indisputable fact remains that for Afghanistan Bush got an international consensus. Bush failed to get a consensus on Iraq, had a weak case to begin and still invaded Iraq.
The US should never have gone into Iraq, it was a strategic blunder; as I stated then to people who knew me.
Afghanistan was far more defensible, though I personally would have been OK with systematically destroying all the military bases there with an air campaign and leaving the fighting on the ground to the locals.

 

[CurveLight]

That simply regurgitated talking points from cnn and fox. I believe the Taliban made a public offer to the bush admin that they would help round up bin laden and alkida if they were provided with evidence they were responsible for 9E. No such evidence was produced.

No I simply restated known facts from history. I may have simplified for the audience being addressed, as Xenophon thoughtfully demonstrated, but those are facts.

Presumably the "Lack of evidence" was along the lines of "the Taliban won't acknowledge any evidence we produce" so, big surprise, Bush went ahead and invaded. The indisputable fact remains that for Afghanistan Bush got an international consensus. Bush failed to get a consensus on Iraq, had a weak case to begin and still invaded Iraq.
The US should never have gone into Iraq, it was a strategic blunder; as I stated then to people who knew me.
Afghanistan was far more defensible, though I personally would have been OK with systematically destroying all the military bases there with an air campaign and leaving the fighting on the ground to the locals.

A couple of things may have been fact but it was largely talking points but people like you cannot, by choice, see the difference. This is why you dismiss the fact the Bush admin never even offered evidence to the Taliban. It's why you falsely claim "Islamic terrorists" did 9/11 as a "fact." It's a conspiracy theory but you accept it as fact. Why? Because one of the world's most brutal and dishonest pieces of government said that is what happened?

 

[garyd]

Offering evidence to Sheik Omar who knew in advance that 9/11 was going to happen and how because he is Osama's father-in-law? What would be the point? It was a stalling tactic on the part of the Taliban and nothing more.

 

[eagleseven]

There's no point in arguing with the 9/11 truthers, Mr. Stucker. You'd have better luck convincing a Baptist that God is dead...

 

[Si modo]

There's no point in arguing with the 9/11 truthers, Mr. Stucker. You'd have better luck convincing a Baptist that God is dead...

I had no idea that Curvelight is a troother. That explains a lot.

 

[eagleseven]

There's no point in arguing with the 9/11 truthers, Mr. Stucker. You'd have better luck convincing a Baptist that God is dead...

I had no idea that Curvelight is a troother. That explains a lot.

Curvedlight hides it well, to maintain his credibility, but still reveals himself in threads like these.

 

[Douger]

If they are dumb enough to follow illegal orders ?
When I was in the service we used to call the marines" land mine detectors"
They ALWAYS go in first. To let you know where the mines and snipers were located.
These brainwashed hillbillies should take the next commercial flight home and tell MR Basketball and the scumbags on Krapital Hell to go deal with it themselves.

 

[eagleseven]

All the Marines I know are college-educated.

 

[eots]

Terrell (Terry) E. Arnold, MA – Former Deputy Director, Office of Counter-Terrorism and Emergency Planning, U.S. State Department. Former Chairman, Department of International Studies, National War College. Graduate of the National War College. Retired Senior Foreign Service Officer of the U.S. Department of State. He has served as a security and crisis management consultant for several Fortune 500 companies. He also served as a crisis management consultant for several Federal agencies, including The State Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Customs Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. U.S. Navy veteran of World War II and Korean conflict. Author, co-author, and editor of Fighting Back: Winning the War Against Terrorism (1986), Beyond the Iran-Contra Crisis : The Shape of U. S. Anti-Terrorism Policy in the Post-Reagan Era (1988), The Violence Formula: Why People Lend Sympathy and Support to Terrorism (1990), Think About Terrorism: The New Warfare (1991), A World Less Safe: Essays on Conflict in the 21st Century (2005).
Essay It is Vital to Move Beyond 911 7/3/07:

"More than five years after the fact, Washington leadership keeps the American people fixated on the events of 9/11. They have brought us no closer than we were on September 12, 2001 to resolving how it was executed and by what enemy. They tell us repeatedly that it was the work of al Qaida, but they have yet to show us the proofs. They told us the official version of what happened that day, but their story is laced with contradictions, and the facts visible on the ground at the time belie much of the official account. Our leadership gave us a Sopranos blank screen ending to a terrible tragedy, while working below the radar to avoid our established laws and slowly to destroy our democratic institutions. Every American must look carefully at the pattern of decay that began with 9/11. ...

