| Yesterday, an American involved in the war effort handed me a document. It was an email from a Lieutenant Colonel in the 82nd Airborne Division in Afghanistan. |
The email is about the abysmal, unsafe conditions which some of our most dedicated troops are living in, at a remote base run by the Spanish military in Afghanistan. All deletions [xxx] are by me. I have the entire email. The serious and disturbing allegations are found in the second and third paragraphs. |
Please note, that the failure to support permanent US troops at this Spanish base constitutes real negligence about their ultimate safety. And that comes on top of a degree of harassment that is shocking among allies. |
Gentlemen,
I just finished spending a couple days with TF [xxx] at [xxx] and visiting all of our sites that we have troopers located at. Great progress continues to be made in the [xxx], but several items need some help ASAP: |
A soldier who married his Army sweetheart just six months ago has been seriously injured fighting in Afghanistan.
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Guardsman Davie McClellan, 25, was shot after risking his life to save a fallen comrade.
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His wife, Corporal Vicky Callard, 23, who is in the Military Police, was due to follow him out to Afghanistan this month.
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The couple met at Catterick Garrison in North Yorkshire and were married in the village church in Frosterley, Weardale, last September.
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Gdsman McClellan, of the 1st Battalion Scots Guards, was injured during Operation Moshtarak, the Allied offensive launched last month on Taliban strongholds in Helmand province.
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He had tried to protect his friend, Lance Sergeant David Walker, 36, from further gunfire in Nad-e-Ali.
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L/Sgt Walker later died in hospital and Gdsman McClellan received serious gunshot wounds to the chest.
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He was flown home from Afghanistan to be treated in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham.
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| MARJAH, Afghanistan — Taliban insurgents are increasingly using civilians as human shields as they fight allied troops trying to take the militants’ southern stronghold of Marjah, an Afghan official said Wednesday as military squads resumed painstaking house-to-house searches. |
Feb. 16: U.S. Marines kneel during an operation in the town of Marjah. |
About 15,000 NATO and Afghan troops are taking part in the offensive around Marjah, which has an estimated 80,000 inhabitants and was the largest town in southern Helmand province under Taliban control. NATO hopes to rush in aid and public services as soon as the town is secured to try to win the loyalty of the population. |
With the assault in its fifth day, insurgents are firing at Afghan troops from inside or next to compounds where women and children appear to have been ordered to stand on a roof or in a window, said Gen. Mohiudin Ghori, the brigade commander for Afghan troops in Marjah. Read more at www.foxnews.com |
You want a glimpse of the future that crime-coddling Eric Holder and the White House will be bringing up en masse? |
Right now, in New York City, jihad scientist Aafia Siddiqui is on trial. |
See here, here, here, and here for background on the MIT-trained microbiologist/suspected KSM operative who went missing after 9/11 — and was caught, shot, and extradited two years in Pakistan after threatening to kill American soldiers. |
The Pakistani government is paying for part of her defense. She has used the civilian court system to shout anti-American propaganda and spew hatred against Jews, cause legal chaos, and make a mockery of the rights she has been granted. al Qaeda has been trained to game the system. The Western-educated Siddiqui is milking it for all it’s worth. |
“The beneficiaries of our winter aid programme in Afghanistan are a mix of vulnerable recently returned refugees and internally displaced people, as well as others at particular risk in the cold winter weather,” said Ewen Macleod, UNHCR’s representative in Afghanistan.(20 images) | KABUL, Afghanistan, (UNHCR) - The UN refugee agency on Tuesday began distributing blankets, sweaters, jerry cans and bags of charcoal to 1,500 of the neediest people in Kabul as part of a countrywide initiative to help some 200,000 vulnerable Afghans cope with the winter. |
A young boy waits as displaced Afghans wait to receive relief aid from the UNHCR, on Dec. 1, in Kabul, Afghanistan. Getty Images / Majid Saeedi
