Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops is kicking Uncle Sam's ass

[SaxxyBlues]

Ragheads

 

[Admiral Rockwell Tory]

Bin Laden had nothing to do with Afghanistan. He was killed in Pakistan.

You didn't read the links. Better to post with KNOWLEDGE.

There isn't any knowledge in your links.

 

[candycorn]

No reason to attack Afghanistan? Really? You mean no reason other than it was run by the Taliban who was hosting the scum bag who just masterminded flying commercial jets full of innocent people into the Twin Towers...also full of innocent people? Why don't you go f**k yourself, dude! If that wasn't a reason to invade another country then there IS no reason!

The only problem with that is that all 19 hijackers were Saudis. None were from Afghanistan. So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia?

Not true though most were.

The muscle hijackers were all trained in Afghanistan; practicing slitting the throats of camels with small knives. They made their martyrdom tapes at AQU.

 

[anotherlife]

OP is probably too young to remember when we pulled out of Vietnam: The helicopters on the rooftops, the mad dash of friendlies trying to get the hell out before the NVA overran the entire country.

Afghanistan isn't "collapsing", as the OP would like us to believe. We are constantly re-vamping our strategy there, and the Taliban is slowly being worn down to the point that they are willing to negotiate with us.

God help us all is we don't prevail: The poppy fields will flood this country with cheap heroin, and Afghanistan will become the central point for all radical Islamic state-sponsored terrorist attacks.

No, because we have already destroyed the Swiss banks, and the Latinos will never allow the Afghanistan punks to their sales turf, which is the whole USA.

 

[protectionist]

You have already nuked USMB members with ignorance.

And you allude to "ignorance" of what ?

 

[protectionist]

You don't know shit from Shinola on this topic anymore than Alexandria Occasional-Cortex can tell you how many branches of government there are.

You really need to get some new reading material. That shit will rot your brain.

I'm discerning that you are painfully ignorant of what's going on, and rather than read the links and get yourself informed, you pretend that you know something here, and hope others will go along. Not smart.

Now go back and read the links, so you can find out what's going on. The more you post without the basic knowledge, the dumber you'll be seen.

 

[protectionist]

George Clooney? The son of a TV newsman and a beauty contestant. He never graduated from college, and never served in the military. Who cares what his opinion is or may be.

The post is about what Obama said, not George Clooney. If you had read the very brief link, you wouldn't have had to ask the question (and look foolish).

 

[protectionist]

Go put your Saudi conspiracy theories back under your bed. We have heard them all and it just proves that you are clueless.

Look who's talking.

 

[protectionist]

Contrary to what you believe, nukes are a little more complicated than pushing a button to start a countdown timer. Also, you source that claim that the Pakis carried their nukes around in delivery vans, that is just laughable! Do you have any idea how heavy those things are?

What is laughable is you (with no knowledge) disputing what has been known for by the US intelligence community for years. You look worse and worse with every post.

 

[protectionist]

Garbage, baby, garbage!

The Atlantic? You may as well have read the Communist Manifesto, Mao's Little Red Book, and the Democratic Party platform.

Oh the invalidation card, huh ? Aren't you clever ? The links (wherever they are from) all agree with one another, and I could give you a dozen more from left, right, and center. Available on request. You're digging yourself into a hole.

 

[protectionist]

Yeah, the Indians would LOVE that!

Idiot!

I don't know what your problem is . Are you just too LAZY too read and learn ?

One of those guys who dropped out of school in the 6th grade ? ​

Too egotistical to admit that you came in here clueless ? Is that it ? Sheesh.

The links aren't too long. You could finish them in 15 minutes. Better than

making a fool out of yourself here.​

​

 

[protectionist]

There isn't any knowledge in your links.

That a brilliant statement for someone who didn't read them to make.

By now, we all know you're a moron, you don't have to prove it.

 

[Wyatt earp]

The USA should never have got itself bogged in Afghanistan. There was no reason to attack or invade.

The USA is repeating the mistakes of the past in Afghanistan and it is possible that a major military defeat could cause the USA to cut and run leaving behind a horrific mess.

The First Coward Donald Trump is too afraid to visit either Iraq or Afghanistan.

"A bunch of dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops is kicking Uncle Sam's ass ... various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops."

