The commandant of the Marine Corps said Tuesday that President Barack Obama’s July 2011 deadline to begin American troop withdrawals from Afghanistan was “probably giving our enemy sustenance.”
The remark was by far the most sharply worded public remark from a senior military commander about the White House’s timetable for starting to wind down the war.
But the commandant, Gen. James Conway, said he thought the deadline might not ultimately comfort the insurgents, who could find that only a small number of U.S. forces leave Afghanistan next July, a scenario that is increasingly set forth by senior military commanders. Conway predicted that Taliban fighters, who he said have been told repeatedly by their commanders that the Americans would leave en masse, would be demoralized when they realize that the United States is staying.
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Marine Corps Commandant: Obama’s Afghanistan withdrawal gives the Taliban “sustenance”
Last Afghan WikiLeaks out in ‘couple of weeks’
AFP,
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange vowed Saturday to publish the last batch of secret documents on the Afghan war in “a couple of weeks”, despite Pentagon pleas they would put further lives at risk.
Asked at a press conference in Stockholm when the final batch of 15,000 classified files on the Afghan war would be published, Assange said that “We’re about half way through, so a couple of weeks.”
The announcement at a seminar on the control of information came after the Pentagon on Friday renewed pressure on the whistleblower website not to release the documents, saying they posed greater risks than previously released files.
“We still are hopeful that WikiLeaks will not publish those documents and put further lives at risk,” said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan.
10 Christian medical workers executed by Taliban
The Christian Science Monitor,
The execution-style killings of 10 people working for a Christian medical team in a remote region of northern Afghanistan fit into Taliban insurgents’ stated shift in tactics: Target Western civilians, especially Christians, as “foreign invaders.”
The Taliban took credit for one of the deadliest attacks yet on aid workers in Afghanistan, saying the Christian charity workers were proselytizing to poor villagers – a charge that the International Assistance Mission, which dispatched the team, denies.
The bodies of six Americans, a Briton, a German, and two Afghan interpreters were discovered Friday in a forested part of Badakhshan Province in remote northern Afghanistan – until now considered a relatively peaceful region known mostly to adventure travelers. The only person in the party not killed was a local translator who offered proof he was a Muslim by quoting the Koran, according to the Associated Press.
WikiLeaks founder defends publication of war documents
Julian Assange, founder of the website that published more than 91,000 secret U.S. military reports from Afghanistan, says he’s revealing injustices. President Barack Obama says he’s concerned that disclosure of sensitive information may harm military operations.
Conceived as an electronic dead-drop for confidential documents, WikiLeaks.org receives material that governments and businesses seek to keep secret and publishes them so that they remain in the public domain forever.
“We want to produce positive reform,” Assange, a 39-year- old Australian, said in a telephone interview from London yesterday. “An efficient way to do that is to selectively go after material that organizations are trying to conceal.”
Clinton announces $500 million in aid to Pakistan
AP,
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sought Monday to convince skeptical Pakistanis that American interest in their country extends beyond the fight against Islamist militants by announcing a raft of new aid projects worth $500 million.
The projects, which include hospitals and new dams for badly needed electricity, are part of a $7.5 billion aid effort to win over Pakistanis suspicious about Washington’s goals here and in neighboring Afghanistan, where U.S. troops are being killed in ever greater numbers in an insurgency with roots in Pakistan.
Mistrust over U.S. intentions in Pakistan is in part due to Washington’s decision to turn away from the nuclear-armed country after enlisting its support to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
Petraeus: Military didn’t recommend Obama’s July 2011 withdrawal date
Gen. David Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee this week that President Barack Obama’s July 2011 drawdown date for U.S troops in Afghanistan was not proposed by military officials.
Petraeus said that he understood that the “president has to be interested in fiscal considerations, political considerations, diplomatic considerations” in making decisions about withdrawing troops from a war.
Nonetheless, Petraeus said he agreed with the dateline, while adding that a U.S. presence in Afghanistan is necessary for “quite some time.”
Gen. McChrystal plans to retire
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was fired last week as the top U.S. general in the stalemated Afghanistan war, told the Army on Monday that he will retire.
Army spokesman Col. Tom Collins said McChrystal, 55, notified the service of his plans, but he has not yet submitted formal retirement papers. It is not clear when he will leave the service, but the process usually take a few months.
In announcing McChrystal’s ouster on Wednesday, President Barack Obama praised his long Army career but said his intemperate remarks in a magazine article that appeared last week could not be abided.
