http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Nordland Wed, 22 May 2013 21:17:37 -0400 Liveleak http://edge.liveleak.com/80281E/u/u/ll2/logo.gif http://www.liveleak.com/browse?q=Nordland Mon, 15 Oct 2012 23:33:12 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a94_1350357919 BekasKhan By ROD NORDLAND KABUL, Afghanistan - The first thing Col. Akbar Stanikzai does when he interviews recruits for the Afghan National Army is take their cellphones. He checks to see if the ringtones are Taliban campaign tunes, if the screen savers show the white Taliban flag on a black background, or if the phone memory includes any insurgent beheading videos. Often enough they flunk that first test, but that hardly means they will not qualify to join their country's manpower-hungry military. Now at its biggest size yet, 195,000 soldiers, the Afghan Army is so plagued with desertions and low re-enlistment rates that it has to replace a third of its entire force every year, officials say. The attrition strikes at the core of America's exit strategy in Afghanistan: to build an Afghan National Army that can take over the war and allow the United States and NATO forces to withdraw by the end of 2014. The urgency of that deadline has only grown as the pace of the troop pullout has become an issue in the American presidential campaign. The Afghan deserters complain of corruption among their officers, poor food and equipment, indifferent medical care, Taliban intimidation of their families and, probably most troublingly, a lack of belief in the army's ability to fight the insurgents after the American military withdraws. On top of that, recruits now undergo tougher vetting because of concerns that enemy infiltration of the Afghan military is contributing to a wave of attacks on international forces. Colonel Stanikzai, a senior official at the army's National Recruiting Center, is on the front line of that effort; in the six months through September, he and his team of 17 interviewers have rejected 962 applicants, he said. "There are drug traffickers who want to use our units for their business, enemy infiltrators who want to raise problems, jailbirds who can't find any other job," he said. During the same period, however, 30,000 applicants were approved. "Recruitment, it's like a machine," he said. "If you stopped, it would collapse." Despite the challenges, so far the Afghan recruiting process is not only on track, but actually ahead of schedule. Afghanistan's army reached its full authorized strength in June, three months early, though there are still no units that American trainers consider able to operate entirely without NATO assistance. According to Brig. Gen. Dawlat Waziri, the deputy spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, the Army's desertion rate is now 7 to 10 percent. Despite substantial pay increases for soldiers who agree to re-enlist, only about 75 percent do, he said. (Recruits commit to three years of service.) Put another way, a third of the Afghan Army perpetually consists of first-year recruits fresh off a 10- to 12-week training course. And in the meantime, tens of thousands of men with military training are put at loose ends each year, albeit without their army weapons, in a country rife with militants who are always looking for help. "Fortunately there are a lot of people who want a job with the army, and we've always managed to meet the goal set by the Ministry of Defense for us," said Gen. Abrahim Ahmadzai, the deputy commander of the National Recruiting Center. The country's 34 provincial recruitment centers have a combined quota of 5,000 new recruits a month. "We're not concerned about getting enough young men," General Ahmadzai said, "just as long as we get that $4.1 billion a year from NATO." That is the amount pledged by the United States and its allies to continue paying to cover the expenses of the Afghan military. In terms of soldiers' pay, that underwrites $260 a month for the lowest ranks, which in Afghanistan is above-average pay for unskilled labor. A soldier who re-enlists would get a 23 percent raise, to at least $320 a month, more if he had been promoted. But even as pay rates have risen, so has attrition, which two years ago was 26 percent. The trend is troubling - especially the desertions - as Afghan forces have shouldered an increasing share of the fighting. American officials have tried to persuade the Afghans to criminalize desertion in an effort to reduce it; instead, Afghan officials have proposed a four-year effort to order the recall of 22,000 deserters, according to General Ahmadzai. Meanwhile, Afghan deserters live so openly that they list their status as a job reference. Ghubar, 27, who is from Parwan Province but lives in Kabul, deserted from his battalion with the First Brigade in Kabul just six months into his three-year commitment. Citing his military training, he promptly got a job