US Terror Suspect to Face Charges in New York (click title to entry - thank you)
By VOA News 26 September 2009
Prosecutors say an Afghan-born terror suspect in U.S. federal custody spent more than a year plotting a massive attack on the United States with co-conspirators.Najibullah Zazi was transferred Friday from the western state of Colorado, where he was detained, to the northeastern city of New York, where he faces charges of conspiring to detonate bombs.A federal grand jury in New York indicted 24-year-old Zazi on Wednesday, but that was not made public until Thursday. The U.S. government says Zazi received bomb-making instructions in Pakistan in 2008. It also says he bought components to build improvised explosive devices and traveled to New York City on September 10, 2009, to move forward with his plans....
Some of questions they won't ask will probably be, "What are acceptable losses in the war in Afghanistan? Will there be less losses if there are more troops? What is the military advantage to increasing the troop level? When will the USA declare victory over the insurgency? What is a measure of that? Are you confident you are asking for all that it will take or are you wagering on the effort? If given everything you need, when will the war end?"
...There were two battalions to the north of Kandahar city. (click here) Another to the far south. Canadian forces were going to swing to the west. About 5,000 new U.S. troops in all.
"But there, there and there," the officer said, pointing to towns just outside a belt where the Americans and Canadians were stationed, "and there," putting his fist on the city, which with 800,000 residents is the country's second-largest population center, "we don't have anyone."
If more forces are not forthcoming to mount counterinsurgency operations in those parts of the province, he concluded, the overall U.S. effort to stabilize Kandahar -- and by extension, the rest of Afghanistan -- will fail....
Four U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan (click here)
Sat Sep 26, 2009 6:54am EDT
...The eight-year-old war in Afghanistan has been in its deadliest phase for foreign troops since July, when U.S. and British forces launched the biggest offensives of the war.
There are now more than 100,000 Western troops in Afghanistan, about two-thirds of them American.
Their commander, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal, is expected to ask for thousands more in a request he will deliver to Washington this week. He has said that without additional forces, his mission is likely to fail....
Polling records appear to back fraud allegations in Afghanistan presidential election (click here)
By HAL BERNTON
McClatchy Newspapers
...The records appear to bolster fraud allegations surrounding the Aug. 20 presidential election — which has become ever more critical to the U.S. and its allies in the face of Afghanistan’s increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency....
Officials To Audit Sampling Of Suspect Afghan Ballots (click here)
by Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson
September 25, 2009
Five weeks after Afghanistan's presidential elections, it's still unclear who will lead the country.
A preliminary tally suggests that incumbent Hamid Karzai is the winner, with 54 percent of the vote. But widespread allegations of fraud and official calls for a recount have stalled the final outcome.
Afghan and international officials are now hoping to break the logjam by agreeing to review ballots at about 10 percent of the nearly 3,100 polling stations flagged as suspicious by a U.N.-backed watchdog....
Doubts raised on Afghan mission ahead of German vote (click here)
SIMON STURDEE
September 23, 2009
Days before German elections, an influential former chancellor on Wednesday slammed the country's unpopular mission in Afghanistan, a foreign policy headache for whoever wins power.
As the race for Sunday's vote heated up, police raided the headquarters of the NPD, a neo-Nazi party with serious financial problems and next to no chance of winning any seats, after offensive letters were sent to ethnic minority MPs.
The election is expected to return Chancellor Angela Merkel to power, but two new opinion polls published on Wednesday confirmed that it is far from certain that she will be able to form her preferred centre-right coalition.
Helmut Schmidt, West German chancellor between 1974 and 1982 and still a respected figure in national politics at age 90, said meanwhile that the aims of Western forces in Afghanistan were "ever blurrier" and "not achievable"....
One question that always crosses my mine when I hear that bin Laden is still propagandizing his allegience to death is, "When will his iconography be too old to use?" Will it 'time out' when he reaches 100 years old or not? And what are the chances he is still alive considering the average longevity in the region?"
Bin Laden seeks to sway German election, Obama debate on Afghanistan (click here)
The new Al Qaeda tape, attributed to Osama bin Laden, coincides with a US policy debate on the Afghan war and a new poll showing the German race tightening.
By Dan Murphy Staff writer 09.25.09
In a new audio tape released Friday by Al Qaeda’s propaganda arm, a voice purported to be Osama bin Laden’s followed up on a series of threats made by more junior Al Qaeda members in recent months against America’s European allies in the Afghan war, warning that if they don’t pull out there will be retaliation against “the oppressor on behalf of the oppressed.”...
