At least eight US soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan

[thewiseguy]

Source: BBC

US commander Daniel Dwyer told the BBC the soldiers had been killed in clashes in the north of the country, close to the border with Pakistan.

The BBC's Martin Patience in Kabul says it is one of the biggest single losses in a day for the coalition since the start of military operations there.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7504393.stm

---

Looks like we are winning in Afghanistan.

[EFerrari]

1. Clashes with whom? The report says "Taliban militants"

but I wonder if our guys even know who's shooting at them.

[thewiseguy]

2. Taliban militants.

Taliban has stepped up attacks in Afghanistan. I believe the fighting took place in Kunar province.

[saigon68]

41. "BRING EM ON" shouted the AWOL CHIMPANZEE

[JeanGrey]

47. I have a nephew in special forces and the last we heard

which was a couple of months ago, they were getting close to Bin Laden and the fighting had really escalated. That's all I know, for what it's worth.

[elocs]

3. My 19 year old godson just arrived in Afghanistan this very weekend.

The way it looks, that is not any better than Iraq and may be getting worse.

[RazzleCat]

4. Oh no

My step son is their. I can only hope he is not involved.

[hack89]

5. We may or may not be winning

but I don't see how the deaths of 8 soldiers means we are losing. History shows that winning can also be a bloody affair.

[TwilightGardener]

7. 7 years of warfare, and the death toll for our troops is increasing, and the Taliban

and AQ are resurgent--does that sound like winning to you? We screwed the pooch big time in Iraq and Afghanistan, there's no other conclusion to draw.

[Skittles]

14. great critical thinking there

simply marvelous

[hack89]

15. Care to elaborate

or is this just a drive by?

[Squatch]

23. You're in for it, hack89....DU is absolutely lousy with brilliant military tacticians

Why, each one of them has at least one or two quotes from Sun Tzu ready to throw at you, quickdraw style..

[Skittles]

25. you're as btg an ass as he is n/t

[Squatch]

33. At least I know what the hell I'm talking about, Mr. Keyboard Commando

[Skittles]

35. I know more about the military than you seem to think I do

I am a veteran and I grew up on military bases

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[JeanGrey]

48. Thank you for your service and stay safe.

:-)

[hack89]

45. Why am I an ass?

I just asked you to amplify on what you said. Am I an ass simply for expressing a view you disagree with? How progressive.

[Psephos]

24. Drive-by shooting with a water pistol

If you're going to criticize someone else's critical skills you'll enhance your case by demonstrating a few of your own.

Eight doesn't sound off the charts in a war theater considering how many were murdered in Houston or Baltimore or Detroit this past week.

Let alone Caracas.

There's no shortage of violent death in this world, and murderers move in to fill the vacuum when those in charge of keeping the order disappear.

The war in Iraq was a catastrophe, a fiasco. That does not mean the same is true of Afghanistan. The removal of the Taliban and their soccer stadium stonings of women and their Al Qaeda training compounds and their love of blowing up 1000-year-old sacred sites does not cause me to lose sleep at night.

[Skittles]

26. OMG!!!!!!!

do you REALIZE you are spouting RIGHTWING TALKING POINTS? To compare the deaths of troops in Iraq or Afghanistan to MURDERS IN DETROIT OR BALTIMORE? WTF!!!! :thumbsdown:

[Psephos]

29. Drip drip drip....

[Skittles]

36. yup - that's what you are n/t

[Psephos]

51. Meanwhile, crickets about Taliban stoning of women, shooting gays, burning villages, etc., etc.

Have you ever used Google?

Try "Taliban Human Rights Crimes" and then get back to me.

Being ignorant of severe human rights travesties is not an excuse. And name calling is not "critical thinking."

I support armed international intervention in Afghanistan for the same reason I support funding of the local police department. Because without them, the criminals take over.

You really want to see the fundy stoners back in the driver's seat, Skittles?

[Psephos]

28. self delete

[cliss]

31. Don't forget, Psephos.

The Taliban was OUR creation. They are OUR boys. If you look into the history of these extremists, they have been funded by the US.

I'd provide some links, but I'm actually posting over at the Daily Kos.

Give it some thought. We are not the "Good Guys" like I used to believe. We've created an awful lot of mischief around the world.

[tuckessee]

49. Yep, today's Taliban are yesterday's Mujahadeen. n/t

[Psephos]

50. The Shah was a US creation, too, but that doesn't mean he shouldn't have been yanked

The provenance of the Taliban has little do with the propriety of getting rid of them.

