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NATO Says Increased Military Ops Behind Death Toll
KABUL -- Intensified military operations against the Taliban are behind a surge in troop deaths in Afghanistan, NATO said Sunday, as the alliance announced the 93rd fatality in a record month for casualties.
This file picture shows a .50-calibre machine gun on board a helicopter flying over Afghanistan's southern Logar province. The number of troops killed in June alone stands at 93, according to an AFP count, by far the deadliest monthly toll since the war began in late 2001. (AFP/File/Bonny Schoonakker) NATO's International Security Assistance Force said three more foreign soldiers had died in Taliban attacks -- two US personnel killed in gunfights on Sunday and one from an unidentified nation in a bomb blast on Saturday.
The deaths bring to 313 the total number of soldiers to have died in Afghanistan this year. The number killed in June alone stands at 93, according to an AFP count, by far the deadliest monthly toll since the war began in late 2001.
However, an ISAF spokesman said the grim toll was a measure of success as the alliance takes the fight to the Taliban with the influx of thousands more troops into the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
"With the build-up of the additional reinforcements we have been able to confront the insurgency and Taliban in areas where they have not been challenged for years," Brigadier General Josef Blotz said.
"That's one of the reasons that we're seeing some more violence these days and weeks. And unfortunately this also leads to a higher casualty rate," he told reporters.
There are 140,000 international, mostly US, troops in Afghanistan, and their numbers are set to peak at 150,000 by August.
The deaths come as questions intensify over the war effort following last week's sacking of the top US military officer in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, over an inflammatory magazine profile.
McChrystal issued a highly critical assessment of the war just days before he was fired by President Barack Obama, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
The Independent on Sunday said leaked military documents showed McChrystal had briefed defence ministers from the countries involved in the war earlier this month and warned them to expect no progress in the next six months.
McChrystal was forced to step down as commander of the NATO-led force due to disparaging remarks about administration officials, including Obama, in the explosive article carried by Rolling Stone.
But the newspaper suggested the article was only one reason why the general quit, saying his candour about the reality of the situation in Afghanistan was an obstacle to Obama's plans for an early US withdrawal.
"Stan argued for time, and would not compromise. Rolling Stone provided an excuse for Obama to fire the (opponent) to his plan without having to win an intellectual argument," it quoted an unnamed senior military source as saying.
According to the paper, McChrystal had said corruption under the Afghan administration of President Hamid Karzai and security remained serious issues as foreign forces battled a "resilient and growing insurgency".
Police in western Afghanistan said meanwhile that more than a dozen rebels had been killed in fighting with Afghan and international forces, mostly on Saturday.
Ten rebels were killed in a gunfight with NATO-led troops in the northwestern province of Badghis while four others were killed after attacking a police convoy transporting captured militants in neighbouring Farah province the same day, police said.
On Friday, eight Arabs, five Pakistanis and two Afghans were killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded while they were producing the devices, the interior ministry said.
The ministry said the rebels had gathered in a mosque in the eastern province of Paktia to build IEDs -- the Taliban's weapon of choice responsible for many of the fatalities being suffered by NATO forces.
But even as political opposition in NATO countries builds against the war, ISAF's Blotz sad the tide was turning.
"It's a tough time we're in. We're in the arena, there's no way out now. We've to stay on," the spokesman said.
"We have to fight this campaign and it's actually getting a little harder," he said, adding that by the end of 2010 "you'll see progress and success because of that increased level of the security".
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30 Comments so far
Show AllSeems like the only thing that brings a cry from the public to end the wars are when American troops die. Ironically, if more soldiers get axed in a short period of time and it brings an end to the occupation, it may actually save American lives over the long term.
Call me insensitive, but I find it hard to cry when the killers get killed. Parents that glorify the military and brainwash their children to do the same do not see their complicity in their own child's death and/or psychological destruction in the hands of a brutal and cruel organization--the US military.
"Parents that glorify the military and brainwash their children to do the same do not see their complicity in their own child's death and/or psychological destruction in the hands of a brutal and cruel organization--the US military."
This shows the incredible power of the combination of propaganda and ignorance. It amazes me that people can still be convinced to send their children to kill and be killed for the empire in the age of the internet. There is so much alternative information out there to show what the war mongering main stream media says is complete B/S, If only people would take the time to read it.
