Who do you trust?

At first this sounds pretty tempting, but when you check out the details it isn't quite so attractive.

At the major international conference on Afghanistan in London last Thursday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai called on the Taliban to take part in a loya jirga (assembly of elders) - as a start to peace talks.

The Taliban are widely reported as having responded that first they want all of the more than 110,000 foreign troops in Afghanistan to leave the country by 2011.

Asia Times Online, however, has learned from well-connected sources in Afghanistan who have been directly involved in backchannel negotiations with the Taliban that there is an important nuance to the Taliban demand. That is, the United States must put an immediate halt to its plans to send a further 30,000 troops to Afghanistan before withdrawal begins in 2011.

In return, the Taliban would be prepared to open up a channel of dialogue with the Americans, through Saudi Arabia, while at the same time taking measures to reduce the level of hostilities in the country.

[snip]

The key issue boils down to one of trust, that is, whether the US would be prepared to only send in replacements for previously deployed troops, given that the surge in forces was meant to be a cornerstone of its counter-insurgency plan as a means of softening up the Taliban before talks could begin in earnest. Asia Times Online contacts claim that in an effort to get the dialogue process back on track, the US is considering the Taliban's demand on stopping the troop surge in Afghanistan, with the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan lined up to work out an arrangement that would keep the Taliban and al-Qaeda under control in any US exit plan.

Should the US agree to the Taliban demands, there is no guarantee that the Taliban would stick to their word. This is the US's dilemma.

"Washington has to focus on out-of-box thinking to resolve this conflict in Afghanistan," a Kabul-based contact told Asia Times Online on the condition of anonymity. "The Americans desperately want an exit strategy but they cannot announce it outright because if they did so, the Taliban would overrun any government they left behind. The Americans aim to invite the Taliban to join the political process, but the bitter fact is that the Taliban do not believe in elections at all. They want the reinstatement of their Islamic Emirate that was dissolved by the Americans in 2001.

And just why might the Taliban not keep their word? Hell, that would be up to Obama. Its all there in the passages snipped.
...
Note: Headline links to source.

Taliban attack helps inmates escape Afghan prison

A guard watches over inmates in the
courtyard at Kandahar jail in 2001.
Suspected Taliban militants attacked
a prison in the southern Afghan city
of Kandahar late Friday and freed a
number of prisoners, intelligence and
police officials said. (AFP/File/
Banaras Khan)
Yes, you're memory is correct. That's the same Taliban the moron and other leaders of countries who supplied coalition forces said had been defeated years ago. To all those leaders I say, "Use a fucking dictionary before throwing around words like 'defeated' next time."

"In Afghanistan, coalition forces and their Afghan allies drove the Taliban from power in less than two months."

-- The moron in the White House
-- Addressing US Air Force Academy
-- Graduating class of 2008
-- May 28, 2008

Its comforting to know all those Taliban militants are were behind bars.

Oopsie!

Taliban militants staged a brazen bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan late Friday, blowing down the gate and helping hundreds of suspected insurgents flee, officials said. Many police officers were reported killed.

The complex attack included a truck bombing at the main gate, a suicide bomber who struck a back wall and rockets fired from outside, setting of a series of explosions that rattled Kandahar, the country's second biggest city.

A Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said 30 insurgents on motorbikes and two suicide bombers attacked Sarposa Prison and freed about 400 Taliban members.

Abdul Qabir, chief of the Sarposa Prison, also said hundreds of prisoners escaped, but did not provide an exact figure. He said some inmates stayed at the jail, which also held criminals.

Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai who is president of Kandahar's provincial council, said the prison held about 350 suspected Taliban fighters.

He said "all" the prisoners escaped, but also had no specific number. "There is no one left," he said.

BTW, if you search Google News for "Taliban Defeated" you get screen after screen of stories stating the Taliban can not be defeated. Everyone knows it except the idiot and his cabal of neocons. Oh yeah, and John McSame.

Note: Headline links to source.