The Taliban are fundamentalists who believe in using brutality and violence to force their religious view of the world on others. They have treated women, gays, and "infidels" viciously.

What kind of progressive makes excuses for fundy oppressors?

[PassingFair]

18. What exactly would a "win" entail?

Endless occupation?

[Skittles]

27. hey PASSING!!

if you compare troop deaths to MURDERS IN DETROIT we are WINNING!!!!! Yup, someone here actually fucking used that talking point! :puke:

[PassingFair]

43. Guess that puts me in a worse war-zone than Bagdad!

:hi:

Hi, from Detroit!

[daleo]

30. Sure, consider the example of Pyrrhus

The armies separated; and, it is said, Pyrrhus replied to one that gave him joy of his victory that one more such victory would utterly undo him. For he had lost a great part of the forces he brought with him, and almost all his particular friends and principal commanders; there were no others there to make recruits, and he found the confederates in Italy backward. On the other hand, as from a fountain continually flowing out of the city, the Roman camp was quickly and plentifully filled up with fresh men, not at all abating in courage for the loss they sustained, but even from their very anger gaining new force and resolution to go on with the war.<1>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhic_victory

[hack89]

34. Consider Normandy or Iwo Jima nt

[daleo]

42. Eventually history will render it's judgement. n/t

[hack89]

44. I agree. nt

[tuckessee]

46. It shows the Taliban are pulling off more complex, determined ops against the Americans.

They are prosecuting their attacks with much greater aggressiveness, executing them for a longer duration and efficiently using combined arms more so now than in the past.

That potentially means big trouble (higher casualties) for the "Army of One".

If they start reaching out to touch your air power, then your really in deep doo doo.

[bemildred]

54. Yep, and I was struck by the apparent isolation of this outpost when it got in trouble. nt.

[TwilightGardener]

6. Oh boy. We pointlessly dumped all of our troops and resources into Iraq, and now

we're backsliding in the area where we face the REAL threat to our security. No wonder Chimpy is suddenly reshuffling the troops and sending them to Afghanistan--he has no fucking choice, we're totally losing control there. Fucking dimwit.

[MaineDem]

8. North? Near Pakistan?

Hmmm, I considered the north of Afghanistan to be the border area with the other "-stans", Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, etc. Near Mazar-e-Sharif and the Northern Alliance group.

Ahh, now I read the article and there's some confusion as to where this actually happened.

Why didn't we finish the job the entire world was in favor of us doing in Afghanistan in the first place? Bush is an idiot.

[thewiseguy]

9. I suspect the fighting took place in Kunar province

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kunar_Province

Very beautiful landscape though

[ohio2007]

38. That's where the Khyber pass is generally located

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/07/11/world/main4250744.shtml
The US admiral went for a visit to Islamabad and discussed the lack of effort and how the Pakistani paramilitaries were having their asses handed to them
in the FATA region on their side



With the Lincoln standing off the southern coast of Pakistan, I wonder if the # of attacks on supply convoys going through the pass will drop....if the ISI passes the word to stand down....Unless the ISI is losing respect and control of commerce flowing through the badlands .

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/08/carrier.moves/

[thewiseguy]

10. Death toll has increased to 9 according to AP

[Flagg]

11. 7 years after the invasion, there are still talibans fighting and killing american soldiers ?

Wow, some failure.

[Faygo Kid]

12. Took your eye off the ball back in 2003, didn't you, Georgie?

Back then, as we all recall, Osama Bin Laden was a name not to be mentioned, and Al Qaeda was allowed to slip out of Afghanistan, all for the war in Iraq.

Why this man has not been impeached for his crimes is increasingly mystifying.

[Tutonic]

17. Yeah now that ball has expanded into the size of a mushroom

cloud that is rolling towards the green zone. Osama must be doing somersaults in Hell.

[JohnyCanuck]

13. John Pilger: "The good war is a bad war"

9 Jan 2008
In his latest article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes how the invasion of Afghanistan, which was widely supported in the West as a 'good war' and justifiable response to 9/11, was actually planned months before 9/11 and is the latest instalment of 'a great game'.

"To me, I confess, (countries) are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for dominion of the world."
Lord Curzon, viceroy of India, speaking about Afghanistan, 1898

I had suggested to Marina that we meet in the safety of the Intercontinental Hotel, where foreigners stay in Kabul, but she said no. She had been there once and government agents, suspecting she was Rawa, had arrested her. We met instead at a safe house, reached through contours of bombed rubble that was once streets, where people live like earthquake victims awaiting rescue.