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

November has been quite a month, so far, in Afghanistan. The level of violence has been appalling and the most serious recent atrocity was yet another suicide bombing in Kabul. It killed over fifty people and injured twice that many but didn’t merit a Trump tweet, which isn’t surprising because he doesn’t seem to be interested in the place. Further, as reported by the Washington Post on November 19, he hasn’t visited a single country in which his troops are fighting.

The reason he hasn’t visited his troops in such areas is because he is a coward. He is a physical yellow-belly who lacks the courage to go anywhere near a war zone. He is below contempt, but he could gain a little bit of respect if he ordered the US and NATO to get out of Afghanistan.

Early in November the New York Times summed up the shambles in Afghanistan by stating
In the past week, the Times confirmed that 118 members of the security forces were killed, a significant increase over the previous week, but, unusually, there were no confirmed deaths of civilians. Fighting spread to nine provinces, but the emphasis shifted to the south as cold weather intensified in the north. An entire battalion of Afghan border soldiers was wiped out in western Farah Province, and the Taliban tried — unsuccessfully so far — to take over Jaghori District in Ghazni, an anti-insurgent stronghold.

On November 3 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces. Major Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard was instructing Afghan soldiers when one of them shot him dead. He left a wife and seven young children. On the same day, as reported by the New York Times, twenty Afghan soldiers were reported missing after a Taliban attack in Uruzgan Province, and on November 5, six policemen and seven soldiers were killed in Ghazni, two Afghan Humvees were blown up, 17 policemen were killed in Kandahar Province and seven soldiers in Herat.

Seven soldiers were killed on November 7, two of them in Nangarhar Province in an airstrike by United States aircraft while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was visiting foreign troops in Herat. The following day seventeen soldiers were killed along with eight policemen.

After the NYT’s report that no civilians had been killed in the first week, the situation changed dramatically and the Taliban killed 15 civilians and 10 members of the special forces in Ghazni on November 11, then “In the western province of Farah, at least 37 members of the Afghan security forces were killed in overnight attacks by Taliban fighters on checkpoints that triggered hours of fighting, local officials said on November 12.” That was the day that a loonie of Islamic State killed at least six civilians and wounded 20 others in a suicide bombing in Kabul.

Stoltenberg told foreign soldiers in Herat they “have to remember that you are in Afghanistan because NATO is in Afghanistan to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism. So this is about helping the Afghans but also about helping ourselves. It is in our security interest to make sure that Afghanistan not once again becomes a platform, a territory, a country where terrorist organizations can prepare, plan attacks against our own countries.”

This is fallacious nonsense, but he’s got to say it because there is no real reason for the NATO presence in Afghanistan. In the words of the World War One dirge sung by British soldiers in France, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here . . .”

They got there because the United States was hell-bent on war. And this war has had a most significant and disastrous spin-off that the drum-thumpers didn’t think about. It has shown the world that there has been yet another war which the US couldn’t and can’t win.

The foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan — almost 3,500 of them, including 1,892 American combatants — have died for nothing. The entire war has been a disgraceful catastrophe, and as I recorded in Counterpunch in 2012, the US-NATO fiasco was well described by US Colonel David Davis:
The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possesses the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO’s most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eavesdrop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that are as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.

Remember the idiot General Petraeus? In 2010 he declared “We must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and International Security Assistance Forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people and that we are in this to win. That is our clear objective.”

But they lost. And there’s no point in reinforcing failure. US-NATO forces failed to follow almost every Principle of War, and they paid the price.

Get the hell out of Afghanistan. Now.

Written by a surender monkey french dude...



Go figure.


.

 

[protectionist]

There isn't any knowledge in your links.

The Pentagon's Secret Plans to Secure Pakistan's Nuclear Arsenal | Analysis | NTI

Nuclear Threat Initiative - Wikipedia

“There are three threats,” says Graham Allison, an expert on nuclear weapons who directs the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard. The first is “a terrorist theft of a nuclear weapon, which they take to Mumbai or New York for a nuclear 9/11. The second is a transfer of a nuclear weapon to a state like Iran. The third is a takeover of nuclear weapons by a militant group during a period of instability or splintering of the state.”​

Pakistani leaders say their military and security organizations are immune to radical influence. “I have seen no significant radicalization of any of our men in uniform,” said the Inter-Services Intelligence senior official National Journal interviewed in Islamabad. “This is simply a lie.” But the evidence suggests otherwise. Sympathy for jihadist-oriented groups among at least some Pakistani military men has been acknowledged for years, even inside Pakistan; recently a brigadier, Ali Khan, was arrested on charges of maintaining contact with a banned extremist organization.