They all signed up to die, I agree with the above but sometimes feel like im a voice in the wilderness that is crazy, so thanks for the above.
They all signed up to kill.
Dying is the downside.
The ruling elite are organized criminals - who know that war is the most profitable of all businesses, and they don't care whose or how much blood is on their money. Peace, truth, & diplomacy are their biggest enemies. Their biggest ally is deception, and they are very skilled in that art.
The truth widely known, will set us free (from them and the wars and horror that they create).
The ruling elite are organized criminals - who know that war is the most profitable of all businesses, and they don't care whose or how much blood is on their money. Peace, truth, & diplomacy are their biggest enemies. Their biggest ally is deception, and they are very skilled in that art.
The truth widely known, will set us free (from them and the wars and horror that they create).
WikiLeaks will soon post the classified film of the bombing of Granai village in Afghanistan, May 2009 that killed ~140 civilians, including ~92 children, when the US Military dropped 500lb and 1,000lb bombs on them. That will be a big step in the right direction.
McChrystal blew it so the issue did not go before Congressional review.
Now, it's like there never was a deadline for success.
We continue on the same path of occupation. Everything's going according to plan!
No Review? No Problem!
Insanity is... expecting a different result!
"The Independent on Sunday said leaked military documents showed McChrystal had briefed defence ministers from the countries involved in the war earlier this month and warned them to expect no progress in the next six months."
On Meet the Press, McCain stated that the USA involvement in Afghanistan is to prevent another planned attack from that country like the 9/11.
First, the planning was done in Hamburg, Germany, and the attack came from Boston, Newark, and JFK with US commercial airliners.
So the reasons, McCain gave are bogus. The war in Afghanistan is bogus. And continued presents in Afghanistan is bogus.
The whole fucking thing is bogus. So tell me again, why we are there?
How many of us are going to be part of this Karmic debt?
KARMA
Karma, the paying back of any and all wrongs done to another Soul, another body, the heart, the mind; don’t know how many times my fingers have typed these words but they always bear repeating. “You shall pay every whit”: There seem to be many out there who do not believe in a Creator and when one is mentioned it is only to say “if there is a Creator why doesn’t he/she, whatever allow all this shit to happen“?
Everyone who comes on CD seems to have their own mind and would and could look back through their lives and say “I did it my way” and you got this way through a zillion years of evolution? Please, that is so bullshit and that is as much time as I will spend on it. There is evolution but not without the Creator. With a Creator wham, bam the Soul, which is part and parcel of the Creator is given a chance to pay that whit because so many Souls went off the deep end with their creativity they interfered with and tried to dominate other Souls. Man, it is just like a cancer.
There would be no point in creating Souls without free will as they might as well just be robots going through the motions and that is where free will, reincarnation, and Karma come together. The Soul is born into a body of it’s choice and that means that it can come with any type of malady to lessen or mitigate a previous wrong. That is Karma. A Soul may choose to not do anything during a stay here and wait for another opportunity; but payback is a bitch because there will be no real peace until al the shit is right. There is more but this is enough here.
Don’t know about the soldiers and politicians that are into all these unjustified murders of human bodies that are receptacles of their fellow Souls. How does a Soul, in between reincarnations, explain itself to a fellow Soul? My heart and Soul would not condemn or judge any other; that does not mean doing whatever to stop this madness as that is a positive accomplishment and good for you. From what I’ve read there no remembrance of previous lives because most could not take the kind of shit they may have done before and, one last note, you do get a preview of what a life might be like but, freewill is ever the rule you can’t escape. Choices and Karma.
Tony
Karma..well put; the more suffering that is caused- the more suffering received...fascist amerika has heavy karma to bear!
tioche;thank you and, for me,if there is no Karma then every person born is a potential greedy crook,murderer and then they are buried and we wait for the next one.Makes no sense to me.Sometimes the whole thing does not make sense because there has to be mercy or a Soul could reincarnate a zillion time and not ever get near to where he/she would be eligable for any mercy! Gives me a headache.Tony
Choices and consequences might fit just as well. Most animals do not have free will; they must follow their instincts, meaning their natures are fixed. Not so with man. Karma, may simply mean reinforcing some negativity or another, making it more difficult to be free of it. Perhaps the tendency of that negativity, rather than particular memories, is carried into the next life--if we are indeed born again. In that light, Karma would mean the strength of negative tendency, and the possibility of extricating oneself from it.
a Buddhist visits his mother.