as a security guard. Ghubar declined to give more than his first name, but was not worried about being photographed. "There is no accountability," he said. "If they had any accountability, it wouldn't be such a bad army." Most of his complaints were echoed by the 10 other deserters interviewed on the record for this article. "I wanted to serve my country, my homeland," Ghubar said. "But after I joined, I saw the situation was all about corruption. The officers are too busy stealing the money to defeat the insurgents." A typical swindle described by the deserters was the diversion of the money allocated to commanders to pay for food, which is usually procured locally rather than distributed from a central depot. "Half the time we would get rice with a bone in it, with a little fat, no meat," he said. Ghubar added, "People who join the army, they just lose their hope." Ajmal, 24, from Kabul, who also gave only his first name and deserted from the same battalion, said he knew of commanders who had signed up their sons as "ghosts," enabling them to collect army pay while attending university full time. Muhammad Fazal Kochai, 28, who deserted from the First Brigade of the 201st Corps a year ago but still proudly shows the army ID card he carries in his wallet, had a particularly rough time. During his year in the army, 25 of his comrades were wounded and 15 killed out of his company of 100 to 150 men, stationed in the dangerous Tangi Wardak area of Wardak Province. Still, he said, he would have stayed had it not been for the corruption of his officers: "Everybody is trying to make money to line their pockets and build their houses before the Americans leave." The final straw came when local villagers pointed him out after his unit had killed a local Taliban commander. "I started to get phone calls from the Taliban saying, 'We know who you are, and we're going to kill you.' " He deserted and called to tell the Taliban they did not have to worry about him any longer. Now Mr. Kochai is convinced the Afghan Army will lose once the Americans leave. "The army can do nothing on their own without the equipment and supplies of the Americans, without the air support, nothing," he said. Sher Agha, 25, from the Sarkano District of eastern Kunar Province, had a similar experience. "Unknown gunmen kept bothering my family and telling them to force me to quit my job and come back home," he said. Finally, he did. Most of the deserters either had been wounded or knew someone who had, and they had high marks for the American military's medical evacuation ability, but complained of poor care and neglect once they were transferred to the Afghan system. "When I was wounded, the Americans were there in 10 minutes and choppered me out of Khost," Ajmal said. "Then I went to an Afghan military hospital and no one asked about me. My unit even had me listed as dead." Someone from his unit did, however, come to retrieve valuable pieces of equipment like his body armor and ammunition belt. He deserted after the hospital discharged him. At the National Recruiting Center, Colonel Stanikzai keeps working, but he admits to a bleak outlook. "The news of the American withdrawal has weakened our morale and boosted the morale of the enemy," he said. "I am sorry to speak so frankly. If the international community abandons us again, we won't be able to last." The colonel's hunt for infiltrators is rooted in realism. Often the Taliban cellphone telltales are adopted by people in rural areas as a protection in case the insurgents stop them, he said, so alone they are hardly grounds for dismissal. One day last month, his caseload included a convicted murderer from Kunduz: Abdullah, a 30-year-old who has only one name. He had neglected to mention his criminal record, but it was discovered through biometric files compiled with American assistance. Abdullah pleaded that his offense had been a crime of passion and that the victim's family had forgiven him and accepted the customary blood money. Colonel Stanikzai sent him back to Kunduz to get a letter from the police chief certifying him for service. Abdullah tried to kiss the colonel's hand in gratitude. "We are going through a very, very hard time here," the colonel said. Jawad Sukhanyar and Habib Zahori contributed reporting from Kabul, and employees of The New York Times from Khost, Kunar, Kunduz and Kandahar Provinces. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=a94_1350357919 BekasKhan Afghan Army's Turnover Threatens U.S. Strategy Afghanistan Occupation US NATO Taliban Pakistan terrorist Punjabi ISI Al Qaeda Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:59:30 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=262_1348062906 BekasKhan An Afghan soldier, left, on patrol with an American soldier in the Barakzai hamlet of Sangsar. Similar operations in the future will require approval by a general. By MATTHEW ROSENBERG Published: September 18, 2012 FACEBOOK TWITTER GOOGLE+ E-MAIL SHARE PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS KABUL, Afghanistan - In a significant blow to a core element of the Western exit strategy from Afghanistan, the American-led military coalition said Tuesday it has temporarily curtailed joint operations with the Afghan Army and police forces. Related Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan Strikes Minibus, Killing Mostly Foreign Workers (September 19, 2012) IHT Rendezvous: British Legislators Waver on Afghan War (September 18, 2012) Egypt: 8 Charged Over Anti-Islam Film (September 19, 2012) Times Topic: The 'Innocence of Muslims' Riots (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) Connect With Us on Twitter Follow@nytimesworldfor international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors The new limits were a sign of how American priorities were being drastically reordered amid a wave of anti-American sentiment brought on by an anti-Islam movie, which has sparked riots across the Muslim world and on Tuesday was the motive behind a suicide bombing here that killed 14 people, 10 of them foreigners. Coalition officials said they feared that anger over the American-made film, which mocks the Prophet Muhammad, could worsen an already deadly spike in attacks on foreign troops by Afghan soldiers and police forces over the past six weeks. Under the rules issued on Sunday, a general's approval will be required for foreign forces to work with Afghans on a tactical level - a broad category that covers everything from joint patrols into Taliban territory to hands-on training behind the fortified walls of a shared outpost. Until now, junior officers from both sides were able to organize patrols or small operations on their own. An American captain, for instance, could send men from his company to reinforce Afghans in a firefight without seeking higher approval. But now those officers would need approval from a two-star general who commands thousands of service members. The shift away from a top-to-bottom partnership with Afghans, even on a temporary basis, represented a sharp departure from efforts to pull Afghan forces closer to the coalition's own so they could battle the Taliban together and, at the same time, let Afghanistan's nascent army and police lean on and learn from foreign troops. Coalition officials had an oft-repeated catchphrase to describe the relationship: the two sides, they say, were fighting "shoulder-to-shoulder." Among higher-level units, that cooperation will remain unchanged, coalition officials said on Tuesday, stressing that the basic concept of forging a partnership with the Afghans to get them ready to fight on their own was still the guiding strategic principle for NATOforces. "We are not stepping away from this," said Lt. Col. Richard W. Spiegel of the Army, a coalition spokesman. "Things might look a little different, but we're not walking away." Yet such talk did little to reassure Afghan soldiers and police forces, a number of whom said most of their units were not yet ready to fight on their own - an assessment shared by the Pentagon's own public reporting. "It's better to announce a cease-fire so we can also step back and take a nap," said Abdul Qayom Baqizoi, the police chief of Wardak Province in central Afghanistan. An Afghan soldier said the new orders were already harming his forces, citing an episode on Monday in which an Afghan Army vehicle struck a hidden bomb. Two soldiers were killed, and the Americans did not respond to a request to evacuate four wounded soldiers, said Major Salam, an officer based in western Afghanistan who asked that his first name not be used. Instead, he said they had to wait for help from their own forces, which do not have medical evacuation helicopters. "It took them six hours to bring the soldiers to the hospital. One of them has lost a lot of blood, and he might die," Major Salam said. Amid the growth in popular anti-American sentiment, President Hamid Karzai and top officials in his government have also begun this week to publicly push back on Washington's demands that they hold thousands of prisoners indefinitely at a prison recently turned over by the Americans. The Afghan government made clear on Sunday that it wants the Americans to immediately turn over another 600 prisoners they are still holding. The government followed up on Tuesday by saying that Afghan law does not provide for the indefinite detention of prisoners. American officials have countered that the Afghan government agreed to the indefinite detentions in the deal under which they won control of the prison, a detention facility in Parwan adjacent to the Bagram Air Base. "We need to give everybody a chance to solve this at the high levels; once you trade barbs publicly, people's positions harden," said one Western official. The coalition move to curtail direct