Yet neither the Pakistani army nor the SPD seems to consider jihadism the most immediate threat to the security of its nuclear weapons. Instead, the Pakistani chief of army staff, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani's worry, as expressed to Khalid Kidwai, the retired lieutenant general in charge of securing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal, who commands a security apparatus called the Strategic Plans Division (SPD), was focused on the United States.

According to sources in Pakistan, Kayani believes that the U.S. has the technical means to stage simultaneous raids on Pakistan’s nuclear facilities. Kidwai promised that the counterintelligence branch of the SPD remained focused on rooting out American and Indian spies from the Pakistani nuclear-weapons complex, and on foiling other American espionage methods. Pakistan’s air force trains its pilots to intercept U.S. spy planes; its military assumes (correctly) that the U.S. devotes many resources to aerial and satellite surveillance of its nuclear sites.

Pakistan would be an obvious place for a jihadist organization to seek a nuclear weapon or fissile material: It is the only Muslim-majority state, out of the 50 or so in the world, to have successfully developed nuclear weapons. Its central government has serious trouble controlling the many corners of its territory. Its security services are infiltrated by an unknown number of jihadist sympathizers; a number of jihadist organizations are headquartered there and have relations with the government. And the weapons are stored on bases and in facilities spread across the country.

In an interview this summer in Islamabad, a senior official of the Inter-Services Intelligence directorate, the Pakistani military’s spy agency (ISI), told National Journal that U.S. fears about the safety of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were entirely unfounded. “Of all the things in the world to worry about, the issue you should worry about the least is the safety of our nuclear program. It is completely secure.”

Like many statements made by Pakistan’s leaders, this one contained large elements of deceit. Militants have already targeted at least six facilities widely believed to be associated with Pakistan’s nuclear program. To hide weapons from the prying satellite eyes of the United States, Pakistan moves warheads around in unmarked vans with low security profiles down busy roads. In fact, Pakistanis see jihadists as less threatening than Washington, which they believe wants to seize their nuclear weapons.

It is true that the Strategic Plans Division is considered to be a highly professional organization, at least by Pakistani-government standards of professionalism. Kidwai, its leader, is well regarded by Western nuclear-security experts. “I think it’s overstated that the weapons can get into bad hands,” >> Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s former president, who created the SPD.

But some U.S. intelligence experts aren’t so sure. A popular text message in the days after the Bin Laden raid read, “If you honk your horn, do so lightly, because the Pakistani army is asleep.”

Americans also question Pakistan’s nuclear vigilance. Thomas Fingar, a former chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President George W. Bush, said it is logical that any nuclear-weapons state would budget the resources necessary to protect its arsenal -- but that “we do not know that this is the case in Pakistan.” The key concern, Fingar says, is that “we do not know if what the military has done is adequate to protect the weapons from insider threats, or if key military units have been penetrated by extremists. We hope the weapons are safe, but we may be whistling past the graveyard.”

Pakistanis are correct to believe that the U.S. government -- because it does not trust Pakistan, because it knows that the civilian leadership is weak, and because it does not have a complete intelligence picture -- is worried that the SPD could fail in its mission, and that fissile material or a nuclear weapon could go missing. Concerned that Pakistan’s ethnic rivalries, corruption, and terrorism could one day tear the country apart, the Pentagon has developed a set of highly detailed plans to grapple with nuclear insecurity in Pakistan. “It’s safe to assume that planning for the worst-case scenario regarding Pakistan nukes has already taken place inside the U.S. government,” Roger Cressey, a former deputy director of counterterrorism under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, told NBC News in August. “This issue remains one of the highest priorities of the U.S. intelligence community … and the White House.”

During Senate hearings for her confirmation as secretary of State in 2005, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was asked by Sen. John Kerry what would happen to Pakistan’s nukes in the event of an Islamic coup in Islamabad. “We have noted this problem, and we are prepared to try to deal with it,” Rice said.

Those preparations have been extensive. According to military and intelligence sources, any answer to a Pakistani nuclear crisis would involve something along the following lines: If a single weapon or a small amount of nuclear material were to go missing, the response would be contained -- Abbottabad redux, although with a higher potential for U.S. casualties. The United States Joint Special Operations Command maintains rotating deployments of specially trained units in the region, most of them Navy SEALs and Army explosive-ordnance-disposal specialists, who are trained to deal with nuclear weapons that have fallen into the wrong hands. Their area of operation includes the former Soviet states, where there is a large amount of loose fissile material, and, of course, Pakistan. JSOC “has units and aircraft and parachutes on alert in the region for nuclear issues, and regularly inserts units and equipment for prep,” says a military official who was involved in supporting these technicians.

