Maybe the Republicans would rather debate how good things are going in Afghanistan….oh wait, Bush fucked that one up, too.

More than six years after the U.S. invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said Wednesday.

National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of the country and Karzai’s government controls 30 percent to 31 percent. The majority of Afghanistan’s population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.

Underscoring the problems facing the Kabul government, a roadside bomb in Paktika province killed two Polish soldiers who are part of the NATO force in the country and opium worth $400 million was seized in the southern part of Afghanistan. That brought the number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan to 21 this year, according to an Associated Press tally.

More at Yahoo

In an earlier post, “Where’s bin Laden?” I wrote about the changes to the script for the film Charlie Wilson’s War, specifically, the removal of all mentions of bin Laden, al-Qaeda or 9/11. Mike Finnigan at C&L helpfully passed on a link to “Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in ‘Charlie Wilson’s War’” by Melissa Roddy at AlterNet.

Now, via Jonathan Schwarz at A Tiny Revolution (here and here), come two good pieces on the real history behind the film Charlie Wilson’s War.

First up is Chalmers Johnson with “Imperialist Propaganda: Second Thoughts on Charlie Wilson’s War” at TomDispatch.com:
Read more »

It’s a better question for George Bush, actually. But where’s bin Laden in Charlie Wilson’s War?

I read a draft of the script last year, and while most of it hasn’t changed much, there were a few notable, disappointing omissions.

Let me be clear: Charlie Wilson’s War is an excellent film, one of the best I’ve seen all year. Overall, the cast is superb. The film combines substance with wit to spare. Aaron Sorkin is a master of exposition, using it as ammunition and often off’setting it with comedy and other activities: sitting in a hot tub, a belly dance, the old West Wing walk and talk, a dance of dueling meetings reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. Director Mike Nichols knows the medium well, but he’s also an actor’s director, well beloved by them. Hanks is quite good as Wilson. I still think Julia Roberts is miscast, but I understand why she was cast (huge box office draw). I was ecstatic to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman cast as Gust; it’s a perfect fit and one of his most enjoyable performances, and that’s saying a lot. His first scene alone is worth the price of admission, and he and Hanks have great chemistry. Ned Beatty plays a small, key role. The film even has Amy Adams, splendid as always (see Junebug if you haven’t), although a friend of mine noted, she should have been sporting big hair for the era (as most American women in the cast are).
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While we have our eyes on Iraq, our troops in Afghanistan have now also had their deadliest year since our invasion in 2001.

From USA Today:

While we’ve had our eye on Iraq, what’s going on in Afghanistan? R.I.P. Army Spc. Ciara Durkin. I hope your family gets the answers they so rightly deserve.

Three things that stink about this:

1.) Canavan told the Quincy, Mass., Patriot Ledger on Wednesday that when her sister was home three weeks ago, she told her about something she had come across that raised some concern with her: “She was in the finance unit and she said, ‘I discovered some things I don-t like and I made some enemies because of it.’”

and

2.) The family is also wondering whether Durkin’s sexual orientation — she was gay — played a role in her death.

3.) Initially the Pentagon reported that Durkin, part of a finance unit deployed to Afghanistan in November 2006, had been killed in action, but then revised its statement to read she had died of injuries “suffered from a non-combat related incident” at Bagram Airfield. The statement had no specifics and said the circumstances are under investigation.

Full story at AOL News

By JASON STRAZIUSO
The Associated Press

KABUL, Afghanistan - A Taliban suicide bomber wearing an Afghan army uniform set off a huge explosion Saturday while trying to board a military bus in the capital, killing 30 people, most of them soldiers, officials said. Hours later, the Afghan president offered to meet personally with the Taliban leader for peace talks and give the militants a position in government.

Strengthening a call for negotiations he has made with increasing frequency the last several weeks, President Hamid Karzai said he was willing to meet with Taliban leader Mullah Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former prime minister and factional warlord leader.

“If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me, I’ll personally go there and get in touch with them,” Karzai said. “Esteemed Mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?”

Karzai said he has contacts with Taliban militants through tribal elders but that there are no direct and open government communication channels with the fighters.

read more HERE

By BRIAN MURPHY
The Associated Press

PROVE IT! I don’t believe a freaking word you say.

