Recently in Afghanistan Category

CNN

The Taliban claimed that its fighters used a rocket-propelled grenade launcher to shoot down a U.S. Chinook helicopter in the Wardak province, about 30 miles (50km) west of Kabul.

Maj. John Redfield, a U.S. military spokesman, told CNN a coalition helicopter went down in the Wardak province after an exchange of fire with enemy on the ground.

All 10 soldiers on board were picked up and taken to safety, he said. He could not say if any were injured.

Meanwhile, a suicide bomber on Monday killed two soldiers and wounded three others in northern Afghanistan, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Afghanistan said.

New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The Taliban insurgents who attacked a remote American-run outpost near the Pakistan border on Sunday numbered nearly 200 fighters, almost three times the size of the allied force, and some breached the NATO compound in a coordinated assault that took the defenders by surprise, Western officials said Monday.

Star Tribune

U.S. officials say militant attacks in Afghanistan are becoming more complex, intense and better coordinated than a year ago. Monthly death tolls of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan surpassed U.S. military deaths in Iraq in May and June. And last Monday, a suicide bomber attacked the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 58 people in the deadliest attack in the Afghan capital since 2001.

New York Times

In the first civilian judicial review of the government's evidence for holding any of the Guantánamo Bay detainees, a federal appeals court has ordered that one of them be released or given a new military hearing.

The ruling, made known Monday in a notice from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, overturned a Pentagon tribunal's decision in the case of one of 17 Guantánamo detainees who are ethnic Uighurs, a Muslim minority from western China.

The imprisonment of the 17 Uighurs (pronounced WEE-goors) has drawn wide attention because of their claim that although they were in Afghanistan when the United States invaded in 2001, they were never enemies of this country and were mistakenly swept into Guantánamo.

No, it can't be possible. Our government make a mistake?! Not the government commanded by George "No regrets" W. Bush. Oh please oh please tell me it ain't so! I mean, these prisoners sound dangerous, what with peddling their fruits of mass destruction.

The one-paragraph notice from the appeals court said a three-judge panel had found in favor of Huzaifa Parhat, a former fruit peddler who made his way from western China to a Uighur camp in Afghanistan.

I am so disheartened. Poor president Bush. He will never be able to achieve world peace at this rate.

The News Tribune

Studies: Iraq costs U.S. $12B per month

By CHARLES J. HANLEY ; AP Special Correspondent

Published: March 9th, 2008 02:07 PM | Updated: March 9th, 2008 05:02 PM

The flow of blood may be ebbing, but the flood of money into the Iraq war is steadily rising, new analyses show. In 2008, its sixth year, the war will cost approximately $12 billion a month, triple the "burn" rate of its earliest years, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and co-author Linda J. Bilmes report in a new book.

Beyond 2008, working with "best-case" and "realistic-moderate" scenarios, they project the Iraq and Afghan wars, including long-term U.S. military occupations of those countries, will cost the U.S. budget between $1.7 trillion and $2.7 trillion - or more - by 2017.

Christ, I can't make the monthly mortgage without facing the prospect of getting my heat shut off. How the hell am I suppose to pay for my portion of this God forsaken clusterfuck?

New York Times

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 30 — Several hundred Taliban fighters have moved into a strategic area just outside the southern city of Kandahar in recent days and clashed with Afghan and NATO forces, according to Canadian and Afghan officials.

The fighting, which began Tuesday, is the first time large numbers of Taliban have been able to enter the area just north of the city since 2001. Control of the area, known as the Arghandab district, would allow the Taliban to directly threaten Kandahar, southern Afghanistan’s largest city.

Whether the Taliban were looking to establish permanent control over the area or were simply carrying out raids was unclear on Tuesday night. But Canadian military officials said Afghan and NATO forces had begun a “large operation” to drive out the Taliban.

Blue Girl, Red State

Four and a half years into Iraq, and six years into Afghanistan, they have decided it’s time to determine what, exactly, to do with mercenaries who attack and murder civilians without provocation, or otherwise commit actions that undermine the efforts of the United States to salvage something – anything – from this clusterfuck so we can claim some sort of semblance of a shadow of a specter of a pale imitation of victory™ and get the hell out of there.

New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — Hoping to ease the strain of two wars, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Thursday that he was likely to approve a $3 billion plan by the Army to accelerate by a full year the expansion of its active-duty force that President Bush approved in January.

Mr. Geren said that expediting the growth of the force would be achieved by increasing recruiting and re-enlistment. The Army has had to resort to large cash bonuses, up to $20,000 for recruits who agree to report quickly for basic training, and far higher amounts to keep soldiers in the service who do specialized jobs.

Though the Army is on track to meet its recruiting goal this year, it has had to accept modest increases in the number of recruits without high school diplomas, take more soldiers who scored low on an aptitude test and expand the use of moral waivers to recruit people with low-level criminal convictions.

All things said and done, it really is a good idea to expand the active-duty force. Now that Bush has made the United States a pariah internationally, and generated even more reasons for terrorists to hate us, we are going to need more troops to deal with the increased terrorist attacks we will no doubt experience for the foreseeable future. And with our troops now stretched out so thin, our ability to respond at the moment is rather questionable.

news.bbc.co.uk

Taleban militants say they have agreed to free 19 South Koreans held hostage for more than a month in Afghanistan. Seoul said the agreement was reached on condition its troops were withdrawn as scheduled by the year's end. South Korea also agreed to end all missionary work in Afghanistan and stop its citizens from travelling there.