Seizing or remotely disabling a weapon of mass destruction is what’s known in military jargon as a “render-safe mission” -- and JSOC has evidently pulled off such missions before. In his memoir, Hugh Shelton, who chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1997 to 2001, recalls an incident from the 1990s in which the CIA told the Special Operations Command that a ship had left North Korea with what Shelton describes as “an illegal weapon” on board. Where it was headed, the U.S. didn’t know. He wrote: “It was a very time-sensitive mission in which a specific SEAL Team Six component was called into action. While I cannot get into the tactical elements or operational details of this mission, what I can say is that our guys were able to ‘immobilize’ the weapon system in a special way without leaving any trace.”

Much more challenging than capturing and disabling a loose nuke or two, however, would be seizing control of -- or at least disabling -- the entire Pakistani nuclear arsenal in the event of a jihadist coup, civil war, or other catastrophic event. This “disablement campaign,” as one former senior Special Operations planner calls it, would be the most taxing and most dangerous of any special mission that JSOC could find itself tasked with -- orders of magnitude more difficult and expansive than Abbottabad. The scale of such an operation would be too large for U.S. Special Operations components alone, so an across-the-board disablement campaign would be led by U.S. Central Command -- the area command that is responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia, and runs operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and U.S. Pacific Command.

JSOC would take the lead, however, accompanied by civilian experts. It has been preparing for such an operation for years. JSOC forces are trained to breach the inner perimeters of nuclear installations and then to find, secure, evacuate -- or, if that’s not possible, to “render safe” -- any live weapons. At the Nevada National Security Site, northwest of Las Vegas, Delta Force and SEAL Team Six squadrons practice “Deep Underground Shelter” penetrations, using extremely sensitive radiological detection devices that can pick up trace amounts of nuclear material and help Special Operations locate the precise spot where the fissile material is stored. JSOC has also built mock Pashtun villages, complete with hidden mock nuclear-storage depots, at a training facility on the East Coast, so SEALs and Delta Force operatives can practice there.

At the same time, U.S. military and intelligence forces have been quietly pre-positioning the necessary equipment in the region. In the event of a coup, U.S. forces would rush into the country, crossing borders, rappelling down from helicopters, and parachuting out of airplanes, so they can secure known or suspected nuclear-storage sites. According to the former senior Special Operations planner, JSOC units’ first tasks might be to disable tactical nuclear weapons -- because those are more easily mated, and easier to move around, than long-range missiles.

In a larger disablement campaign, the U.S. would likely mobilize the Army’s 20th Support Command, whose Nuclear Disablement Teams would accompany Special Operations detachments or Marine companies into the country. These teams are trained to engage in what the military delicately calls “sensitive site exploitation operations on nuclear sites” -- meaning that they can destroy a nuclear weapon without setting it off. Generally, a mated nuclear warhead can be deactivated when its trigger mechanism is disabled. So both the Army teams and JSOC units train extensively on the types of trigger mechanisms that Pakistani weapons are thought to use. According to some scenarios developed by American war planners, after as many weapons as possible were disabled and as much fissile material as possible was secured, U.S. troops would evacuate quickly -- because the final stage of the plan involves precision missile strikes on nuclear bunkers, using special “hard and deeply buried target” munitions.

 

[Denizen]

The USA should never have got itself bogged in Afghanistan. There was no reason to attack or invade.

The USA is repeating the mistakes of the past in Afghanistan and it is possible that a major military defeat could cause the USA to cut and run leaving behind a horrific mess.

The First Coward Donald Trump is too afraid to visit either Iraq or Afghanistan.

"A bunch of dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops is kicking Uncle Sam's ass ... various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops."

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

November has been quite a month, so far, in Afghanistan. The level of violence has been appalling and the most serious recent atrocity was yet another suicide bombing in Kabul. It killed over fifty people and injured twice that many but didn’t merit a Trump tweet, which isn’t surprising because he doesn’t seem to be interested in the place. Further, as reported by the Washington Post on November 19, he hasn’t visited a single country in which his troops are fighting.