"what brought you here, my son?"
"it was my car, ma."
I hope that someone begins a good solid critique of the clichés that are fed to mid-level administrators and staff that roll off the tongue with dismissive ease such as:
- Our system isn't perfect but its better than all the rest
- love it or leave it
- we have to prevent another 9/11
- war with transparency
In an interview with Charlie Rose, Gen McCrystal rejects "a little bit"... "the great man theory" and then speaks of the soldier 'heros' with 'corporate knowlege'- soldiers risking their lives - on the 'team' - slick double-speak.
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11083
start at min 36:00 from a 2009 interview with Charlie Rose
It is interesting to listen to. He verbally constructs a framing/placing of the soldiers as 'great men' (heros), cultivates a sycophantic denial of structural realities - he hence fosters their self perception as an equal to himself (a non-existence: he is gone, they stay) while romanticising their expendability.
Why should they respect the fact that there is a civilian dimension to reality. The soldiers are the heros (great men) under the command of so great a man that he can, in vacuous verbal abnegation, mythologize a misreading of reality. Because they MUST follow orders and participate in the culture fostered, perhaps we have an example of one more root of post traumatic stress disorder - living a lie without options, without dissent and they must reject dissent and even eliminate dissenters (insugents struggling to remove a violent invading empire)- McCrystal signing off on the misrepresentation of the death by 'friendly fire' of the young football star in (08?).
The psychological construct is schizoid. victim hero soldiers who must kill innocents because the system has enemies it cannot identify; must kill and die for a grossly romanticized vision of life that is dependent on an unsustainable extractive system; genocidal (in Eric Prince's world - which is contracted to protect diplomats!!!!! the Afghans regarded as 'ragheads', untrustworthy, barbaric: demonization of ethnicity, etc)
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/5/4/exclusivesecret_recording_of_erik_prince_reveals
It is the psychology of a cornered animal with no option, no imagination other than war, writ large as vehicle for "policy".
Because of the fears/greed/extremely clever stupidity of transnational corporations we are prevented from accessing resources to delve into alternative technologies that are peaceful by nature.
Then the greatest myth of ALL... humans are by nature violent.
Great analysis, old goat.
"Humans greatest gift? Ability to tell a story. Greatest curse? They believe them!"
Love it! An excellent argument.
Of course this article contains and promulgates a propaganda "story" that reaches into the corner closets of America's consciousness. Even in CD!
"On Friday, eight Arabs, five Pakistanis and two Afghans were killed when an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded while they were producing the devices, the interior ministry said.
"The ministry said the rebels had gathered in a mosque in the eastern province of Paktia to build IEDs -- the Taliban's weapon of choice responsible for many of the fatalities being suffered by NATO forces."
This story panders to the now fully reinforced anti-Arab notion of Americans, reinforced by mainstream media, almost all politicians, movies, and our bumper stickers. The dark and shady mosque; the set of black-hatted multinational Arabs/ Muslims; the universally feared IED; and a sort of glee-taking in their own deaths caused by their own stupidity.
Such psychological constructs are as vicious and vacuous as McChrystal's. Even Common Dreams readers are susceptible to such propaganda.
Please don't tell me that anyone really believes that the U.S. will win the war in Afghanistan. Our troops are there to get all the people they perceive as bad guys. Unless they are shooting at them they cannot identify bad guys. That is like saying that they are fighting to remove all the weeds in the gardens of the world. Pull one out and another one grows back.
As far as McChrystal, doing an interview to get fired, maybe he heard about the U.N. Rights Chief Navi Pillay's threat to hold to account the torturers for their inhumanity.
What, 8 years of Bush's lies didn't convince anyone not to join the military? The troops had plenty of time to wise up.
In the latter Bush years the military was having a very difficult time with recruitment and glossy ads on TV were rampant -- not much anymore. Thanks to the Great Depression No. 2 canon fodder has been plentiful.
"With the build-up of the additional reinforcements we have been able to confront the insurgency and Taliban in areas where they have not been challenged for years," Brigadier General Josef Blotz said. He then smiled and winked at the reporters and added, "Of course, what I said is all total bullshit and this part of my remarks is off the record. I would like to add one thing: I am a genius. I sleep only two hours per night and eat only once every other day. So why wasn't I chosen to replace McChrystal?"
