Oct 19, 2009 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Times Online: President Karzai's camp today declared a "deadlock" as a UN-backed watchdog reported "clear and convincing evidence of fraud" in Afghanistan's election and reportedly revised the results to force a second round of voting. Mohammad Moin Marastyal, an Afghan MP and leading member of Mr Karzai’s campaign team. said that the UN-backed Electoral Complaints Commission (ECC) ...
Continue ReadingOct 18, 2009 20 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Times Online: White House seeks to explain its hesitations on Afghanistan President Obama will not decide whether to sanction a troop surge for Afghanistan until the issue of whether the country has a credible government has been settled, the White House Chief of Staff said today. Rahm Emanuel said that the question of whether to send 40,000 extra ...
Continue ReadingOct 18, 2009 10 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Press TV: The British army has been relocating Taliban insurgents from southern Afghanistan to the north by providing transportation means, diplomats say. The diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said insurgents are being airlifted from the southern province of Helmand to the north amid increasing violence in the northern parts of the country. The aircraft used for ...
Continue ReadingOct 18, 2009 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
The Independent: In his fortified headquarters, Lt-Col Charlie Calder drew a large red circle on a map with a laser pointer indicating a vast expanse of northern Helmand, his area of responsibility. He then ringed a spot the size of a 10p piece – less than 20km square – to highlight the ground he and his ...
Continue ReadingOct 18, 2009 10 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Times Online: John Kerry, the US Senator, has has warned it would be "irresponsible" to send more US troops to Afghanistan at this time, amid a deepening election crisis that has placed the Kabul government's legitimacy at stake. The United States should not proceed with a new Afghanistan strategy committing a potentially major increase in US resources, ...
Continue ReadingOct 16, 2009 6 Comments ›› Erik Wong
FOX News: The last few weeks have seen a greater focus on U.S. efforts in Afghanistan -- both in terms of the current status of the conflict and the range of future policy options. President Obama has addressed the issue, as has the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Although support for sending additional troops ...
Continue ReadingOct 16, 2009 7 Comments ›› Erik Wong
NRO: I try to keep up to speed on Islamic law, but it's more complicated than I'd thought. For example, women are supposed to be "modest" in public. But that's no reason not to make them disrobe in the street and shake their breasts: A hardline Islamist group in Somalia has begun publicly ...
Continue ReadingOct 16, 2009 6 Comments ›› Erik Wong
FOX News: Halloween night at Hugh Hefner’s not-so-humble abode will still be filled with all the usual suspects - scantily-clad costumed women, bopping blonde bunnies, a Haunted House and Hollywood’s hottest stars. But while the 31st of October itself isn’t an official Hugh Hefner party, for this year its going to be even more special as the ...
Continue ReadingOct 15, 2009 5 Comments ›› Erik Wong
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. veterans criticized President Barack Obama's lengthy review of Afghan war strategy, saying on Thursday the drawn-out debate in Washington was a direct threat to troops and the nation's defense. The head of Veterans of Foreign Wars, a group representing 1.5 million former soldiers, issued a tersely worded statement urging Obama to follow ...
Continue ReadingOct 15, 2009 16 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
When ten French soldiers were killed last year in an ambush by Afghan insurgents in what had seemed a relatively peaceful area, the French public were horrified. Their revulsion increased with the news that many of the dead soldiers had been mutilated — and with the publication of photographs showing the militants triumphantly sporting their victims’ ...
Continue ReadingOct 14, 2009 5 Comments ›› Erik Wong
FOX News: WASHINGTON -- President Obama said Tuesday he will decide on new troops for Afghanistan in "the coming weeks." He told reporters that decisions on the military front were important but just one aspect of the improvements needed to the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. He said an important element is building up civilian capacity to help ...
Continue ReadingOct 14, 2009 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
NEW YORK (AP) — The airport shuttle driver accused of plotting a bombing in New York had contacts with Al Qaeda that went nearly all the way to the top, to an Usama bin Laden confidant believed to be the terrorist group's leader in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press. Mustafa Abu ...
Continue ReadingOct 13, 2009 2 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Politico: President Obama insisted Tuesday that his review of the war in Afghanistan was in line with the strategy he unveiled last spring ... "We are going through a very deliberate process that is completely consistent with what I said back in March," Obama told reporters after a meeting with Spanish Preisdent Zapatero. "At the time, ...
Continue ReadingOct 13, 2009 5 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Politico: Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s eldest daughter Liz will launch a new group aimed at rallying opposition to the “radical†foreign policy of the Obama administration which it says has succeeded only in undermining the nation’s security. The new group, Keep America Safe, will make the case against President Barack Obama’s moves to wrench America away ...
Continue ReadingOct 12, 2009 10 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
I have the following information from a very reliable military affairs source: "Obama was presented three options by General McChrystal: 1) small increase, 2) 40,000 extra troops, 3) Over 60K troops. 40K is the primary choice of the top brass, --- in presenting 3 options, he was able to illustrate why the ...
Continue ReadingOct 12, 2009 34 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Monday Update: Continued due to weekend site shutdown for server migration. You'll need an Amazon.com account to log-in here, so if you have one, great, if not it's easy to set up, and if you'd rather use a different method, there is the snail mail, and at least one other system which will be set up ...
Continue ReadingOct 12, 2009 2 Comments ›› Erik Wong
Washington Post: It is a sign of our weird political moment that the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Obama will probably hurt him among some of his fellow citizens. His opponents are describing the award as premature. The deeper problem is that the Nobel will underscore the extent to which Obama is a cosmopolitan ...
Continue ReadingOct 11, 2009 4 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Washington (AP) -- US Republican Senator John McCain warned Sunday that a failure to dispatch more US troops to Afghanistan would be "an error of historic proportions" but Democrats expressed caution about any surge. "I think the great danger now is not an American pullout," McCain told CNN television. "I think the great danger now is a ...
Continue ReadingOct 11, 2009 1 Comment ›› Pat Dollard
Washington - - Top Republican senators escalated their call Sunday for President Obama to grant Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for more troops in Afghanistan, and one prominent Democrat warned that a failure to do so could jeopardize U.S. forces. The Obama administration is allegedly in deliberations over whether to build on its counterinsurgency strategy with ...
Continue ReadingOct 11, 2009 14 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
New York Times: WASHINGTON — In late 2001, Mullah Muhammad Omar’s prospects seemed utterly bleak. The ill-educated, one-eyed leader of the Taliban had fled on a motorbike after his fighters were swiftly routed by the Americans invading Afghanistan. Much of the world celebrated his ouster, and Afghans cheered the return of girls’ education, music and ordinary ...
Continue ReadingOct 10, 2009 5 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Someone needs to tell these folks about this... ABC News: "The Taliban" and "global warming" may not seem to belong in the same sentence. But a number of U.S. intelligence and military studies recently made public describe how man-made climate change plays into the hands of terrorist groups in many countries -- and specifically, aggravates the war in ...
Continue ReadingOct 10, 2009 No Comments ›› Pat Dollard
RAWALPINDI, Pakistan (AP) — Heavily armed militants were holding up to 15 soldiers hostage inside Pakistan's army headquarters early Sunday after they stormed the complex in an audacious assault on the heart of the most powerful institution in the nuclear-armed country. Ten people were killed in the attack, including two ranking officers. The standoff was ...
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