The reason he hasn’t visited his troops in such areas is because he is a coward. He is a physical yellow-belly who lacks the courage to go anywhere near a war zone. He is below contempt, but he could gain a little bit of respect if he ordered the US and NATO to get out of Afghanistan.

Early in November the New York Times summed up the shambles in Afghanistan by stating
In the past week, the Times confirmed that 118 members of the security forces were killed, a significant increase over the previous week, but, unusually, there were no confirmed deaths of civilians. Fighting spread to nine provinces, but the emphasis shifted to the south as cold weather intensified in the north. An entire battalion of Afghan border soldiers was wiped out in western Farah Province, and the Taliban tried — unsuccessfully so far — to take over Jaghori District in Ghazni, an anti-insurgent stronghold.

On November 3 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces. Major Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard was instructing Afghan soldiers when one of them shot him dead. He left a wife and seven young children. On the same day, as reported by the New York Times, twenty Afghan soldiers were reported missing after a Taliban attack in Uruzgan Province, and on November 5, six policemen and seven soldiers were killed in Ghazni, two Afghan Humvees were blown up, 17 policemen were killed in Kandahar Province and seven soldiers in Herat.

Seven soldiers were killed on November 7, two of them in Nangarhar Province in an airstrike by United States aircraft while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was visiting foreign troops in Herat. The following day seventeen soldiers were killed along with eight policemen.

After the NYT’s report that no civilians had been killed in the first week, the situation changed dramatically and the Taliban killed 15 civilians and 10 members of the special forces in Ghazni on November 11, then “In the western province of Farah, at least 37 members of the Afghan security forces were killed in overnight attacks by Taliban fighters on checkpoints that triggered hours of fighting, local officials said on November 12.” That was the day that a loonie of Islamic State killed at least six civilians and wounded 20 others in a suicide bombing in Kabul.

Stoltenberg told foreign soldiers in Herat they “have to remember that you are in Afghanistan because NATO is in Afghanistan to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism. So this is about helping the Afghans but also about helping ourselves. It is in our security interest to make sure that Afghanistan not once again becomes a platform, a territory, a country where terrorist organizations can prepare, plan attacks against our own countries.”

This is fallacious nonsense, but he’s got to say it because there is no real reason for the NATO presence in Afghanistan. In the words of the World War One dirge sung by British soldiers in France, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here . . .”

They got there because the United States was hell-bent on war. And this war has had a most significant and disastrous spin-off that the drum-thumpers didn’t think about. It has shown the world that there has been yet another war which the US couldn’t and can’t win.

The foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan — almost 3,500 of them, including 1,892 American combatants — have died for nothing. The entire war has been a disgraceful catastrophe, and as I recorded in Counterpunch in 2012, the US-NATO fiasco was well described by US Colonel David Davis:
The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possesses the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO’s most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eavesdrop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that are as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.

Remember the idiot General Petraeus? In 2010 he declared “We must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and International Security Assistance Forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people and that we are in this to win. That is our clear objective.”

But they lost. And there’s no point in reinforcing failure. US-NATO forces failed to follow almost every Principle of War, and they paid the price.

Get the hell out of Afghanistan. Now.

Written by a surender monkey french dude...

Go figure.

Is military defeat more acceptable to you than surrender?

 

[Correll]

The USA should never have got itself bogged in Afghanistan. There was no reason to attack or invade.

The USA is repeating the mistakes of the past in Afghanistan and it is possible that a major military defeat could cause the USA to cut and run leaving behind a horrific mess.

The First Coward Donald Trump is too afraid to visit either Iraq or Afghanistan.

"A bunch of dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops is kicking Uncle Sam's ass ... various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops."

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

November has been quite a month, so far, in Afghanistan. The level of violence has been appalling and the most serious recent atrocity was yet another suicide bombing in Kabul. It killed over fifty people and injured twice that many but didn’t merit a Trump tweet, which isn’t surprising because he doesn’t seem to be interested in the place. Further, as reported by the Washington Post on November 19, he hasn’t visited a single country in which his troops are fighting.

The reason he hasn’t visited his troops in such areas is because he is a coward. He is a physical yellow-belly who lacks the courage to go anywhere near a war zone. He is below contempt, but he could gain a little bit of respect if he ordered the US and NATO to get out of Afghanistan.

