Afghan leader: U.S. must stop targeting Taliban

[Gunny]

MSNBC News Services
updated 3:43 a.m. CT, Sat., April. 26, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - Afghan President Hamid Karzai criticized the U.S. and British conduct of the war in Afghanistan, insisting that his government must be accorded the lead in policy decisions.

In a New York Times interview published on Saturday, Karzai said he wanted U.S. forces to stop arresting suspected Taliban members and their sympathizers, saying that fear of arrest along with past mistreatment were discouraging them from coming forward and laying down their arms.

more ... http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24321473/

Then the Afghan government needs to take the lead in military decisions as well. And furnish its own military.

Idiot.

 

[rayboyusmc]

Nope, we are sending more Marines. We need to tell Iraq and Afghanistan you each have one year and we're going home. This open ended crap just encourages this dependency on US.

Or we pull our troops out of Iraq. Go back into Afghanistan will a real desire to win. Once we have stabilized Afghanistan, we check to see what's up in Iraq. If they haven't got their shit together by then, that's their issue not ours.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080426/ap_on_re_as/afghan_marines

 

[Gunny]

Nope, we are sending more Marines. We need to tell Iraq and Afghanistan you each have one year and we're going home. This open ended crap just encourages this dependency on US.

Or we pull our troops out of Iraq. Go back into Afghanistan will a real desire to win. Once we have stabilized Afghanistan, we check to see what's up in Iraq. If they haven't got their shit together by then, that's their issue not ours.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080426/ap_on_re_as/afghan_marines

We went to Afghanistan with a real desire to win and drove the Taliban into the ground or across the border to Pakistan. Unfortunately, as long as they are allowed to sit around in "Cambodia" and we aren't allowed to touch them, they have a safe haven to regroup and rearm.

You aren't suggesting we invade a sovereign nation are you? That's pretty much the only way we are going to have any more impact.

But hey .... if Karzai wants to do it himself, power to him. I damned sure wouldn't let him be calling the shots for something he himself can't do.

 

[rayboyusmc]

I believe they are no longer sitting around in "Cambodia" right now, but have reconstituted their strength elsewhere in Afghanistan. As in the attempt on Karzai's life yesterday.

We didn't put in enough of a force to stop then from coming back into power. We didn't infiltrate into their cells in Pakistan. We let Ossama escape from Tora Bora.

No, this war was lead by the same great Military Administration the gave us Messed Up Potamia.

Had we stayed the course and comitted adequate troops rather than invading Iraq, we could have a stable country there now. Then we could have dealt more with Saddam. His WMDS were gone. There were no drones that the administration told US could fly across the atlantic to bomb US. There were no chance of a fucking mushroom cloud.

IRAQ NEVER NEEDED TO BE INVADED. IF SADDAM WAS SO BAD, ASSASINATE HIM RATHER THAN KILL THOUSANDS OF INNOCENT AMERICANS AND IRAQIS. THE MAJORITY OF IRAQIS ARE WORSE OFF NOW THEN UNDER THE DICTATOR SADDAM. THIS IS WAR WAGED FOR EMPIRE, MONEY, ARROGANCE THAT WAS COMPOUNDED AND SQUARED TO INFINITY BY STUPIDITY.

[QUOTEThe Bush administration has concluded that Osama bin Laden was present during the battle for Tora Bora late last year and that failure to commit U.S. ground troops to hunt him was its gravest error in the war against al Qaeda, according to civilian and military officials with first-hand knowledge.

Intelligence officials have assembled what they believe to be decisive evidence, from contemporary and subsequent interrogations and intercepted communications, that bin Laden began the battle of Tora Bora inside the cave complex along Afghanistan's mountainous eastern border. Though there remains a remote chance that he died there, the intelligence community is persuaded that bin Laden slipped away in the first 10 days of December.



After-action reviews, conducted privately inside and outside the military chain of command, describe the episode as a significant defeat for the United States. A common view among those interviewed outside the U.S. Central Command is that Army Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the war's operational commander, misjudged the interests of putative Afghan allies and let pass the best chance to capture or kill al Qaeda's leader. Without professing second thoughts about Tora Bora, Franks has changed his approach fundamentally in subsequent battles, using Americans on the ground as first-line combat units.

In the fight for Tora Bora, corrupt local militias did not live up to promises to seal off the mountain redoubt, and some colluded in the escape of fleeing al Qaeda fighters. Franks did not perceive the setbacks soon enough, some officials said, because he ran the war from Tampa with no commander on the scene above the rank of lieutenant colonel. The first Americans did not arrive until three days into the fighting. "No one had the big picture," one defense official said.

The Bush administration has never acknowledged that bin Laden slipped through the cordon ostensibly placed around Tora Bora as U.S. aircraft began bombing on Nov. 30. Until now it was not known publicly whether the al Qaeda leader was present on the battlefield.
][/QUOTE]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A62618-2002Apr16


How long do you continue to support a mistake before you realize that you have to do something else?