NewsBusted 6/15/11 (video 2m36)

video source: http://www.youtube.com/embed/qT3GNirzzvk

source: http://www.newsbusters.org
related: http://www.mediaresearch.org
related: http://MRCTV.org

---

o'generalisimo - Latest: Day 287 (Mo.2Nov09)

Lest We Forget - http://www.harrold.org/911
From: gg Sent: Monday, November 02, 2009

Interesting link! GG  http://www.theobamafile.com/ObamaLatest.htm

Obama's New Afghan Strategy -- Surrender!

Kristinn, at FreeRepublic.com, says Obama is considering an almost complete surrender in Afghanistan, if the report this weekend by the BBC's Katty Kay is accurate.

Speaking as a panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, a weekend public affairs broadcast, Kay reported on the internal debate at the White House -- "There are real questions being asked, I think, about whether even with a big injection of troops this is a real country, a real war that you can win.

"And there's a new phrase which is floating around the White House which is 'minimum security'.  That we're not actually aiming for a country which is stable that we are in control of, but we are aiming for a minimum amount of security and perhaps even a negotiated settlement with the Taliban."

This would tie in with reports that Obama has concluded the U.S. cannot beat the Taliban and that he has requested two new studies.  The first study is to determine which provinces may be ceded to the Taliban.  The second, is to determine troop levels other than those requested by Gen. McChrystal over two months ago.

Kay's remarks start at the 19:10 minute in the backward clock on the video.  She describes the three different views on the situation in Afghanistan that have been presented to Obama:  the military needs a large injection of troops to execute the McChrystal's strategy;  even with more troops, Afghanistan will never be winnable;  and "'we have no choice but to win this war' and that is what Obama said back in March."

Obama has delayed making his decision.  It will not be announced until the end of November.  That's three months into the twelve month window left to win the war.

Troop casualties in Afghanistan have skyrocketed in the past three months, with over 1000 being wounded.  58 service members have been killed in the last month, making it the deadliest month of the eight-year long war.

On Friday, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs bragged that Obama has spent almost twenty hours in meetings on Afghanistan since August.

---

Commander In Least

Noah Steele Kline says that as a Marine, Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, and Honorably Discharged Sergeant, he knows a thing or two about mission accomplishment versus troop welfare.  As a matter of fact, any Marine can tell you the clearly stated objective of the Marine Corps is mission accomplishment.  Troop welfare comes secondary.

Commanders and military leaders learned long ago that success on any battlefront depends chiefly upon mission accomplishment.  Troop welfare, while important, does not trump mission accomplishment.  For the enlisted Marine on the ground, this is sometimes a hard pill to swallow, but we understand.  And actually, this is one of the reasons why the Marine Corps is one of the finest and most effective fighting forces in the world.

Our current Commander in Chief (who never served in the military) has not demonstrated that he comprehends the concept of mission accomplishment before troop welfare.  Disappointingly, Obama has not demonstrated that he comprehends the concept of mission accomplishment at all.  We have no clear mission in Afghanistan.  We have no concise finalization strategy for Iraq.  Obama has yet to establish just what we are supposed to be doing in either of these theaters.

Furthermore, Obama seems to be thwarting any forward momentum with regard to mission accomplishment by manifesting an attitude that troop welfare is paramount.  He has also hastily portrayed an apologetic attitude for American strength.  This destructive attitude breeds not only optimism in our enemies, but despair in those in uniform who are genuinely proud to serve the country they love.

Not only that, Obama is arguing with the very commander he appointed to do what needs to be done.  Consequently, his indecisiveness, or "dithering" as Cheney put it, is costing American lives and wasting precious time needed to gain momentum toward mission accomplishment -- for whatever the mission may be.

For someone who neither served in the military nor had any executive leadership, Obama has yet to do anything to assuage the collective apprehensions from those of us who feel he is too green for the job of Commander in Chief.  The presidency is not the place for on-the-job training, especially in a time of war.  Although Obama has probably learned a lot in his first nine months in office, he has not asserted to Americans or our enemies that the new administration has any idea how to handle a war, let alone two.

Continue reading here . . .

---

---

related: http://harrold.org/rfhextra/religion.html & http://harrold.org/rfhextra/menu.htm

o'generalisimo - Why pull back in Afghanistan?

From: kd Sent: Tuesday, October 27, 2009

     You simply don't get these kinds of views from the US media.. and they seem pretty logical...KD

     Afghanistan: What is going on?

http://PRAVDA.Ru  sources in Pakistan state that the US military forces are pulling back from the border posts between Afghanistan and Pakistan, while at the same time the Pakistani army is engaged in a major offensive against the Taliban.  Is this to allow the Taliban to move freely, while the hidden objective is the Pakistani State?

---

.

war - Pentagon Fast Tracks GBU-57A/B Massive Ordnance Penetrator

From: jrp Sent: Thursday, October 08, 2009

http://www.network54.com/Forum/211833/thread/1253583273/last%201253583580/Pentagon+Fast+Tracks+GBU-57A-B+Massive+Ordnance+Penetrator

The Pentagon is accelerating by three years plans for a super bunker buster, the GBU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator or MOP, a powerful new bomb aimed squarely at the underground nuclear facilities of Iran and North Korea.