Early in November the New York Times summed up the shambles in Afghanistan by stating
In the past week, the Times confirmed that 118 members of the security forces were killed, a significant increase over the previous week, but, unusually, there were no confirmed deaths of civilians. Fighting spread to nine provinces, but the emphasis shifted to the south as cold weather intensified in the north. An entire battalion of Afghan border soldiers was wiped out in western Farah Province, and the Taliban tried — unsuccessfully so far — to take over Jaghori District in Ghazni, an anti-insurgent stronghold.

On November 3 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces. Major Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard was instructing Afghan soldiers when one of them shot him dead. He left a wife and seven young children. On the same day, as reported by the New York Times, twenty Afghan soldiers were reported missing after a Taliban attack in Uruzgan Province, and on November 5, six policemen and seven soldiers were killed in Ghazni, two Afghan Humvees were blown up, 17 policemen were killed in Kandahar Province and seven soldiers in Herat.

Seven soldiers were killed on November 7, two of them in Nangarhar Province in an airstrike by United States aircraft while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was visiting foreign troops in Herat. The following day seventeen soldiers were killed along with eight policemen.

After the NYT’s report that no civilians had been killed in the first week, the situation changed dramatically and the Taliban killed 15 civilians and 10 members of the special forces in Ghazni on November 11, then “In the western province of Farah, at least 37 members of the Afghan security forces were killed in overnight attacks by Taliban fighters on checkpoints that triggered hours of fighting, local officials said on November 12.” That was the day that a loonie of Islamic State killed at least six civilians and wounded 20 others in a suicide bombing in Kabul.

Stoltenberg told foreign soldiers in Herat they “have to remember that you are in Afghanistan because NATO is in Afghanistan to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism. So this is about helping the Afghans but also about helping ourselves. It is in our security interest to make sure that Afghanistan not once again becomes a platform, a territory, a country where terrorist organizations can prepare, plan attacks against our own countries.”

This is fallacious nonsense, but he’s got to say it because there is no real reason for the NATO presence in Afghanistan. In the words of the World War One dirge sung by British soldiers in France, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here . . .”

They got there because the United States was hell-bent on war. And this war has had a most significant and disastrous spin-off that the drum-thumpers didn’t think about. It has shown the world that there has been yet another war which the US couldn’t and can’t win.

The foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan — almost 3,500 of them, including 1,892 American combatants — have died for nothing. The entire war has been a disgraceful catastrophe, and as I recorded in Counterpunch in 2012, the US-NATO fiasco was well described by US Colonel David Davis:
The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possesses the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO’s most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eavesdrop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that are as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.

Remember the idiot General Petraeus? In 2010 he declared “We must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and International Security Assistance Forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people and that we are in this to win. That is our clear objective.”

But they lost. And there’s no point in reinforcing failure. US-NATO forces failed to follow almost every Principle of War, and they paid the price.

Get the hell out of Afghanistan. Now.

No reason to attack a nation supported the murder of thousand of our civilians?

YOur vileness knows no limits, TRAITOR.

Your dogma infusion has poisoned your mind.

9/11 was caused by a failure of US institutions: the FBI, CIA, NSA, GOP, Pentagon, Airforce, NORAD, Airlines.

Perhaps these instituitons need to train against "dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops".

Funny how lefties get so confused about responsibility.

Bin Laden led the mass murder of Americans, and the government of Afghanistan of the time, refused to give him to US.

And you dismissed the deaths of thousands of Americans.

You are a vile traitor.

If you were anything but an indolent, lip-service patriot you would be going after George W Bush for not permitting an intensive and extensive bi-partisan inquiry into 9/11, and you would be going after all the FBI, CIA, NSA, GOP, Pentagon, Airforce, NORAD, and Airlines officials whose negligence allowed it to happen.

The Afghanistan government didn't have Bin Laden and could not give him to the USA. Nor, is it the practice of any government to "hand over" people without due process.

The government of Saudi Arabia was assisting and funding the terrorists ahead of the 9/11 incident.

Every USA administration official who failed to keep America safe was promoted after 9/11. Not one of the negligent officials was prosecuted.

George W Bush allowed planeloads of Saudis and others who might have been implicated to escape. This included Saudi Ambassador Turki Al Faisal who would have at least have had knowledge which should have been extracted. Nobody denies that the Saudis were assisting the 9/11 terrorists.

Donald Trump has also failed. He promised to expose hidden information on 9/11 but lied again and tainted himself with 9/11 culpability.