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| Brigadier General Barack H. Obama |
| As your battalion commanders and General Axelrod have already briefed you, you embark today on an important mission to the Af-Pak Theater. The success of this mission will not only insure the future of democracy and human civilization, but also my Gallup net favorable index. |
| And as your supreme commander-in-chief, it is my great honor, privilege, and turn to serve as your pool driver, because Michelle has her Pilates class this afternoon. |
| As I have allegedly always said, Afghanistan is war of necessity. But as your supreme commander, I know that in planning wars and field trips we must never act rashly. |
By the way, who needs hand sanitizer? Anybody? |
| Anyhoo, after receiving General McChrystal’s request, I carefully reviewed and focus tested it with some of the top military strategist of DailyKos and HuffingtonPost. |
It’s no “300″ scenario … the Spartans bought time to let the Greeks fight decisively another day, after all, not to withdraw from that endless, tiresome, anguish-inducing, politician-bothering Greco-Persian conflict. And these 30,000 don’t face annihilation as the 300 did when Leonidas angled his critical end run around a foot-dragging Spartan council. |
But the nagging issue of the president’s rationale for shorting his field commander by a 25 percent increment of what was not a huge number to begin with doesn’t seem to have been seriously addressed in the Obama deliberation story* that has been trotted around as part of a White House self-justification campaign. NYT’s version comes closest: |
| Mr. Obama was leery. He had received a memo the day before from the Office of Management and Budget projecting that General McChrystal’s full 40,000-troop request on top of the existing deployment and reconstruction efforts would cost $1 trillion from 2010 to 2020, an adviser said.Read more at www.julescrittenden.com |
In an interview with The Times, Bob Ainsworth said that the
Government would not follow Washington’s promise to start pulling out in
2011. “You can’t put a time on it. You’ve got to look at conditions,” he
said. |
| Britain’s opposition Conservative Party leader David Cameron met British
soldiers in Afghanistan. Mr. Cameron stands in opposition to “artificial
timetables” for troop withdrawals in Afghanistan. |
He accepted that the public would not tolerate the war “going on for ever”,
but insisted there was no deadline for withdrawal. “Nobody is talking about
a drawdown, we are talking about bringing more in there…but we are talking
about transition.” He said that it would be wrong to set a date for the
start of troop reductions. |
Speaking on a visit to Afghanistan, he said: “We all want to make progress
and bring British troops home as soon as we can but any timetable has got to
be based on success and results and we must not give people false hope. Read more at www.newmediajournal.us |
| After announcing a new strategy of counterinsurgency in March, and appointing Gen. Stanley McChrystal the new supreme commander in Afghanistan, it looks like Obama only now will commit more troops to Afghanistan. That will be a wise decision — but one coming three months after the generals’ request. |
We were given an unexpected reprieve through the defeat of al-Qaeda in Iraq. We can now build on that victory by routing the Taliban in the way the Iraq surge stabilized democracy there. |
| Finally, there is an array of taxes on the horizon — increased federal income-tax rates; promised hikes in health-care surcharge taxes; and even rumors of value-added federal sales taxes. These increases are said to be aimed at the proverbial wealthy. But that could change — given that the top 5 percent of households already provide 60 percent of the nation’ s income-tax revenue. And many are already paying 50 percent to 60 percent of their incomes in combined local, state, federal, and payroll taxes. Read more at article.nationalreview.com |
And when you try, you generally don’t make anyone happy. Right-left roundup starts with Politico: Dick Cheney slams Obama for projecting “weakness.” |
Ralph Peters, NY Post: “Obama’s window dressing.” Peters examines the complex superficiality of the superficial complexity behind tonight’s punt. |
Brooks at NYT: “Clear, Hold and Duct Tape.” A shrug of support for getting it half right. |
You can’t fight a successful war unless the commander-in-chief is fully committed to it. So President Obama’s chief task in his speech Tuesday night on Afghanistan is to make it absolutely clear that he is. |
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Of Concern: A Memo to the Secretary of Defense by Michael Yon