Rawa is the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, which since 1977 has alerted the world to the suffering of women and girls in that country. There is no organisation on earth like it. It is the high bar of feminism, home of the bravest of the brave. Year after year, Rawa agents have travelled secretly through Afghanistan, teaching at clandestine girls’ schools, ministering to isolated and brutalised women, recording outrages on cameras concealed beneath their burqas. They were the Taliban regime’s implacable foes when the word Taliban was barely heard in the west: when the Clinton administration was secretly courting the mullahs so that the oil company Unocal could build a pipeline across Afghanistan from the Caspian.

Indeed, Rawa’s understanding of the designs and hypocrisy of western governments informs a truth about Afghanistan excluded from news, now reduced to a drama of British squaddies besieged by a demonic enemy in a “good war”. When we met, Marina was veiled to conceal her identity. Marina is her nom de guerre. She said: “We, the women of Afghanistan, only became a cause in the west following 11 September 2001, when the Taliban suddenly became the official enemy of America. Yes, they persecuted women, but they were not unique, and we have resented the silence in the west over the atrocious nature of the western-backed warlords, who are no different. They rape and kidnap and terrorise, yet they hold seats in Karzai’s government. In some ways, we were more secure under the Taliban. You could cross Afghanistan by road and feel secure. Now, you take your life into your hands.”

SNIP

Acclaimed as the first “victory” in the “war on terror”, the attack on Afghanistan in October 2001 and its ripple effect caused the deaths of thousands of civilians who, even more than Iraqis, remain invisible to western eyes. The family of Gulam Rasul is typical. It was 7.45am on 21 October. The headmaster of a school in the town of Khair Khana, Rasul had just finished eating breakfast with his family and had walked outside to chat to a neighbour. Inside the house were his wife, Shiekra, his four sons, aged three to ten, his brother and his wife, his sister and her husband. He looked up to see an aircraft weaving in the sky, then his house exploded in a fireball behind him. Nine people died in this attack by a US F-16 dropping a 500lb bomb. The only survivor was his nine-year-old son, Ahmad Bilal. “Most of the people killed in this war are not Taliban; they are innocents,” Gulam Rasul told me. “Was the killing of my family a mistake? No, it was not. They fly their planes and look down on us, the mere Afghan people, who have no planes, and they bomb us for our birthright, and with all contempt.”

http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=470

[IndianaGreen]

16. The 9/11 conspirators were based in Germany

meanwhile the Cheney energy taskforce, using the ENRON-contrived energy "crisis" in early 2001 as an excuse, was looking at maps of Iraq's oil fields. Surely something stinks in here, starting with the US decision to let bin Laden escape from Tora Bora! This is one war we did not want to end prematurely.

[n2doc]

19. 9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Afghanistan, Official Says

Source: AP

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: July 13, 2008
Filed at 1:22 p.m. ET

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A multi-pronged militant assault on a small, remote U.S. base killed nine American soldiers Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on U.S. troops since the 2001 invasion, a Western official said.

Militants fired machine guns, rocket-propelled grenades and mortars from homes and a mosque in the village of Wanat in the northeastern province of Kunar, a mountainous region that borders Pakistan, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said in a statement.

The attack on the relatively new outpost began at 4:30 a.m. Sunday and lasted throughout the day.

Nine U.S. troops were killed in the attack, a Western official said on condition of anonymity because the deaths had not yet been officially announced.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Afghanistan.html

---

more at the link. Damn.

[applegrove]

20. * White House took their eye off the ball in Afghanistan and should

pay for it at the polls this November.

[CherokeeDem]

21. If only the Dems in Congress had join the Impeachment ...

movement of Dennis Kucinich in 2006 when the American public told them through the election we wanted the war ended, maybe these young men and those that have gone before them would still be alive. I have no words to describe the hatred I have for Bush and his evil cohorts. There is not a punishment strong enough nor swift enough for them.

May these soldiers and their families find some peace.

[krispos42]

22. Oh, look

more numbers. :mad:

[daleo]

32. I imagine their will be massive U.S. air bombardment in retaliation

Unfortunately, it is likely to kill a lot of civilians and only increase political support for the Taliban.

[JohnyCanuck]

52. Any wedding plans should be immediately put on hold.

The USAF fighter jocks are highly skilled at taking out wedding parties with their precision bombing runs and surgical strikes.

