The Truth Blurts

[douglas9]

Individuals in the Pentagon and media polloi are beginning to commit a cardinal sin. They’re blurting the truth—sort of. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military’s senior spin surgeon (his father was a Hollywood publicity agent), says that “Afghans are in the lead” of the Marja offensive. But not everybody involved in writing the narrative is willing to tell a lie that big.

New York Times journalist C.J. Chivers, a former Marine, was among the first mainstream media voices to shoot down claims the Afghan army was leading the operation. In a February 20 article posted from Marja, Chivers reported that Marines were doing the “heavy lifting” while the Afghans lagged behind. They lagged so far behind, Chivers noted, that the Marines coined a new acronym: WOA (waiting on the Afghans).

“Statements from Kabul have said the Afghan military is planning the missions and leading both the fight and the effort to engage with Afghan civilians caught between the Taliban and the newly arrived troops,” Chivers wrote. “But that assertion conflicts with what is visible in the field. In every engagement between the Taliban and one front-line American Marine unit, the operation has been led in almost every significant sense by American officers and troops.”

In response to truth-outs like Chivers’, unnamed “senior military officials” tell us via NPR that the U.S. definition of “in the lead” means the Afghans are “planning the operation” and are “sitting down with Afghan elders in mosques or in meetings known as shuras.”

http://zenhuber.blogspot.com/2010/03/truth-blurts.html

[Mari333]

1. what a clusterfck of epic proportions...

'It could take forever. Afghan forces are starting from pre-natal stage compared to where Iraq’s security force started—prior to the Iraqi Freedom invasion, Iraq had an actual army that had won an actual war with one of its neighbors—yet the Iraqis haven’t progressed much past the Gomer Pyle level themselves.

In July 2009, five years after “King” David Petraeus was in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Colonel Timothy Reese, chief of the U.S. Army’s Baghdad Operations Command Advisory Team, blurted a memo lambasting the Iraqi’s lack of combat readiness. Corruption in the Iraqi officer corps is “widespread,” Reese said. Enlisted men are neglected and mistreated. Cronyism and nepotism are “rampant.” Laziness is “endemic.” Lack of initiative is “legion.” Iraq’s forces are “unable to plan” and their “near total effectiveness” prevents them from becoming self-sustaining.

Prior to Iraq’s fourth election since U.S. psychological operations forces staged the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad nearly seven years ago, violence is once again rampant and the hapless Iraqi forces are helpless to stop it. Conditions in Iraq are so bad that Petreaus’s pet ox “Babe” Odierno, who always makes me think of John Candy’s character in the film Stripes, is again echoing the mantra that he may have to delay the timeline for sending combat troops home. (Lean-mean-fightin’ Odierno has been the official mascot of the Long War Society since February 2009, when he went on record with Petraeus hagiographer and former journalist Thomas E. Ricks as wanting to scrap President Obama’s withdrawal plan and keep 30,000 or so U.S. troops in Iraq until 2015 or whenever.)'

corporate wars that will never end


and this country will be bankrupt thanks to the war machine.

[Robb]

2. The oft-ignored reason the Taliban were so good at taking power

...is that they were the only trained combat fighters in the region of any number.

[gratuitous]

3. Stoopid Afghans

Don't they want to shoot their fellow citizens at the behest of foreign occupiers? What's the matter with them? Don't they know how good and benevolent the United States is, and that we always and everywhere want only the best for everyone.

[G_j]

4. yea, no wonder we had to occupy their stupid country! nt

:sarcasm:

[gratuitous]

5. Buncha ingrates, if you ask me

Almost makes you wonder if it was worth it to invade and occupy their crummy little country. Well, except for stealing some natural resources, and letting all those lucrative defense contracts. But we're not supposed to think about those things while we're waving flags and cheering on the military.

Maybe next time, we won't invade them at all. That would surely teach them a lesson.

[G_j]

6. in fact, why not just let them have their silly country back?

:think:

[gratuitous]

7. God, wouldn't that just burn them?

Teach them to mess around with the United States and America.