AWOL Afghans Found … on Facebook
At least 11 of the 17 members of the Afghan military who went AWOL from an Air Force base in Texas and are considered deserters by their nation have turned up in the exact place you’d expect to find them in the year 2010.
They’re on Facebook.
And, by the look of things, they’re not unlike millions of other young men on the social networking site. One proclaims to be a fan of Paris Hilton and is a member of a group named “FREE Webcam Sex with ME!” Another is a fan of hip hop music, Michael Jackson, the tearjerker movie The Notebook, Family Guy and Sports Center. Another is a fan of soccer and the Godfather.
McChrystal sacked
President Barack Obama sacked his loose-lipped Afghanistan commander Wednesday, a seismic shift for the military order in wartime, and chose the familiar, admired — and tightly disciplined — Gen. David Petraeus to replace him. Petraeus, architect of the Iraq war turnaround, was once again to take hands-on leadership of a troubled war effort.
Obama said bluntly that Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s scornful remarks about administration officials in interviews for a magazine article represent conduct that “undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system.”
He fired the commander after summoning him from Afghanistan for a face to face meeting in the Oval Office and named Petraeus, the Central Command chief who was McChrystal’s direct boss, to step in.
17 Afghan military members AWOL from U.S. Air Force base
Fox News, “EXCLUSIVE: Alert Issued for 17 Afghan Military Members AWOL From U.S. Air Force Base”
by Jana Winter
A nationwide alert has been issued for 17 members of the Afghan military who have gone AWOL from an Air Force base in Texas where foreign military officers who are training to become pilots are taught English, FoxNews.com has learned.
The Afghan officers and enlisted men have security badges that give them access to secure U.S. defense installations, according to the lookout bulletin, “Afghan Military Deserters in CONUS [Continental U.S.],” written by Naval Criminal Investigative Service in Dallas and obtained by FoxNews.com.
The Be-On-the-Lookout (BOLO) bulletin was distributed to local and federal law enforcement officials on Wednesday night.
Fox News article continues here.
Lithium deposit worth nearly $1T discovered in Afghanistan
The New York Times, “U.S. Identifies Vast Mineral Riches in Afghanistan”
by James Risen
The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.
The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.
The New York Times article continues here.
FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones
My Way News (AP), “FAA under pressure to open US skies to drones”
by Joan Lowy
Unmanned aircraft have proved their usefulness and reliability in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq. Now the pressure’s on to allow them in the skies over the United States.
The Federal Aviation Administration has been asked to issue flying rights for a range of pilotless planes to carry out civilian and law-enforcement functions but has been hesitant to act. Officials are worried that they might plow into airliners, cargo planes and corporate jets that zoom around at high altitudes, or helicopters and hot air balloons that fly as low as a few hundred feet off the ground.
On top of that, these pilotless aircraft come in a variety of sizes. Some are as big as a small airliner, others the size of a backpack. The tiniest are small enough to fly through a house window.
My Way News (AP) article continues here.
Justice: Navy SEAL acquitted
Fox News, “Navy SEAL Found Not Guilty of Assaulting a Suspected Terrorist”
Virginia military jury found a Navy SEAL not guilty on charges of punching a suspected Iraqi terrorist.
Matthew McCabe, a Special Operations Petty Officer Second Class, was facing three charges: dereliction of performance of duty for willfully failing to safeguard a detainee, making a false official statement, and assault.
The suspected terrorist McCabe was accused of punching is Ahmed Hashim Abed, who is the suspected masterminded the grisly killings of four American contractors in Iraq six years ago.
Fox News article continues here.
British sniper sets world record for longest-distance kill: 8,120 feet (1.54 miles)
New York Post, “Sniper kills Qaeda-from 1½ mi. away”
by Lukas I. Alpert
It was silent but deadly.
A British sniper set a world sharpshooting record by taking out two Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan from more than a mile and a half away — a distance so great, experts say the terrorists wouldn’t have even heard the shots.
Craig Harrison killed the two insurgents from an astounding distance of 8,120 feet — or 1.54 miles — in Helmand Province last November firing an Accuracy International L11583 long-range rifle.
“The first round hit a machine-gunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a corporal of horse in the British Army’s Household Cavalry, the equivalent of a sergeant in the American military.
“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too,” Harrison told the Sunday Times of London.
New York Post article continues here.