KABUL, Afghanistan - A top American commander on Friday accused Iran of supplying powerful roadside bombs to militants in Afghanistan and said the U.S. would “act decisively” if the cross-border flow continues.

Heavy battles in the violence-plagued south, meanwhile, killed 75 Taliban and at least six civilians, and a suicide car bomb in the capital killed a French soldier and an Afghan bystander.

Adm. William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, said Iran’s Revolutionary Guard is supplying roadside bomb parts for the type of sophisticated and deadly bombs found in Iraq known as explosively formed penetrators.

“The Iranians are clearly supplying some amount of lethal aid,” Fallon told The Associated Press during a trip to Afghanistan. “There is no doubt … that agents from Iran are involved in aiding the insurgency.”

Fallon said the U.S. was carefully watching the flow of weapons from Iran and said the U.S. would “act decisively” if the cross-border flow continues. His comments were not meant as a threat of military action against Iran but a suggestion that border interdiction efforts may need to be increased, Fallon’s aides said later.

Iran has denied that it is supplying arms to fighters in Afghanistan.

read more HERE

No kidding…..whodda thunk it! History would have told you that a long time ago.

Military force alone is unlikely to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, a top U.S. commander said Thursday, noting that most insurgencies end with a political solution.

Maj. Gen. Robert Cone, who is in charge of equipping and training Afghan security forces to take over from international troops, said the local units were making good progress, but declined to say when they would be strong enough to allow foreign forces to go home.

Meanwhile, a senior Taliban leader was killed in a clash with Afghan and foreign troops in southern Afghanistan, an Afghan army officer said.

Violence is soaring in Afghanistan despite years of counterinsurgency operations by international troops and millions of dollars spent in equipping the country’s army and police units.

More at YahooNews

Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Three British soldiers were killed in southern Afghanistan when a U.S. aircraft supporting them in a battle against the Taliban dropped a bomb, the Ministry of Defense said on Friday.

The incident on Thursday takes the number of British deaths in Afghanistan since the Taliban was toppled in 2001 to 73.

Two other soldiers were injured.

The soldiers were on a mission to disrupt Taliban activity north west of Kajaki, in the lawless Helmand province.

“Their patrol was attacked by Taliban insurgents and during the intense engagement that ensued, close air support was called in from two U.S. F15 aircraft to repel the enemy,” the ministry said in a statement.

“A single bomb was dropped and it is believed the explosion killed all three soldiers, who were declared dead at the scene.”

An investigation into the incident has begun, the ministry said.

By Gordon Lubold
The Christian Science Monitor

Washington - In the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other individuals the military considers high-value targets, the US Air Force is pursuing a new program that could put a missile on a target in minutes instead of hours.

The Air Force is developing a “hypersonic” engine designed to fly bombs at Mach 6.5 speed, or more than 4,000 miles per hour, allowing commanders a chance to conduct long-range strikes on targets in a fraction of the time it takes now. The program, known as the X-51A scramjet, could be a valuable tool as a “manhunter” in fights such as those in Afghanistan or Iraq - or as a deterrent against more conventional enemies in industrialized nations, officials say. It all comes down to speed, and that could change the nature of the fight in the war on terrorism, military officials say.

“Faster is always better in air power,” says Brig. Gen. Jim Poss, the Air Force’s director of intelligence for its Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va. “What we’ve found from combat experience is that people realize very quickly you have to move to survive on the modern battlefield. And the best way to counter that is to get there with the appropriate weapon in the appropriate size very quickly.”

The program isn’t a weapons program per se, but a demonstration of an engine that can move a weapon really, really fast. Unlike a rocket, which requires its own oxygen stored in heavy tanks, a scramjet engine mixes the oxygen already in the air with fuel at such a high rate that it can propel itself faster than anything else that can fly long distances within the atmosphere. Strap on a warhead, and the United States has a unique new weapon, analysts and military officials say.

It sounds ideal from a military commander’s standpoint. There’s just one problem: The X-51A doesn’t quite exist just yet.

read more HERE

By LOLITA BALDOR
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Army’s top general said Tuesday that lengthening U.S. tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan beyond the current 15 months would be too stressful and risky for troops. Gen. George Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, also said he didn’t know when officials would be able to cut the length of soldiers’ tours back to 12 months.