As an alleged post 9/11 defense, the War on Terrorism is a gigantic fraud. ...

We cannot let a single criminal act, the facts and perpetrators of which are still obscure, destroy our society. With all respect due to those who lost family and friends in the attacks of 9/11, there is no evident search for justice, truth or our future safety in the US government actions outlined in this paper. Instead we are watching the most brutal power games of our times that benefit the few at the expense of the rest of us." Jeff Rense Program



Bio: Library of Congress




Angelo M. Codevilla, PhD – Former U.S. State Department Foreign Service Officer specializing in U.S. intelligence operations in Western Europe. Member of President-Elect Ronald Reagan's Transition Team within the State Department and principal author of the team's report on intelligence. Former Staff Member, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee dealing with oversight of the intelligence services 1977 - 1985. Former U.S. Naval Officer. Currently Vice Chairman of the U.S. Army War College Board of Visitors.

Professor of International Relations, Boston University 1995 - present. Fellow of the Claremont Institute. Former academic appointments include Professorial Lecturer at Georgetown University; Senior Research Fellow for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University; Assistant Professor, Grove City College; and Assistant Professor, North Dakota State College.

Senior Editor of The American Spectator. Author of Advice to War Presidents: A Remedial Course in Statecraft (2009), No Victory, No Peace (2004), The Character of Nations: How Politics Makes and Breaks Prosperity, Family, and Civility (2000), Between The Alps and a Hard Place (2000), The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli, translated by Angelo Codevilla (1995), Informing Statecraft: Intelligence for a New Century (1992), While Others Build: The Commonsense Approach to the Strategic Defence Initiative (1988), Modern France (1974). Co-author of War: Ends and Means (1988), Arms Control Delusion (1987).
Essay in The American Spectator 3/13/09:

"Seven years after Osama bin Laden's last verifiable appearance among the living, there is more evidence for Elvis's presence among us than for his. Hence there is reason to ask whether the paradigm of Osama bin Laden as terrorism's deus ex machina and of al Qaeda as the prototype of terrorism may be an artifact of our Best and Brightest's imagination, and whether investment in this paradigm has kept our national security establishment from thinking seriously about our troubles' sources. So let us take a fresh look at the fundamentals.

Negative evidence alone compels the conclusion that Osama is long since dead. Since October 2001, when Al Jazeera's Tayseer Alouni interviewed him, no reputable person reports having seen him—not even after multiple-blind journeys through intermediaries. The audio and video tapes alleged to be Osama's never convinced impartial observers. The guy just does not look like Osama. Some videos show him with a Semitic aquiline nose, while others show him with a shorter, broader one. Next to that, differences between colors and styles of beard are small stuff.
Nor does the tapes' Osama sound like Osama. In 2007 Switzerland's Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which does computer voice recognition for bank security, compared the voices on 15 undisputed recordings of Osama with the voices on 15 subsequent ones attributed to Osama, to which they added two by native Arab speakers who had trained to imitate him and were reading his writings. All of the purported Osama recordings (with one falling into a gray area) differed clearly from one another as well as from the genuine ones. By contrast, the CIA found all the recordings authentic. It is hard to imagine what methodology might support this conclusion.

Also in 2007, Professor Bruce Lawrence, who heads Duke University's religious studies program, argued in a book on Osama's messages that their increasingly secular language is inconsistent with Osama's Wahhabism. Lawrence noted as well that the Osama figure in the December 2001 video, which many have taken as his assumption of responsibility for 9/11, wears golden rings—decidedly un-Wahhabi. He also writes with the wrong hand. Lawrence concluded that the messages are fakes, and not very good ones. The CIA has judged them all good.
Above all, whereas Elvis impersonators at least sing the King's signature song, "You ain't nutin' but a hound dawg," the words on the Osama tapes differ substantively from what the real Osama used to say—especially about the most important matter. On September 16, 2001, on Al Jazeera, Osama said of 9/11: "I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation." Again, in the October interview with Tayseer Alouni, he limited his connection with 9/11 to ideology: "If they mean, or if you mean, that there is a link as a result of our incitement, then it is true. We incite…" But in the so-called "confession video" that the CIA found in December, the Osama figure acts like the chief conspirator. The fact that the video had been made for no self-evident purpose except perhaps to be found by the Americans should have raised suspicion. Its substance, the celebratory affirmation of a responsibility for 9/11 that Osama had denied, should also have weighed against the video's authenticity. Why would he wait to indict himself until after U.S. forces and allies had secured Afghanistan? But the CIA acted as if it had caught Osama red-handed." The American Spectator




Coleen Rowley – Former Special Agent and Minneapolis Division Counsel, FBI. 24-year FBI career. Agent Rowley was selected one of Time Magazine's three 2002 Persons of the Year for revealing FBI headquarters' efforts to "throw up roadblocks and undermine" FBI field investigations of Al Qaeda operatives in the four weeks prior to 9/11.

Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller 5/21/02: Regarding FBI headquarters (FBIHQ) obstruction of terrorism investigations. "The fact is that key FBIHQ personnel whose job it was to assist and coordinate with field division agents on terrorism investigations and the obtaining and use of FISA searches (and who theoretically were privy to many more sources of intelligence information than field division agents), continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine Minneapolis' by-now desperate efforts to obtain a FISA search warrant, long after the French intelligence service provided its information and probable cause became clear. HQ personnel brought up almost ridiculous questions in their apparent efforts to undermine the probable cause. ...

When, in a desperate 11th hour measure to bypass the FBIHQ roadblock, the Minneapolis Division undertook to directly notify the CIA's Counter Terrorist Center (CTC), FBIHQ personnel actually chastised the Minneapolis agents for making the direct notification without their approval ...

I know I shouldn't be flippant about this, but jokes were actually made that the key FBIHQ personnel had to be spies or moles, like Robert Hansen, who were actually working for Osama Bin Laden to have so undercut Minneapolis' effort." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews - TIME.com


Interview 9/25/05: "And what I did was, I think, I put the first good dent in the blanket defense that for 8 and a half, 9 months, was holding - that 9/11 could not have been prevented.

... we were all settling for, ‘9/11 could not have been prevented’, it was ‘hindsight’. Condi Rice, "Well, no one could have ever imagined that someone would fly…" and of course, when she says that, she’s disregarding a whole bunch of things. People are letting her get away with it. She’s disregarding the fact of two or three prior incidents of people trying to fly planes into buildings, attempted takeovers of cockpits…We’re also ignoring the fact that in Minneapolis [FBI office], the acting supervisor, arguing with [FBI] headquarters said, ‘This is a guy [Zacarias Moussaoui] that could fly a plane into the World Trade Center’ on August 22nd!" http://www.nowpubli


Editor's note: Despite Agent Rowley's high-profile revelations and intimate knowledge of FBI headquarter's efforts to obstruct investigations of Al Qaeda-related terrorist activities in the four weeks prior to 9/11, the 9/11 Commission never interviewed her. The 9/11 Commission's "full and complete account of the circumstances surrounding the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks." contains no mention of her allegations that FBI headquarters "continued to, almost inexplicably, throw up roadblocks and undermine" FBI field agent counterterrorism efforts. The Commission Report only obliquely mentions Agent Rowley in a single footnote. See also Special Agent Robert Wright and Special Agent Harry Samit.

Bio: The Claremont Institute - California Public Policy Conference featuring Mitt Romney


Patriots Question 9/11 - Responsible Criticism of the 9/11 Commission Report

 

[Freeman]

Once again....when and how?

Since you seem woefully ignorant of recent (and not so recent) history.
IN the late 70's the USSR invaded Afghanistan to protect their Border from Islamic terrorists. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics in retaliation (which had the positive aspect of not costing government money). When Reagan came to office he funded a resistance movement. When the resistance got rid of the Soviets, they made Afghanistan a fundamentalist Islamic state in a more or less permanent posture of Jihad; those are the Taliban. They committed a lot of atrocities including the gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural artifacts (two giant Buddha statues among others).
All the above is far enough back that some might call it ancient history.
Then on September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists attacked the US killing thousands. You can easily find this if you search the web for 9/11. This is the 3000 dead which were referenced.
Al Quaeda, in their typical fashion, taunted the world to let us know they were responsible without actually claiming they had done anything.
It was firmly established that the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan had helped train,fund, and deploy the terrorists. The US got a consensus among the nations of the world and went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and destroy Al Quaeda.
We have yet to leave.

Taliban was created and financed by US, for that reason they are always not listed as terrorist organisation.
they are just extremists, but they never committed massacres nor target civilians like the bloody coalition and nato!

in late 90s, alqaeda was created by CIA to terrorize ME citizens and find motives to invade those countries.

 

[Si modo]

Once again....when and how?