U.S.-LED AIR RAID KILLS 12 CIVILIANS, 20 TALIBAN IN AFGHAN SOUTH

Oh that's well worth it. Only 60% "collateral damage". Jesus.

I'm sorry, but killing three civilians for every 5 Taliban seems excessive.

And as I've said many times, I was never in the military and realize shit happens, but one dead civilian is too many IMHO.

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UPDATE: It appears the 12 dead have become 25 dead in a matter of minutes. Three of them were babies.

Suspected Taliban militants attacked police posts in southern Afghanistan, sparking clashes and NATO airstrikes that left 25 civilians and 20 militants dead, a senior police officer said today.

(update)

UPDATE: To be fair, the alertnet.org story did say 12 members of "a" family were killed. Apparently the other 13 were neighbors. Sorry if I led you astray.

Taliban claims to launch nationwide offensive in Afghanistan

This can't be good.

Hey, didn't Bush destroy the Taliban?

The Taliban claimed it would launch a fierce nationwide offensive against government and foreign targets in Afghanistan from Sunday.

The Taliban would initiate an offensive dubbed Ambush across Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman Yousuf Ahmadi told Xinhua by satellite phone from an undisclosed place.

Taliban fighters would adopt various tactics including suicide bombing, roadside bombing, ambush and so on, he said, adding the Taliban was aiming at causing great loss and casualties to Afghan and foreign troops.

The spokesman did not say how long the offensive would last.

It takes time to see how fierce the Taliban's so-called offensive would be and whether the Taliban is only carrying out a propaganda campaign.

It seemingly has been quite peaceful in Afghanistan on Sunday for the time being.

Due to rising Taliban-linked insurgency, over 1,600 persons, most of whom were Taliban militants, have been killed in Afghanistan this year.

Editor: Xiao Jie

I often post whole articles from Xinhua because they're so short.

(courtesy link)

ABC News Exclusive: The Secret War Against Iran

Does this sound at all familiar? Uh, South America during Ronnie's reign come to mind?

A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.

The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran.

It has taken responsibility for the deaths and kidnappings of more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials.

U.S. officials say the U.S. relationship with Jundullah is arranged so that the U.S. provides no funding to the group, which would require an official presidential order or "finding" as well as congressional oversight.

I like that little punt of "no funding" information. Hehe, we aren't officially financing terrorists.

And doesn't the leader of this group of fucking thugs and murders sound like a charming fellow?

"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler , part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.

"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said.

Yeah, I'd sure love to sit down and have a nice cold one with that sophisticated gentleman.

Now here's an area of real repugnance, Bushco is letting a drug smuggling Taliban member (a group we're fighting) act as judge and jury, or the CIA fills those rolls, and executioner. These murdered people have not been found guilty by any court of law.

One last shot here. How in hell do the hyenas in the Bush administration live with themselves? We won't talk to Hamas, Hezbollah, Taliban, Syria or Iran because they are all terrorists or terrorist supporters. Just forget we have our own terrorists. Ours are on the side of truth, justice and democracy.

I have another last shot. Call it one for the road. Did you catch that little "executing them on camera" bit? The Bush administration is condoning the making of fucking snuff films. They're probably duplicated and couriered to Cheney nightly so he can get all excited. Disgusting!

Sure makes ya feel proud of yer ol' government doesn't it.

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Kuwaiti Court Acquits 2 Ex-Gitmo Inmates

Here's hoping the long ordeal of these two men is finally over.

A criminal court on Saturday acquitted two former Guantanamo Bay prisoners of joining al-Qaida or the Taliban.

Omar Rajab Amin and Abdullah Kamel al-Kundari denied any terror connections at the start of their trial. Their lawyers argued there was no evidence against them and the case was "political." Defense attorneys said the accused were in Afghanistan for charity work - not to fight.

Details of the ruling, which was announced by a court clerk, were not immediately available. The two men were not in court Saturday, but one of their lawyers, Thikra al-Majdali, said she expected them to be released from custody by tomorrow.