Category: | Herald Sun

... Worse, from the royals’ point of view, was that Khashoggi had dirt on Saudi links to al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. He had befriended Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan and Sudan while championing his jihad against the Soviets in dispatches. At that same time, he was employed by the Saudi intelligence services to try to persuade bin Laden to make peace with the Saudi royal family. The result? Khashoggi was the only non-royal Saudi who had the beef on the royals’ intimate dealing with al Qaeda in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks. That would have been crucial if he had escalated his campaign to undermine the crown prince.

Like the Saudi royals, Khashoggi dissociated himself from bin Laden after 9/11 (which Khashoggi and I watched unfold together in the Arab News office in Jeddah). But he then teamed up as an adviser to the Saudi ambassador to London and then Washington, Prince Turki Al Faisal. The latter had been Saudi intelligence chief from 1977 until just ten days before the 9/11 attacks, when he inexplicably resigned. Once again, by working alongside Prince Turki during the latter’s ambassadorial stints, as he had while reporting on bin Laden, Khashoggi mixed with British, US and Saudi intelligence officials. In short, he was uniquely able to acquire invaluable inside information. ...

1. YOur pathological need to blame America for all the evil in the world is noted, traitor.

2. YOur excuses for the actions of our enemies are noted, traitor.

 

[Correll]

No reason to attack a nation supported the murder of thousand of our civilians?

You mean Saudi?

Saudi Arabia did not have Bin Laden in their territory and refuse to give him to US.

 

[Wyatt earp]

The USA should never have got itself bogged in Afghanistan. There was no reason to attack or invade.

The USA is repeating the mistakes of the past in Afghanistan and it is possible that a major military defeat could cause the USA to cut and run leaving behind a horrific mess.

The First Coward Donald Trump is too afraid to visit either Iraq or Afghanistan.

"A bunch of dudes in bedsheets and flip-flops is kicking Uncle Sam's ass ... various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops."

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!

Afghanistan is Collapsing. Get Out: Now!
by BRIAN CLOUGHLEY

November has been quite a month, so far, in Afghanistan. The level of violence has been appalling and the most serious recent atrocity was yet another suicide bombing in Kabul. It killed over fifty people and injured twice that many but didn’t merit a Trump tweet, which isn’t surprising because he doesn’t seem to be interested in the place. Further, as reported by the Washington Post on November 19, he hasn’t visited a single country in which his troops are fighting.

The reason he hasn’t visited his troops in such areas is because he is a coward. He is a physical yellow-belly who lacks the courage to go anywhere near a war zone. He is below contempt, but he could gain a little bit of respect if he ordered the US and NATO to get out of Afghanistan.

Early in November the New York Times summed up the shambles in Afghanistan by stating
In the past week, the Times confirmed that 118 members of the security forces were killed, a significant increase over the previous week, but, unusually, there were no confirmed deaths of civilians. Fighting spread to nine provinces, but the emphasis shifted to the south as cold weather intensified in the north. An entire battalion of Afghan border soldiers was wiped out in western Farah Province, and the Taliban tried — unsuccessfully so far — to take over Jaghori District in Ghazni, an anti-insurgent stronghold.

On November 3 yet another US soldier was killed by a member of Afghanistan’s military forces. Major Brent Taylor of the Utah National Guard was instructing Afghan soldiers when one of them shot him dead. He left a wife and seven young children. On the same day, as reported by the New York Times, twenty Afghan soldiers were reported missing after a Taliban attack in Uruzgan Province, and on November 5, six policemen and seven soldiers were killed in Ghazni, two Afghan Humvees were blown up, 17 policemen were killed in Kandahar Province and seven soldiers in Herat.

Seven soldiers were killed on November 7, two of them in Nangarhar Province in an airstrike by United States aircraft while NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was visiting foreign troops in Herat. The following day seventeen soldiers were killed along with eight policemen.

After the NYT’s report that no civilians had been killed in the first week, the situation changed dramatically and the Taliban killed 15 civilians and 10 members of the special forces in Ghazni on November 11, then “In the western province of Farah, at least 37 members of the Afghan security forces were killed in overnight attacks by Taliban fighters on checkpoints that triggered hours of fighting, local officials said on November 12.” That was the day that a loonie of Islamic State killed at least six civilians and wounded 20 others in a suicide bombing in Kabul.