The Wedding Crashers
A Short Till-Death-Do-Us-Part History of Bush's Wars
By Tom Engelhardt

It was a tribal affair. Against a picture-perfect sunset, before a beige-colored cross and an altar made of the very Texas limestone that was also used to build her family's "ranch," veil-less in an Oscar de la Renta gown, the 26 year-old bride said her vows. More than 200 members of her extended family and friends were on hand, as well as the 14 women in her "house party," who were dressed "in seven different styles of knee-length dresses in seven different colors that match the palette of… wildflowers -- blues, greens, lavenders and pinky reds." Afterwards, in a white tent set in a grove of trees and illuminated by strings of lights, the father of the bride, George W. Bush, danced with his daughter to the strains of "You Are So Beautiful." The media was kept at arm's length and the vows were private, but undoubtedly they included the phrase "till death do us part."

That was early May of this year. Less than two months later, halfway across the world, another tribal affair was underway. The age of the bride involved is unknown to us, as is her name. No reporters were clamoring to get to her section of the mountainous backcountry of Afghanistan near the Pakistani border. We know almost nothing about her circumstances, except that she was on her way to a nearby village, evidently early in the morning, among a party 70-90 strong, mostly women, "escorting the bride to meet her groom as local tradition dictates."

It was then that the American plane (or planes) arrived, ensuring that she would never say her vows. "They stopped in a narrow location for rest," said one witness about her house party, according to the BBC. "The plane came and bombed the area." The district governor, Haji Amishah Gul, told the British Times, "So far there are 27 people, including women and children, who have been buried. Another 10 have been wounded. The attack happened at 6.30AM. Just two of the dead are men, the rest are women and children. The bride is among the dead."

U.S. military spokespeople flatly denied the story. They claimed that Taliban insurgents had been "clearly identified" among the group. "his may just be normal, typical militant propaganda," said 1st Lieutenant Nathan Perry. Despite accounts of the wounded, including women and children, being brought to a local hospital, Captain Christian Patterson, coalition media officer, insisted: "It was not a wedding party, there were no women or children present. We have no reports of civilian casualties." The members of an Afghan inquiry, appointed by President Hamid Karzai, later found that, in all, 47 civilians had died, including 39 women and children, and nine others were wounded.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174954/collateral_ceremonial_damage

[ohio2007]

37. Must have stumpled into a strech of real estate they really don't want these foot patrols near

Might be nearly time to switch to burqa stealth mode and mingle with the women and children ?




Face covered Taliban militants pose before they execute two Afghan women in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on Saturday, July 12, 2008. Taliban fighters told Associated Press Television News that the two were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to U.S. soldiers and other foreign contractors at a U.S. base in Ghazni city. (AP Photo/Rahmatullah Naikzad)
http://www.breitbart.com/image.php?id=app-072b278e-b0aa-4f02-b4d1-48ce3e6404d9&show_article=1&article_id=D91T3P5G0

I'm sure they were whore spies righteously tried under the law in a fair trial.


Two unidentified Afghan Women chat with each other a few minutes before they were executed by Taliban in Ghazni province, Afghanistan, on late Saturday, July 12, 2008. Taliban fighters told Associated Press Television News that the two were executed for allegedly running a prostitution ring catering to U.S. soldiers and other foreign contractors at a U.S. base in Ghazni city. (AP Photo/Rahmatullah Naikzad)

They won't be needing those burqa blues anymore. The menfolk can make better use of those 'dress blues'

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=273_1215984262

[dipsydoodle]

53. Today's BBC News link to what actually happened

Militants breached US Afghan base.

More than 100 insurgents breached a US outpost in north-eastern Afghanistan on Sunday, killing nine US troops in hours of fierce fighting, Nato says.

The militants used rocket propelled grenades and homemade mortars to bombard the base, close to Pakistan's border, from several sides.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7504952.stm

[bemildred]

55. Taliban fighters storm US base

Taliban fighters have stormed a Nato-led forces' outpost in northeastern Afghanistan, killing nine American soldiers and wounding another fifteen, before being driven back.

Mark Laity, a Nato civilian spokesman, told Al Jazeera that the Taliban's attack on the base on Sunday was "substantial" but had been defeated.

"Very, very rarely do they get through the wire," he said on Monday.

"Overall fighting is actually still overwhelmingly going our way ... this is the time of year when the Taliban attack a lot and that's why you're seeing elevated activity levels. We have to cope with them and in general terms we are."

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/07/200871463317512597.html