“I don’t see going beyond the 15 months,” Casey said. “I’ve been there in Iraq, I’ve watched the nature of the combat and the stresses and strains that it puts on these soldiers.”

He said the 90-day extension ordered by officials earlier this year can pass quickly, but staying longer would hurt troops.

“Any more than that, it puts our soldiers at a level of stress and a level of risk that right now I’m not comfortable with,” he told reporters in an appearance at the National Press Club. “So it would be very hard for me to recommend going beyond the 15 months and … we want to get down from 15 months as quickly as we can.”

In an often blunt assessment of the state of the Army, Casey acknowledged that the long and repeated battlefield tours have knocked the Army out of balance, so it can no longer provide ready forces as quickly as it should for other missions.

“We’re consumed with meeting the current demands and we’re unable to provide ready forces as rapidly as we would like for other contingencies, nor are we able to provide an acceptable tempo of deployments to sustain our soldiers and families for the long haul,” said Casey. Before taking over as chief of the Army earlier this year, Casey was the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

read more HERE

Does he really think he’s fooling anyone other than that crappy twenty’something-percent that walks among us? You can’t get more delusional than this (Mitt Romney runs a close second in that race).

Bush: Iraq strategy sees good results

President Bush pauses as he listens to a reporters question during a news conference, Thursday…

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine - President Bush, presiding over a nation dispirited by wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, on Saturday cast both conflicts in terms of “encouraging news.” In stating his case, the president emphasized enemy deaths.

“Our new strategy is delivering good results,” Bush said of Iraq in his weekly radio address, taped at his parents’ summer home on the rocky coast of Maine.

The president said his buildup of U.S. forces in Iraq, designed to provide security for the Iraqi government, was taking hold and showing gains. He acknowledged again, though, that Iraq has made frustratingly slow political progress.

Bush’s comments came as Washington, like much of the nation, has shifted into vacation time. He said that in an otherwise slow news month, the war against terrorists rages on.

Bush’s address amounted to another appeal for patience and upbeat view of events.

BEN FELLER, Associated Press Writer

Source: Yahoo! News

US marines asleep at their base in Falluja, Iraq. Photograph: Nicolas Asfouri/AFP/Getty images

5 more U.S. deaths in Iraq yesterday. And this administration is still blaming Iran for the explosives. If they had one shred of evidence that they were coming from Iran, they’d have been all over the airwaves with that evidence. But are they? No….they just keep SAYING it, and as we all know, what they say and the truth are two different things.
3 U.S. troops and an enterpreter were killed in Afghanistan, also. Meanwhile, Musarraf vows to fight terrorists.

The U.S. has millions of dollars in cost overruns to security firms in the past three years, including $548 million to two British security firms that protect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on reconstruction projects, more than $200 million over the original budget.

All while our troops are being besieged with exhaustion and combat stress.

A senior British commander in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province said he had asked the U.S. military to withdraw its special forces from his area of operations because the high level of civilian casualties they have caused was making it difficult to win over local people.

A U.S. military spokesman denied the request was ever made, either formally or otherwise, but the dispute underlined differences of opinion among NATO and U.S. forces in Afghanistan on tactics for fighting Taliban insurgents and concerns among soldiers on the ground about the consequences of civilian casualties.

A precise tally of civilian casualties is difficult to pin down, but one reliable count puts the number killed in Helmand this year at close to 300 - the vast majority of them caused by foreign and Afghan forces, rather than the Taliban.

More at the International Herald

More than 1,000 civilian contractors have been killed in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion more than four years ago, according to Labor Department records made available Tuesday.

In response to a request from Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., the Labor Department revealed that 1,001 civilian contractors had died in Iraq as of June 30, including 84 during the second quarter of the year.

So far in 2007, at least 231 contractors working for U.S. firms have died in Iraq.

Those contractor fatalities are in addition to the 3,668 military personnel the Defense Department had confirmed dead in Iraq from the start of the war in March 2003 until today.

“We are not getting the full picture” of the cost of the war in Iraq, Schakowsky said in a recent interview.

Another 76 civilian contractors have died in Afghanistan since the start of operations there, the Labor Department records show.

More at the Houston Chronicle