Since you seem woefully ignorant of recent (and not so recent) history.
IN the late 70's the USSR invaded Afghanistan to protect their Border from Islamic terrorists. Jimmy Carter boycotted the Moscow Olympics in retaliation (which had the positive aspect of not costing government money). When Reagan came to office he funded a resistance movement. When the resistance got rid of the Soviets, they made Afghanistan a fundamentalist Islamic state in a more or less permanent posture of Jihad; those are the Taliban. They committed a lot of atrocities including the gratuitous destruction of ancient cultural artifacts (two giant Buddha statues among others).
All the above is far enough back that some might call it ancient history.
Then on September 11, 2001 Islamic terrorists attacked the US killing thousands. You can easily find this if you search the web for 9/11. This is the 3000 dead which were referenced.
Al Quaeda, in their typical fashion, taunted the world to let us know they were responsible without actually claiming they had done anything.
It was firmly established that the Taliban ruling in Afghanistan had helped train,fund, and deploy the terrorists. The US got a consensus among the nations of the world and went into Afghanistan to topple the Taliban and destroy Al Quaeda.
We have yet to leave.

Taliban was created and financed by US, for that reason they are always not listed as terrorist organisation.
they are just extremists, but they never committed massacres nor target civilians like the bloody coalition and nato!

in late 90s, alqaeda was created by CIA to terrorize ME citizens and find motives to invade those countries.

Ummm, no. The Taliban was not financed by the USA nor was Al qaeda created by the CIA.

 

[Colin]

If they are dumb enough to follow illegal orders ?
When I was in the service we used to call the marines" land mine detectors"
They ALWAYS go in first. To let you know where the mines and snipers were located.
These brainwashed hillbillies should take the next commercial flight home and tell MR Basketball and the scumbags on Krapital Hell to go deal with it themselves.

And no doubt the Marines referred to you as a REMF!

 

[Colin]

Taliban was created and financed by US, for that reason they are always not listed as terrorist organisation.
they are just extremists, but they never committed massacres nor target civilians like the bloody coalition and nato!

in late 90s, alqaeda was created by CIA to terrorize ME citizens and find motives to invade those countries.

Are you really that ignorant of events in Afghanistan. How can you sit there and type such absolute bollocks on the page and expect anyone with a shred of knowledge to swallow your platitudes of utter crap!

The Taliban never committed massacres against civilians!??? Where the fuck did you pull that bullshit from? You need to spend some time researching the Taliban before you speak out of that arsehole of yours. Here, to set you on your way from utter ignorance within which the remnants of your mind is trapped, is an article from the Sunday Times in 1998:

No mercy: men, women and children were murdered in their homes as Taliban gunmen took over Mazar-e-Sharif

The Sunday Times , Nov.1,1998
By Michael Sheridan
THE first detailed eyewitness accounts of the massacre of up to 8,000 people by Islamic fundamentalist Taliban fighters who ran amok in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif last August have been passed to western governments.

Testimony compiled by international observers and handed to western diplomats in Pakistan reveals that hundreds of people were packed into containers where they suffocated when the doors were locked in the searing midday heat. Men, women and children were shot in their homes and on the street, and hospital patients were murdered in their beds.

The massacre occurred when, during an offensive aimed at seizing full control of Afghanistan for the first time, Mazar-e-Sharif was overrun by the Taliban, who have imposed the world's most extreme interpretation of Islam, barring women from education, banning television and forcing men to wear beards.

Statements made available to The Sunday Times describe a campaign of slaughter directed against a Shia Muslim minority, the Hazara. The evidence, regarded by experienced aid officials as "highly credible", paints a ghastly picture of butchery and rape as the Taliban shot and cut the throats of Hazaras.

The claims are supported by the influential American group Human Rights Watch, which is due to reveal its own findings on the massacre today and will call on the United Nations to investigate what it describes as "one of the single worst examples of killings of civilians in Afghanistan's 20-year war".

How the Taliban slaughtered thousands of people

Read the rest of the article and educate yourself. This is just ONE example of how the Taliban treat the civilian population. Who do you think are STILL killing women and children in large numbers in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Who do you think is responsible for the recent car bomb atrocities? The fucking Taliban, you idiot!

I could link you to example after example demonstrating Taliban massacres against civilians, but I will not put more effort in for a turd like you. Go educate yourself before shitting on the pages of USMB!

 

[Contumacious]

Mr obama want to send more youngs to fight there in this illagal war

“Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full well that my son, my family, this nation and this world were betrayed by George Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agendas after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy … not for the real reason, because the Arab Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy."

Cindy Sheehan

.

 

[Diuretic]

Wobblies slogan:

"A bayonet is a weapon with a worker at both ends."

Relevant now. Relevant then. Relevant always until we reach the point we can agree the state needs to be abolished in favour of humanity.