McChrystal Told the Truth

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Jun 242010
 

by Rowan Scarborough
Human Events, June 24, 2010

The military is finally telling the unvarnished truth about President Obama’s dysfunctional national security team.

Oddly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his inner circle chose to dish dirt to a reporter for Rolling Stone, a decidedly left-wing publication that portrays the U.S. military negatively and knows as much about counter-insurgency as a 4th grader. The article that brought down the career special-operations soldier throws in the “F-word” several times, not as a quote, but to describe the author’s own views.

Not included in the story is an ongoing dispute between the White House and its generals that shows why McChrystal, the top commander in Afghanistan, had grown so frustrated. Continue reading »

Oliver North Confirms Mullah Omar Capture

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May 142010
 

Brad Thor
BigJournalism.com, May 13, 2010

Late this afternoon,  Lt. Colonel Oliver North confirmed that Taliban leader and Osama bin Laden ally, Mullah Mohammed Omar has been captured. The exclusive news of Omar’s capture was broken by Big Government and Big Journalism Monday evening.

According to Colonel North, Omar was picked up in Karachi on March 27th by the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) who placed him under house arrest in what they call “community care.”

Per North’s sources, “[Omar] has since been transferred to a secret ISI lock-up under the Pakistani euphemism: “institutional care.”

North goes on to state, “According to several reports, all of this information was confirmed to U.S. officials by a senior Pakistani military officer ‘several weeks ago.’” A fact also broken in Monday’s Big Government exclusive. Continue reading »

The Fight for Opium Central

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Mar 192010
 

Oliver North
Townhall.com, March 19, 2010

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan — This forward operating base, “20 miles from nowhere,” may be the fastest-growing military installation in the world. In the six months since our Fox News team was previously here, the base and its “population” have almost doubled in size. As one of our hosts put it shortly after we arrived, “it’s growing faster than opium poppies.” But then again, opium is one of the reasons this place is expanding so rapidly.

If the long war here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush is going to be won, it will have to be won here in southern Afghanistan first. This forbidding terrain along the Helmand River basin is both the “spiritual heartland” of the Taliban movement and the primary source of opium, which fuels their insurgency.

Southern Afghanistan is where the Taliban movement began — and nearly ended. Spawned with the help of Pakistan’s government in the 1980s to help defeat the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, the faction initially was financed by oil-rich Islamists in Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf. By 1996, the Taliban, victors in a bloody half-decade-long civil war, had established a brutal, repressive theocracy in Kabul. Taliban leader Mullah Omar became a patron and protector of Osama bin Laden. Al-Qaida was granted near autonomy to establish bases for indoctrinating and training “holy warriors.” Continue reading »

In Praise of the Rotation of Power

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Mar 122010
 

Sometimes the responsibility of actually governing forces a party to embrace the policies of its opponents.

Charles Krauthammer
National Review Online, March 11, 2010

As the Afghanistan War intensifies — Marja, soon Kandahar, and the steady arrival of 30,000 new American troops — it has come to be seen as Obama’s war.

Not so. It’s become America’s war. When the former opposition party — habitually antiwar for the last four decades — adopted, reaffirmed, and escalated a war begun by the habitually hawkish other party, partisanship fell away, and the war became nationalized.

And legitimized. Do you think if John McCain, let alone George W. Bush, were president, we would not see growing demonstrations protesting our continued presence in Iraq and the escalation of Afghanistan? That we wouldn’t see a serious push in Congress to cut off funds?

Why aren’t we seeing those things? Because Barack Obama is now commander-in-chief. The lack of opposition is not a matter of hypocrisy. It is a natural result of the rotation of power. When a party is in opposition, it opposes. That’s its job. But when it comes to power, it must govern. Easy rhetoric is over; the press of reality becomes irresistible. By necessity, it adopts some of the policies it had once denounced. And a new national consensus is born. Continue reading »

Politically Correct Killing?

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Mar 032010
 

Victor Davis Hanson
National Review Online, March 3, 2010

By all accounts, President Obama has vastly increased the number of Predator drone strikes during his 13 months in office and expanded the theater of missile operations by thousands of square miles. Indeed, since inauguration day, 2009, Predator and Reaper drone attacks may have killed over 500 suspected terrorists in Waziristan and Pakistan.

In January of this year alone, the United States conducted ten strikes, and may have killed some 70 suspected al-Qaeda or Taliban terrorists — along with additional unknown others in their vicinity. When we killed Baitullah Mehsud, the leader of the Taliban in Pakistan, last summer, eleven others were blown up with him, among them his wife and father-in-law — and, earlier, dozens of others were killed in strikes that failed to target him. In the first two months of 2010, the Obama administration conducted almost half the number of strikes that were conducted in all of 2008, the last full year of the Bush administration. Continue reading »

Incredible Photos: Afghanistan, February, 2010

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Feb 262010
 

In southern Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, Thousands of American, Afghan and British troops entered Marja in the biggest offensive of the war, with the goal of destroying the Taliban’s largest haven and restoring government presence in southern Afghanistan. Resistance was sporadic and fierce as troops seized positions around the area. Stricter combat rules and a concerted effort by the Afghan government and NATO forces were aimed at not only protecting the civilian population, but planning for the aftermath, building infrastructure, support and trust in an area long dominated by the Taliban. Collected here are images of the country and conflict over the past month, part of an ongoing monthly series on Afghanistan. (43 photos total)

See photos

Civilians in Crosshairs Slow Troops

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Feb 232010
 

By MICHAEL M. PHILLIPS
Wall Street Journal, February 21, 2010

[AirStrike.1-Jp]

Afghan civilians walk behind U.S. Marines in Marjah on Sunday.

MARJAH, Afghanistan—As Capt. Anthony Zinni monitored a live video feed from a Predator drone circling overhead, he spotted four men planting a booby trap in the middle of the road here.

For Capt. Zinni, one of the officers responsible for approving airstrikes in the nine-day-old battle for Marjah, it seemed like an easy call: The men were digging a hole alongside a road where a Marine supply convoy was scheduled to pass within hours. But just as he was about to give the order to strike, Capt. Zinni spotted even-smaller white figures on the video running along the path south of the canal.

Children. Maybe 50 feet from the men planting the booby trap. “It’s not a good shot,” Capt. Zinni said, ordering the Predator drone to delay the strike. “It’s not a good shot.” Continue reading »

In Marja, it’s war the old-fashioned way

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Feb 222010
 

By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post, February 20, 2010

MARJA, AFGHANISTAN — They had slogged through knee-deep mud carrying 100 pounds of gear, fingers glued to the triggers of their M-4 carbines, all the while on the lookout for insurgents. Now, after five near-sleepless nights, trying to avoid hypothermia in freezing temperatures, the grunts of the 1st Battalion of the 6th Marine Regiment finally had a moment to relax.

As the sun set Thursday evening over the rubbled market where they set up camp, four of them sat around an overturned blue bucket and began playing cards. A few cracked open dog-eared paperbacks. Some heated their rations-in-a-bag, savoring their first warm dinner in days. Many doffed their helmets and armored vests.

Then — before the game was over, the chapters finished, the meals cooked — the war roared back at them. Continue reading »

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