The Americans would like to dump Karzai and I am sure the ISI would also like to see him gone.

Posted by: blowback | Feb 11 2009 22:10 utc | 4

many metrics in action, one pakistani taliban-warlords being assassinated, another the enraged people of afghanistan, victims of indiscriminate us bombing and assault tactics they learned from the israelis, who learned them from the nazi’s, the jack boot at midnight and the v-1 rocket bomb out of a blue sky, even with GPS and laser guidance, they still kill civilians and cause the same terror that londoners felt. the third metric is the widespread karzai administration corruption and behind the scenes jockeying for replacement candidates towards the presidential elections this summer, and finally obama’s park-and-ride stopgap to keep us forces kicked out of iraq in the sandbox on the dole, rather than have them killing and raping on food stamps in conus. and the mercs. can’t forget the mercs. it’s kind of like the ‘tree of life’, or that ‘citric acid cycle’ chart, everything feeding on everything, in a perfect ectopian ecology. as far as ops, shucks, madrassas train ’em, the warlords own ’em, seven went in, four succeeded, two were gunned down and one disappeared, no different from ok corral or seven samurai in reverse, just drifters on the trail.
nothing much to report, slow news day, and the msm has more people covering af now, gotta put in war-zone hours on the tangos for a dan rather post at nyc news desk. they’re runnin’ scared, just like the merc’s. newspapers and warfare are drying up, everyone going all soft and bailed out and myspace. that’s how the cookie crumbles!

Posted by: shah loam | Feb 12 2009 4:59 utc | 6

With the war and the opening up of the avenues, all the different militant groups have been over-lappingly penetrated by the various spy agencies, CIA, RAW, ISI, BND, Mossad, KGB… you name it. It is possible that sometimes some group is working for more than one paymaster and doing opposite things. The picture is too confusing, too much noise and very little information.
What needs to be done is to not loose focus on the big picture. Pakistani nukes is one issue. Continuing with the new great game is another. Making the Afghan capital look week goes in the favour of the surge. There is another battle brewing in Washington between the old establishment and the newcomers. The way this battle shapes up, in the background of the new great depression, may not just decide the future of Afghanistan, but that of amerika itself.

Posted by: a | Feb 12 2009 6:33 utc | 8

for uncle – a scholar who played with fire

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Feb 12 2009 18:43 utc | 10

@Giap I read about half the piece on the human terrain team being treated as the soldiers they are, then skimmed to the last paragraphs where sure enough, after writing quotes like:
“Salam got murdered in his own country by foreign occupiers,” Maximilian C. Forte, assistant professor of anthropology at Concordia University in Quebec, wrote on his website, Open Anthropology. “Try, just as an experiment, to see things from that angle for a moment.”
Or even
“These aren’t just social scientists,” wrote a commenter named Eric O on Wired magazine’s blog, Danger Room. “They are employed by the US military to conduct research with a goal of helping the military more effectively carry out the occupation.”
The article can seamlessly segue to
“”We are very upset that people were using her for political gain,” said Meshi, a Wellesley classmate. “They portrayed her as this really naive woman who did not know what she was doing, or used it as a way to criticize the Human Terrain program.”
But Loyd’s friends and relatives don’t have time to dwell on anger. They are too busy trying to figure out how to carry out her last wishes. In her will, Loyd asked that a fund be set up to send Afghan girls to Wellesley. Loyd’s mother isn’t sure how to do that, but she is planning to travel to Afghanistan to figure it out. “We want to continue what she was doing,” she told the mourners at Loyd’s memorial. “We want to make sure her legacy stays alive.”
which is where the article ends.
Subtext:

those who point out that the activities of the latest amerikan ‘martyr’ were just as malevolent and possibly far more more lethal than the usual actions of an assault rifle wielding amerikan invader are exploiting the’poor girl’ for political gains.
After all, the poor little thing had become greatly stressed by feelings of guilt about her exploitation of anthropology discipline and keen assistance towards ensuring that Afghani indigenous culture was destroyed by western materialism.
However terrain team boss. amerikan contractor Don Ayala has been charged – can you believe it, charged! merely because he:
knocked the attacker down and handcuffed him. Minutes later, when Ayala learned how seriously Loyd had been hurt, he put a pistol to the man’s head and fired, according to an affidavit filed in a Virginia court where Ayala pleaded guilty last Tuesday to manslaughter.
Of course Ayala will get off after much hooha but nevertheless who do these wogs think they are?

If Afghani freedom fighter Abdul Salam hadn’t treated Paula Loyd, as the soldier she was, the amerikan media would have found very little ‘news value’ in a story about amerikan anthropologists taking advantage of fellow humans’ preparedness to answer anthropologists intrusive interrogations honestly, yet for the author of this article along with most of the audience the story discloses an outrage – ie; that some unwhite has had the gall to treat a soldier intent on gathering intelligence for an army attacking his friends and family on a daily basis, as a soldier.
Most of the rest of the world cannot conceive of why it is that amerika chooses to put women in harms way via the amerikan military, but practically all do understand that once a woman chooses to join the front line, any attempt by her or the empire to posthumously reclaim ‘the innocence of womanhood’ in her name, is just more amerikan hypocrisy.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Feb 13 2009 9:43 utc | 12

Last Campfire.
“How many are armed? I got one armed, definitely. Two. Two, two armed.
They’re around the fire. About eight.
Yeah, I count eight guys. <-- yes, but are they Taliban? are they fighting? OK, we got 8 individuals, at least 5 armed. <-- a little exaggeration never hurts. Come left, come left a little, coming left. Right there. We clear? Engage. OK, right, steady platform, ... commence firing. <-- voice profiles show hard-on's Voice over unintelligible. <-- colonel custer congratulates his sharp shooters Eight more Tangos dead. 25,000,000 to go. It'll be a long war! http://afghan-tribunal.3005.net/japanese/pdf/judgement.pdf

Posted by: Chip He | Feb 13 2009 20:52 utc | 14

Is there a reason a direct link wasn’t provided for the YouTube “Last Campfire”?
Here it is.
Were there news reports about this attack and its outcome?

Posted by: jawbone | Feb 15 2009 17:16 utc | 16

Ooops.

Posted by: jawbone | Feb 15 2009 17:52 utc | 18