White House ‘pessimistic’ about Afghanistan war.

[ProSense]

White House ‘pessimistic’ about Afghanistan war.

The Washington Post reports that the National Security Council “has concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met, even as U.S. and NATO forces have scored significant combat successes against resurgent Taliban fighters”:

Intelligence analysts acknowledge the battlefield victories, but they highlight the Taliban’s unchallenged expansion into new territory, an increase in opium poppy cultivation and the weakness of the government of President Hamid Karzai as signs that the war effort is deteriorating. <…>

Overall, “there doesn’t seem to be a lot of progress being made. … I would think that from standpoint, things are looking decent,” the intelligence official said.

Senior White House officials privately express pessimism about Afghanistan. There is anxiety over the current upheaval in neighboring Pakistan, where both the Taliban and al-Qaeda maintain headquarters, logistical support and training camps along the Afghan border.

A recent report from the Senlis Council found that the Taliban now controls 54 percent of Afghanistan.

U.S. lowers bar for political success in Iraq (more on Bush's failed foreign policy)

Six years, $600 billion and the "surge" equals two lost wars

[ProSense]

1. 7 police beheaded in Afghanistan

7 police beheaded in Afghanistan

By NOOR KHAN, Associated Press Writer Sat Nov 24, 2:09 AM ET

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Taliban militants beheaded seven policemen Friday after overrunning their checkpoints in southern Afghanistan, officials said, while in a separate clash, an Australian soldier and three civilians were killed.

On Saturday, a suicide bomber targeting Italian soldiers killed six Afghans near Kabul, including three children, Afghan officials said.

Six other police officers were missing after the Taliban's Friday attack on police checkpoints in Arghandab district, in Kandahar province, said Abdul Hakim Jan, a police officer.

The attack in the strategic area of Arghandab, 15 miles north of Kandahar city, came weeks after Afghan and foreign troops forced Taliban militants to relinquish control of the town, which they had briefly captured.

more

WH pessimistic!

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

2. Sorta makes one wonder where those 5000 troops taken out of Iraq will be heading.

Switching quagmires.

"When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier."

Rudyard Kipling

Note: My grandfather fought on Afghanistan's plains as a Brit soldier. Tho' did escape blowing out his brains.

[Disturbed]

3. Afghanistan ‘Falling into Hands of Taliban’

Afghanistan ‘Falling into Hands of Taliban’

by Richard Norton-Taylor

The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area.

Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control “vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries”, the Senlis
Council says in a report released yesterday.

On the basis of what it calls exclusive research, it warns that the insurgency is also exercising a “significant amount of psychological control, gaining more and more political legitimacy in the minds of the Afghan people who have a long history of shifting alliances and regime change”.
It says the territory controlled by the Taliban has increased and the frontline is getting closer to Kabul - a warning echoed by the UN which says more and more of the country is becoming a “no go” area for western aid and development workers.

The council goes as far as to state: “It is a sad indictment of the current state of Afghanistan that the question now appears to be not if the Taliban will return to Kabul, but when … and in what form. The oft-stated aim of reaching the city in 2008 appears more viable than ever and it is incumbent upon the international community to implement a new strategic paradigm before time runs out.”

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/11/22/5391/

Anyone interested in real details regarding the failed policy of Busholini & Blair in Afghanistan should read: "Imperial Hubris".

[Supersedeas]

4. but Dimson has avenged his Papa, that's what matters to the cheerleaders in the Media

[Disturbed]

5. US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11

US planned war in Afghanistan long before September 11
By Patrick Martin
20 November 2001

Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that “if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest.” The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless, poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special Forces began October 19.

It is not an accident that these revelations have appeared overseas, rather than in the US. The ruling classes in these countries have their own economic and political interests to look after, which do not coincide, and in some cases directly clash, with the drive by the American ruling elite to seize control of oil-rich territory in Central Asia.

The American media has conducted a systematic cover-up of the real economic and strategic interests that underlie the war against Afghanistan, in order to sustain the pretense that the war emerged overnight, full-blown, in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11.

The pundits for the American television networks and major daily newspapers celebrate the rapid military defeat of the Taliban regime as an unexpected stroke of good fortune. They distract public attention from the conclusion that any serious observer would be compelled to draw from the events of the past two weeks: that the speedy victory of the US-backed forces reveals careful planning and preparation by the American military, which must have begun well before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

More here: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/afgh-n20.shtml