The prosecution can appeal the ruling, but it was not clear Saturday if it would do so.

Amin, 41, and al-Kundari, 32, were released from the U.S. detention camp in September after spending nearly five years there. They were detained by authorities for questioning upon their return to Kuwait.

I'm assuming here justice has been done and the men are indeed innocent. But they still lost nearly five years of their lives for nothing. Then faced political persecution for 5 months in Kuwait.

There'll probably be more stories like this to come.

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Here We Go Again

I may not be original, but I'm honest (sort of). This is stolen wholly from Lawrence of Cyberia.

[O]n 12 September 2002, two-thirds of the way through George W. Bush's virtual declaration of war against Iraq, there came a dangerous tell-tale code which suggested that he really did intend to send his tanks across the Tigris River. "The United States has no quarrel with the Iraqi people," he told us in the U.N. General Assembly. In the press gallery, nobody stirred. Below us, not a diplomat shifted in his seat. The speech had already rambled on for twenty minutes but the speechwriters must have known what this meant when they cobbled it together.

Before President Reagan bombed Libya in 1986, he announced that America "has no quarrel with the Libyan people." Before he bombed Iraq in 1991, Bush the Father told the world that the United States "has no quarrel with the Iraqi people." In 2001, Bush the Son, about to strike at the Taliban and al-Qaeda, told us he "has no quarrel with the people of Afghanistan." And now that frightening mantra was repeated. There was no quarrel, Mr. Bush said - absolutely none - with the Iraqi people.

So, I thought to myself as I scribbled my notes in the UN press gallery, it's flak jackets on...

-- Robert Fisk, The Great War for Civilization, Chapter 12 paragraphs 1 & 2

U.S. fires into Pakistan to hit back at Taliban

File under: This can't be good.

Asserting a right to self-defense, American forces in eastern Afghanistan have launched artillery rounds into Pakistan to strike Taliban fighters who attack remote U.S. outposts, the commander of U.S. forces in the region said Sunday.

The skirmishes are politically sensitive because Pakistan's government, regarded by the Bush administration as an important ally against Islamic extremists, has denied that it allows U.S. forces to strike inside its territory.

The use of the largely ungoverned Waziristan area of Pakistan as a haven for Taliban and al-Qaida fighters has become a greater irritant between Washington and Islamabad since Pakistan put in place a peace agreement there in September that was intended to stop cross-border incursions.

Army Col. John W. Nicholson, commander of the 3rd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division, said that rather than halt such incursions, the peace deal has led to a substantial increase.

Pakistani border forces, which had been active in stopping Taliban incursions into Afghanistan as recently as last spring, stopped offensive actions against them once the peace deal took effect, he said.

"That did relax some of the pressure on the enemy," Nicholson said.

The Pakistan army's top spokesman said Sunday that coalition forces operating in Afghanistan are not allowed to fire into Pakistani territory but acknowledged that artillery fire from the coalition had landed inside Pakistan in recent days. Pakistan also plans to seek "clarification" about Nicholson's comments. [emphasis mine]

Would someone please read Bush the definition of "sovereignty"? Just in case he has no idea what it means. Or more likely couldn't care less about other counties' right to it.

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Great ally ya got there, Bush

These are the dogs Bush decides to lie down with? Kewl. Perhaps you champion them because you would like the same protections.

The United Nations office in Afghanistan has voiced strong opposition to the Afghan parliament's approval of a bill granting immunity to war-criminals and exempting them from judicial proceedings.

The parliament, with a strong warlord presence and after a week of heated debates, approved a bill Wednesday that grants immunity to all individuals involved in atrocities in the past two-and-a-half decades, including the Taliban and war criminals from the country's 1992-1996 civil war.

No sane person thinks its right to excuse atrocities for Christ sake. Got it?

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Must Read IMHO

Bush defeated the Taliban? Yeah, right. This should piss him off big time.