It has been a amazing to hear the sleep and eating habits of our top brass, but stupid macho Americans will eat this s$$t up as a sign of strength. Of course, we know from science that these kind of habits (plus the alcohol and pills) can lead to all kinds of physical and mental problems. These are dangerous people.
In an interview with ABC's This Week, Panetta admitted the last time the CIA had good intelligence on bin Laden's location was "the early 2000s."
"He is, as is obvious, in very deep hiding," said Panetta. "He's in an area of the tribal areas of Pakistan that is very difficult... All I can tell you is it's in the tribal areas. We know that he's located in that vicinity."
Congress authorized the US military to go after Osama bin Laden.
Can someone tell Obama and the US military that they are looking in the wrong places.
Don’t these people ever communicate with each other?
When you have free money to spend on war, why stop and rebuild your own economy for coming century?
The military goals of a corrupt elite hell bent on world domination are insane. They are using the same techniques used to subdue Native Americans, on a world basis. Build foreign military bases, trade with foreign countries and hook them on debt, pay debts by selling valuable resources to American corporations cheaply, and keep them impoverished as the cycle continues.
The United States is too financially weak to continue this process, yet it continues. America is rotting internally and it's people suffering. There is no price too great to pay for these foreign misadventures as long as the burden is placed on the backs of working people. Ugly outcomes are inevitable.
When Harry Truman gave General Douglas McArthur the boot for insubordination, in his farewell address, the General referred to an army song, "Old soldiers never die, they just fade away". Not exactly the appropriate words to mark Barack Obama's removal of General Paul McChrystal from running the counter-insurgency war in Afghanistan, since he's only 55 years old and, whatever his plans now, it's doubtful he's the type to pull a fadeaway number. Contrariwise, if McChrystal gets a chance to express himself, perhaps he'd choose "I shall return", the departing words of General McArthur himself as he left the Phillipines just ahead of the Japanese takeover of that island archipellago. McChrystal return as what? The heroic warrior, of course, out to avenge whatever real or imagined slights he and his gang of miltary thugs (see the Rolling Stone's "The Runaway General") suffered from the Obama administration. He could, for example, resign from the military and run for the presidency himself in 2012, or, back, say, a Hillary Clinton bid for the WH. Would he succeed? Depends upon the status of the Afghanistan War and public opinion in the U.S. If by 2012 the Afghan resistance is dominating the countryside even more than now and the public is totally turned off on the war, perhaps no volume of "Who lost Afghan" TV ads would persuade the American people to put an avenging general (or his stooge) in the WH. But if it's a stalemate, who knows? Or would it be the other way around?
"It's a tough time we're in. We're in the arena, there's no way out now. We've to stay on,"
Bullshit! Yes there is a way out, and no you dont have to stay on. Whats keeping you there? You CAN just leave!
"We have to fight this campaign"
Who on earth told you that? Oh no you dont HAVE to fight this campaign. You dont belong there, and you CAN just leave! There may be times when "We had no choice" was actually true. But usually this just means "We have nothing logical to say for ourselves, so we shall give you this bullshit!
I heard this quote on NPR this morning -- in passing -- "I don't know why people are surprised when I do what I say I'm going to do."
At this point I don't think hate is too strong a word to apply to Obama.
He went on in the story to talk about closing the deficit in next year's budget and how he's going to sell this to the American people -- since you and I will, of course, be feeling the pain, certainly not the Pentagon.
Should it come as any surprise that an increase in Violence fuels more violence and death?
Ya, Ya, we have 30,000 more troops, more people are getting killed, so the tide is turning. After nine years we are finally winning, blah, blah, blah! I am actually surprised that they used the term reinforcements in this article. The prefered term of the US/NATO Governments and the compliant corporate media is "surge," because, reinforcements means you are losing, the forces that you already have in place can't handle the job, so you are reinforcing them. Just watch, next summer General Betrayus will want to Surge again, so much for drawing down.
Actually, Obama, the Democrats and Republicans don't want this war to end right now. 10 percent unemployment with all of those reserves and national guardsman, not to mention all of the regular troops who's enlistments have run out coming home to a nation with no jobs. Hell, those would be the forces we need to get rid of all of these procorporate assholes!