Stoltenberg told foreign soldiers in Herat they “have to remember that you are in Afghanistan because NATO is in Afghanistan to make sure that Afghanistan never again becomes a safe haven for international terrorism. So this is about helping the Afghans but also about helping ourselves. It is in our security interest to make sure that Afghanistan not once again becomes a platform, a territory, a country where terrorist organizations can prepare, plan attacks against our own countries.”

This is fallacious nonsense, but he’s got to say it because there is no real reason for the NATO presence in Afghanistan. In the words of the World War One dirge sung by British soldiers in France, “We’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here . . .”

They got there because the United States was hell-bent on war. And this war has had a most significant and disastrous spin-off that the drum-thumpers didn’t think about. It has shown the world that there has been yet another war which the US couldn’t and can’t win.

The foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan — almost 3,500 of them, including 1,892 American combatants — have died for nothing. The entire war has been a disgraceful catastrophe, and as I recorded in Counterpunch in 2012, the US-NATO fiasco was well described by US Colonel David Davis:
The United States, along with over 40 NATO and other allied nations, possesses the most sophisticated, powerful, and technologically advanced military force that has ever hit the field of combat. We have the finest and most well trained soldiers that exist anywhere; we have armored vehicles of every type, to include MIA2 Main Battle Tanks; artillery, mortars, advanced rockets, precision guided missiles, and hand-held rocket launchers; we have a wholly uncontested air force composed of NATO’s most advanced ground attack fighter jets, bombers, AWACS controllers, spy planes, signals-interception aircraft, B 1 bombers, attack helicopters, and massive transport jets to ferry our troops and critical supplies where they are needed; we have thousands of unmanned aerial drones both for intelligence collection and missile-launching; we have a helicopter fleet for personnel transport and attack support; we have an enormous constellation of spy satellites; logistics that are as limitless as the combined weight of the industrial world; we have every technological device known to the profession of arms; we are able to intercept virtually every form of insurgent communication to include cell phones, walkie-talkies, satellite phones, email, and even some ability to eavesdrop on otherwise private conversations; a remarkably capable cohort of intelligence analysts that are as educated, well trained and equipped to a degree that used to exist only in science fiction; and our various nations have the economic wherewithal to spend $10s of billions each month to fund it all. And for almost 10 years we have pitted this unbelievable and unprecedented capability against: A bunch of dudes in bed sheets and flip-flops.

Remember the idiot General Petraeus? In 2010 he declared “We must demonstrate to the people and to the Taliban that Afghan and International Security Assistance Forces are here to safeguard the Afghan people and that we are in this to win. That is our clear objective.”

But they lost. And there’s no point in reinforcing failure. US-NATO forces failed to follow almost every Principle of War, and they paid the price.

Get the hell out of Afghanistan. Now.

Written by a surender monkey french dude...

Go figure.

Is military defeat more acceptable to you than surrender?

Military defeat?

We ran out of places to bomb in Afghanistan after the first day, this is just a police action..


.

 

[airplanemechanic]

No reason to attack Afghanistan? Really? You mean no reason other than it was run by the Taliban who was hosting the scum bag who just masterminded flying commercial jets full of innocent people into the Twin Towers...also full of innocent people? Why don't you go f**k yourself, dude! If that wasn't a reason to invade another country then there IS no reason!

The only problem with that is that all 19 hijackers were Saudis. None were from Afghanistan. So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia?

Go put your Saudi conspiracy theories back under your bed. We have heard them all and it just proves that you are clueless.

Conspiracy theory?

September 11 Hijackers Fast Facts - CNN

All are from Saudi Arabia or the UAE. One was from Lebanon. None were from Iraq or Afghanistan.

 

[dblack]

No reason to attack Afghanistan? Really? You mean no reason other than it was run by the Taliban who was hosting the scum bag who just masterminded flying commercial jets full of innocent people into the Twin Towers...also full of innocent people? Why don't you go f**k yourself, dude! If that wasn't a reason to invade another country then there IS no reason!

The only problem with that is that all 19 hijackers were Saudis. None were from Afghanistan. So why didn't we attack Saudi Arabia?

Go put your Saudi conspiracy theories back under your bed. We have heard them all and it just proves that you are clueless.

Conspiracy theory?

September 11 Hijackers Fast Facts - CNN

All are from Saudi Arabia or the UAE. One was from Lebanon.

Yep. They were Saudis pissed off about the US propping up corrupt governments, including their own.