Thu Nov 12, 2009 5:50am EST
By David Alexander
MANILA (Reuters) - The United States is concerned about corruption and poor governance in Afghanistan and has raised those issues with the administration of President Hamid Karzai, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Thursday....
...an “or else.” (click here)
WHERE does anyone in the USA ever get the 'idea' that wars to defeat al Qaeda are supposed to last longer than it took defeat Hitler? The stupidity of diluting the Afghanistan War to fight an oil war in a disarmed country cannot be understated. I mean, STUPID. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I guess 'bailing out' Halliburton and satisfying Wall Street started long before October 2008.
Wilmington pair arrested in major heroin bust (click here)
Published: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 7:14 p.m.
Last Modified: Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at 7:14 p.m.
Wilmington Two Wilmington men were arrested and 230 bags of heroin stamped “death wish” were seized Monday, concluding a five-month investigation by the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office, according to a news release from the office.
The arrest by detectives from the sheriff’s office Vice and Narcotics Division occurred as a search warrant was executed at 5010 McClelland Drive, Apt. 202, the release from Deputy Charles Smith said.
The seized heroin, which was packaged for sale, has a street value of more than $8,000 Smith said....
Postmortem Afghanistan: The iron law of a world-class election farce (click here)
Innocent Afghanis will, as usual, pay the heaviest price by the hundreds
By Chibli Mallat Daily Star staffThursday, November 12, 2009
It is time for a postmortem analysis in Afghanistan. With all the misery that has befallen the wretched peoples of Afghanistan over 40 years of invasions and civil wars, the mess is far from over. By all accounts, the elections were heavily rigged by the president....
US envoy warns against troop surge in Afghanistan (click title to entry - thank you)
James Meikle, Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 November 2009 07.56 GMT
Eikenberry claims extra US troops 'not a good idea' until Karzai government shows willingness to tackle corruption, says reports.
The US ambassador in Kabul has warned against plans to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan, until President Hamid Karzai's government demonstrates that it is willing to tackle the corruption.
Karl Eikenberry sent two classified cables to Washington in the past week expressing his concern over proposals to deploy as many as 40,000 extra troops while the Karzai government remains dogged by accusations of incompetence and corruption, according to reports from Washington.
The existence of the memos was revealed as Barack Obama held a war council at the White House to discuss the final four options for deployment of extra US troops in an effort to stave off defeat at the hands of the Taliban.
Eikenberry is a former US commander in Afghanistan and his caution over a further troop build-up puts him at odd with senior generals in the Pentagon....
McCrystal's War Strategy is to 'pair' Coalition Forces with Afghanistan Forces
Part of the 'issue' at hand is that General McCrystal is seeing a deteriorating country with insufficient troops for his effort, while President Obama sees a prolonged encounter that will prove to be unwinnable, regardless, of General McCrystal's best effort. General McCrystal is needless to say 'frustrated.'
...Last week, General Stanley McChrystal (click here) shocked political leaders with a blunt speech in London on the war.
Gen McCrystal, who heads the 68,000 U.S. troops as well as the 10,000 Nato forces in Afghanistan, rejected proposals for a strategy more reliant on special forces operations against al-Qaeda.
'Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support,' he said in London....
General McCrystal's strategy is to bring Coalition Troops in 'partnership' with Afghan Troops to bring consistency in the power of the 'entire' of the country's military. As a result and in response to the increased violence during the elections, General McCrystal has removed troops from 'distant' and 'sparcely populated' areas to areas of larger populations to bring greater impact of the Coalition efforts.
The change in priorities within Afghanistan is NOT to fight a prolonged war but to 'empower' a strong affiliation with the people to the Coalition and Afghan forces to remove support from the 'infrastructure' of the Taliban. All this is complicated by the insurgency of the Taliban in Pakistan and that country's determination to remove their influence and violence from the Pakistani people.
The entire region is unstable and it is due to this chronic 'allowable' fluidity of violence by the Taliban and demanded by al Qaeda. If General McCrystal is successful, the Afghan forces will begin to 'push back' against the Taliban and find a 'core' of resistance between Pakistan and Afghanistan to end the war entirely while the two countries enforce 'rule of law' and end the corruption of the Taliban to bring more viable economies that benefit civilization rather than barbarism.
The tape above shows a Coalition base in a distant hamlet where I doubt sincerely the troops were welcome visitors, but, that is somewhat true of anywhere USA troops have fought before, including, South Korea. Military presence among the people where guns and munitons are at the 'ready' is not a 'reasonably friendly' environment.
The bunker was a place where troops were stationed to 'hold' a place in the 'stretched' fabric of coalition war front. The munitions probably should have been destroyed, but, that might have cost more coalition lives.
No doubt the 'donkey' is being dispatched to people that will become suicide bombers. It is that 'dynamic' that is simply a 'high priority methodology' to the Taliban and al Qaeda. They can't do it any other way and it is part of what needs to be defeated in order to stop the 'influence' and 'ability to exist' of al Qaeda compliments of the Taliban.
The Taliban are drug lords.
They are the Afghan Mafia.
Karzai has been a 'figure head.'
Primarily.
General McCrystal is literally 'starting over' in Afghanistan and he is a 'lone voice' to the effort while so many other advisors to the President are an opposition to the initiative, including the people of the USA. The USA has been exploited by the Republicans to result in illegal wars that saw General and Commander one after the other resign from service into retirement, with a General at the onset to Iraq that decried any initiative without sufficient forces. That General was proven time and again TO BE CORRECT.
To add insult to injury to the people of the USA, the fiscal exploitation of 2008 was just the frosting on the cake. NATO on the other hand is receiving General McCrystal's strategy well because they want and need to fight this war as Pakistan and Afghanistan are in their backyards and they have received 'wrath' from al Qaeda attacks in their cities.
To say General McCrystal's strategy is unpopular among Americans is to realize his own 'officers' mess' is a point of frustration for him. He seeks discipline to 'war' and 'effort' and not 'resignation' to the reality of 'corruption.' President Obama and Secretary Clinton have an ally in their concerns of corruption with McCrystal. If they can bring him 'justice' in his strategy we might actually get somewhere with this mess.
For as much as Americans 'want out' of Afghanistan and Iraq, reflection on their reality should center around the REAL corruption within their own political system that brought them Bush and Cheney and not around accepting defeat in a strategy NATO is investing more of their own troops to fight.
The sincerest of realities is that President Obama is receiving pressure from within his own party to 'end it' in Afghanistan as well as Iraq to stop 'bleeding' from their electorate to possible political losses in 2010 elections that will 'put the country right back where it came from.' What Stanley McCrystal has to realize is that his Commander and Chief is fighting a war in the USA as well as Afghanistan. The USA was exploited for eight long years and HIS profound reality with his President is to come to terms with the reality he wouldn't even be required to have a strategy if HIS military wasn't USED for FISCAL exploitation by The Republican Party within his own country.