---

o'waffle - American troops in Afghanistan losing heart, say army chaplains

From The Times October 8, 2009
by Martin Fletcher
at Forward Operating Base in Wardak province

American soldiers serving in Afghanistan are depressed and deeply disillusioned, according to the chaplains of two US battalions that have spent nine months on the front line in the war against the Taleban.

Many feel that they are risking their lives — and that colleagues have died — for a futile mission and an Afghan population that does nothing to help them, the chaplains told The Times in their makeshift chapel on this fortress-like base in a dusty, brown valley southwest of Kabul.

“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion.

“They feel they are risking their lives for progress that’s hard to discern,” said Captain Sam Rico, of the Division’s 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion. “They are tired, strained, confused and just want to get through.” The chaplains said that they were speaking out because the men could not.
The base is not, it has to be said, obviously downcast, and many troops do not share the chaplains’ assessment. The soldiers are, by nature and training, upbeat, driven by a strong sense of duty, and they do their jobs as best they can. Re-enlistment rates are surprisingly good for the 2-87, though poor for the 4-25. Several men approached by The Times, however, readily admitted that their morale had slumped.

“We’re lost — that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”

Sergeant Christopher Hughes, 37, from Detroit, has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

The only soldiers who thought it was going well “work in an office, not on the ground”. In his opinion “the whole country is going to s***”.

The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance. They have, instead, found themselves locked in an increasingly vicious battle with the Taleban.

They have been targeted by at least 300 roadside bombs, about 180 of which have exploded. Nineteen men have been killed in action, with another committing suicide. About a hundred have been flown home with amputations, severe burns and other injuries likely to cause permanent disability, and many of those have not been replaced. More than two dozen mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (MRAPs) have been knocked out of action.

Living conditions are good — abundant food, air-conditioned tents, hot water, free internet — but most of the men are on their second, third or fourth tours of Afghanistan and Iraq, with barely a year between each. Staff Sergeant Erika Cheney, Airborne’s mental health specialist, expressed concern about their mental state — especially those in scattered outposts — and believes that many have mild post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). “They’re tired, frustrated, scared. A lot of them are afraid to go out but will still go,” she said.

Lieutenant Peter Hjelmstad, 2-87’s Medical Platoon Leader, said sleeplessness and anger attacks were common.

A dozen men have been confined to desk jobs because they can no longer handle missions outside the base. One long-serving officer who has lost three friends this tour said he sometimes returned to his room at night and cried, or played war games on his laptop. “It’s a release. It’s a method of coping.” He has nightmares and sleeps little, and it does not help that the base is frequently shaken by outgoing artillery fire. He was briefly overcome as he recalled how, when a lorry backfired during his most recent home leave, he grabbed his young son and dived between two parked cars.

The chaplains said soldiers were seeking their help in unprecedented numbers. “Everyone you meet is just down, and you meet them everywhere — in the weight room, dining facility, getting mail,” said Captain Rico. Even “hard men” were coming to their tent chapel and breaking down.

The men are frustrated by the lack of obvious purpose or progress. “The soldiers’ biggest question is: what can we do to make this war stop. Catch one person? Assault one objective? Soldiers want definite answers, other than to stop the Taleban, because that almost seems impossible. It’s hard to catch someone you can’t see,” said Specialist Mercer.

“It’s a very frustrating mission,” said Lieutenant Hjelmstad. “The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it’s for something [worthwhile], but it’s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There’s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It’s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.”

Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: “We want to believe in a cause but we don’t know what that cause is.”

The soldiers are angry that colleagues are losing their lives while trying to help a population that will not help them. “You give them all the humanitarian assistance that they want and they’re still going to lie to you. They’ll tell you there’s no Taleban anywhere in the area and as soon as you roll away, ten feet from their house, you get shot at again,” said Specialist Eric Petty, from Georgia.

Captain Rico told of the disgust of a medic who was asked to treat an insurgent shortly after pulling a colleague’s charred corpse from a bombed vehicle.

The soldiers complain that rules of engagement designed to minimise civilian casualties mean that they fight with one arm tied behind their backs. “They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”

The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.

To compound matters, soldiers are mainly being killed not in combat but on routine journeys, by roadside bombs planted by an invisible enemy. “That’s very demoralising,” said Captain Masengale.

The constant deployments are, meanwhile, playing havoc with the soldiers’ private lives. “They’re killing families,” he said. “Divorces are skyrocketing. PTSD is off the scale. There have been hundreds of injuries that send soldiers home and affect families for the rest of their lives.”

The chaplains said that many soldiers had lost their desire to help Afghanistan. “All they want to do is make it home alive and go back to their wives and children and visit the families who have lost husbands and fathers over here. It comes down to just surviving,” said Captain Masengale.

“If we make it back with ten toes and ten fingers the mission is successful,” Sergeant Hughes said.

“You carry on for the guys to your left or right,” added Specialist Mercer.

The chaplains have themselves struggled to cope with so much distress. “We have to encourage them, strengthen them and send them out again. No one comes in and says, ‘I’ve had a great day on a mission’. It’s all pain,” said Captain Masengale. “The only way we’ve been able to make it is having each other.”

Lieutenant-Colonel Kimo Gallahue, 2-87’s commanding officer, denied that his men were demoralised, and insisted they had achieved a great deal over the past nine months. A triathlete and former rugby player, he admitted pushing his men hard, but argued that taking the fight to the enemy was the best form of defence.

He said the security situation had worsened because the insurgents had chosen to fight in Wardak province, not abandon it. He said, however, that the situation would have been catastrophic without his men. They had managed to keep open the key Kabul-to-Kandahar highway which dissects Wardak, and prevent the province becoming a launch pad for attacks on the capital, which is barely 20 miles from its border. Above all, Colonel Gallahue argued that counter-insurgency — winning the allegiance of the indigenous population through security, development and good governance — was a long and laborious process that could not be completed in a year. “These 12 months have been, for me, laying the groundwork for future success,” he said.

At morning service on Sunday, the two chaplains sought to boost the spirits of their flock with uplifting hymns, accompanied by video footage of beautiful lakes, oceans and rivers.

Captain Rico offered a particularly apposite reading from Corinthians: “We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed.”

---

Pravda.ru: Al-Qaeda Slowly Makes Its Way to Somalia and Yemen

From: kd  Sent: Monday, September 28, 2009


Front page / Hotspots and Incidents / Terrorism
15.09.2009 Source: Pravda.Ru
URL: http://english.pravda.ru/hotspots/terror/109278-somalia_yemen-0

After serious disagreements with Hezbollah and Hamas militants in Gaza Strip, Al-Qaeda does no longer consider itself a leader of the Arab resistance to the American influence in this region.

Al Qaeda has settled down in Asia, Pakistan and Afghanistan, currently the front of struggle against NATO and the Hindus, who are hated by Pakistan extremists no less than Israelis are hated by Bin Laden.

Besides, Al Qaeda is trying to gain access to Pakistani nuclear weapons to “use them against Americans,” a top commander of Al-Qaeda has recently said to Al Jazeera channel.

Although these nuclear weapons are well protected and, technically, disassembled and stored in different places, a possibility of Al Qaeda seizing the weapons should not be ruled out.

Italian newspaper La Repubblica suggests that Al Qaeda has its people in the Pakistani military. Amidst aggravated political instability in Pakistan, where the activity of Taliban militants close to Al Qaeda has been rising steadily, and anti-Americanism receives growing support of the general public, any incautious step can provoke a hair-trigger reaction.

However, the United States has been putting significant pressure on Pakistani leaders demanding them to activate the struggle against militant groups based in the regions bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials said that the government troops had killed at least 30 insurgents in the ongoing raid near Khyber Pass crossing, the so-called Tribal area encompassing the region near Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Khyber Pass is the main above-ground transportation corridor connecting Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the 1980s, it was used for caravans supplying weapons for Mujahideens fighting against the Soviet Army. Today, similar caravans supply weapons to the militants recruited by Al Qaeda.

After Pakistani officials started seeing the Taliban as a threat and sent the army to fight them, combat actions in the area have become as severe as in some southern provinces of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban.
Despite certain successful operations of the Pakistan army, it is fare to say that Pakistani war has just started. Al Qaeda agents, who have a great trump card – money - will be the main participants in this war.

The funds are coming from Europe, mostly from the Arabian Peninsula. “The cash flow would probably be reduced if the countries that call themselves Islamic admitted that Taliban and Afghanistan are their problem, instead of wishing defeat to the unfaithful who dare to tread “the Muslim land”, ” La Repubblica wrote.

While Al Qaeda leaders are hiding in the tribal areas along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, the middle-tier of the extremist movement display heightened activity in Somalia and Yemen.

“We know that the South Asia is no longer their primary base,” a source in the US defense agency said to the Washington Times. “They are looking for a hide-out in other parts of the world and continue to expand their organization.“

In Somalia, Al Qaeda agents closely collaborate with the Shahab group, actively recruit children for suicide-bombers training, and export young people to participate in military actions against Americans at Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

This year, Al Qaeda’s division in Saudi Arabia has merged with the Yemeni wing to form Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula centered in Yemen.

Here terrorists take advantage of poor economy, demography and domestic security. In August they made the first assassination attempt against a member of Saudi Arabia royal dynasty in decades.

President Obama in his letter asked his Yemen counterpart Ali Abdullah Saleh to ensure closer cooperation with the USA in the struggle against the growing activity of Al Qaeda on Yemen’s territory, and promised to send additional international aid.

Because of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States is unable to pay sufficient attention to Somalia and Yemen, which may cause the US some serious problems in the near future.

by Ivan Tulyakov
Read the original in Russian

© 1999-2009. «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view of PRAVDA.Ru's editors.

---