cooperation with Afghan forces covers all work done by American military companies of roughly 120 men, and the platoons and squads of which they are composed. That includes many of the day-to-day interactions between the tens of thousands of coalition and Afghan troops that live on shared outposts and often work in small groups to more effectively combat insurgents who blend easily into villages. "Clearly, we're going to be seeing less" of the joint patrols, meetings with village elders and other work field units from the two sides often do together, said Colonel Spiegel, adding that such interaction will not cease completely. The orders, which were first reported by The Associated Press, would remain in place until commanders felt the insider threat to their soldiers and Marines had dropped, said Col. Thomas Collins, another coalition spokesman. Related Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan Strikes Minibus, Killing Mostly Foreign Workers (September 19, 2012) IHT Rendezvous: British Legislators Waver on Afghan War (September 18, 2012) Egypt: 8 Charged Over Anti-Islam Film (September 19, 2012) Times Topic: The 'Innocence of Muslims' Riots (Nakoula Basseley Nakoula) Connect With Us on Twitter Follow@nytimesworldfor international breaking news and headlines. Twitter List: Reporters and Editors There had been pullbacks from certain areas during other periods of upheaval, such as widespread rioting earlier this year after American soldiers burned Korans. But the new orders covered the entire country, and given the current threat level, "commanders will be very discerning in the operations they approve or disapprove," Colonel Collins said. While the change would not alter the basic American strategy, "we are concerned with regards to these insider attacks and the impact they are having on our forces," Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told reporters in China, where he was traveling. Gen. John R. Allen, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, "has reflected that in the steps that he has taken," Mr. Panetta said. Some officials, though, acknowledged the new order would sharply limit cooperation between junior American and Afghan officers and their troops in the field, and thus inevitably affect how the war was fought - and brought to a conclusion. The logistical implications of the new orders - how smaller units would continue to share outposts with Afghan forces - were still being worked out, officials said. Sometimes, Afghan and coalition units are separated by mere yards, and they often man posts together and split duty in guard towers. Other support the Americans and their NATO allies provide the Afghans would remain in place, like air cover, artillery support and, in select cases, the airlifting of wounded Afghans on American medical evacuation helicopters, officials said. Nor would life change significantly at battalion and brigade headquarters, which are not covered by the new limits and are, in any case, housed on sprawling bases where there is often physical distance and high walls between the NATO troops and the Afghans. Afghanistan's Defense Ministry played down the impact of the coalition move, saying in a statement that its army companies already conducted many operations on their own and would continue to do so. But as word of the changes spread beyond Kabul, the potential blow to the morale of Afghan forces that for nearly a decade have looked to Americans for everything from bullets to drinking water quickly became apparent. "We rely on the Americans for everything," said Major Salam, the officer in western Afghanistan. "We still need their support." If the Americans "abandon us," he added, "they should know that it would be the end of everything for all of us." Reporting was contributed by Alissa J. Rubin, Habib Zahori, Sangar Rahimi and Rod Nordland from Kabul, and Thom Shanker from Beijing. A version of this article appeared in print on September 19, 2012, on page http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=262_1348062906 BekasKhan Scared and Lost Coalition Sharply Reduces Joint Operations With Afghan Troops Afghanistan Occupation US NATO Pakistan terrorist Punjabi ISI Al Qaeda Tue, 03 Apr 2012 14:24:11 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b5c_1333477236 dyl4n The Associated Press reports that a truck being towed down a snowy mountain in Norway began to slide, taking the tow truck along with it. But at the last second, before his vehicle plunged 200 feet, the tow truck driver jumped out. The driver of the towed vehicle stayed in his car as it fell down the cliff. He suffered broken bones, according to the AP, but the BBC reports that he survived and is now in stable condition. According to Metro , the truck driver had to be towed because he got stuck in snow after he didn't put the right winter tires on his vehicle. The accident happened in Nordland County, Norway. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b5c_1333477236 dyl4n Tow Truck Accident In Norway: Driver Jumps Out. accident, truck, tow, driver , jumps Fri, 24 Dec 2010 00:13:47 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=300_1293167218 PetrWarry sounds dubbed. Copyright Disclaimer: Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. please do not post any political,ultra nationalistic,abusive,communisistic nor neo nazi comments.many thanks. http://www.warshop.cz/kvh/ http://kvh-alexandr-hakl.webnode.cz/ - few names - ZHUKOV ROKOSSOVSKY KONEV HEINRICI HIMMLER GOEBBELS TIPPELSKIRCH REYMANN WEIDLING Sch"orner CHUIKOV MOLTKE STALIN MOLOTOV HITLER GOERING STEINER WENCK JODL MOHNKE KATUKOV RYBALKO KRUKENBERG BRAUN von SALZA D"onitz KUTZNETSOV KREBS SOKOLOVSKY BOGDANOV KATUKOV MANSTEIN BERZARIN Tempelhof International Airport Panzergrenadier Division Nordland Panzer Division M"uncheberg 9th Parachute Division 1st Belorussian Front 1st Ukrainian Front 12th Army Army Group Vistula 2nd Belorussian Front Polish First Army 8th Guards Army 1st Guards Tank Army LVI Panzer Corps 5th Shock Army Berlin Zoo Flak Tower 88mm heavy tank IS3 ? OBVIOUSLY I MIGHT HAVE FORGOT TO POST SOME NAMES AND PLACES.IT'S UP TO YOU TO POST THEM IN YOUR COMMENTS. PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY ULTRA NATIONALISTIC,ABUSIVE,SWEARING,HATEFUL, NOR NEO NAZI COMMENTS like HEIL HITLER ,SIEG HEIL etc.many thanks for understanding. 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Moscow http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=300_1293167218 PetrWarry WWII Battlefield Germany 1945 Eastern Front Footage - Russian Forces Attack Berlin - Doc.Film Trailer ww2 wwii world war battlefield berlin warfare german wehrmacht waffen ss luftwaffe volkssturm hitler youth soviet russian red army fight assault attack kill gun weapon firing shooting victory VE day victory tank panzer katyusha rocket T34 IS2 combat foota Tue, 29 Jun 2010 11:28:47 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=34c_1277824716 Snusmumrikken Norwegian military officials have released the names of the four soldiers killed by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on Sunday. Defense Minister Grete Faremo, her voice cracking with emotion, said she will be among those bringing their bodies home. Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that the four soldiers "were among the finest we have," and that their deaths are "a gruesome reminder" of how dangerous their military assignment was. The four soldiers killed were assigned to the special Kystjeger commando based in Harstad and present in Afghanistan since 2005 as part of Norway's Military Observation Team (MOT). Military chief Harald Sunde said they were part of "the most experienced forces we have" in Afghanistan. Faremo, fighting back tears at a somber press conference in Oslo on Monday, said she and Sunde would travel to Afghanistan so that they could accompany their caskets back home to Norway. "We have lost four of our best soldiers," Faremo said. "Norway is a small country. We have no one to lose." But she and Stoltenberg confirmed that their government won't withdraw any troops as a result of Sunday's attack on the soldiers' armoured vehicle. It was blown up by a roadside bomb that the Taliban claims to have placed and exploded. Researchers have said that as many as 60 percent of recent casualties in Afghanistan have been the result of such roadside bombs. The four soldiers killed were: - Andreas Eldjarn, age 21, from Tromso in northern Norway - Simen Tokle, age 24, from Ballangen in Nordland County - Trond Andr'e Bolle, age 41, from Lena in Toten (Oppland County) - Christian Lian, age 31, from Kristiansand in southern Norway Military officials said all four were riding in an armoured Iveco personnel carrier, on their way to meetings with local officials in Faryab Province in northern Afghanistan, where Norway has taken on special responsibility for stabilization efforts in the area. "It was a patrol from the stabilization force (based at Meymaneh) out on assigment when they were hit by the roadside bomb," said Sunde. He said their vehicle was completely destroyed in the blast. Helicopters, Sunde said, arrived "relatively quickly" in an effort to rescue those on board but their lives couldn't be saved. Their bodies were brought back to the Norwegian camp at Meymaneh. Officials said Faryab was long a relatively peaceful area of Afghanistan, but its security has worsened in recent years as insurgents fanned out to fight NATO's presence around the country. Some military researchers believe casualties will continue to mount, as insurgents and organized criminal gangs boost their own offense against the NATO forces. Nearly 100 NATO soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan this month, and more than 300 since the year began. Stale Ulriksen of the Norwegian foreign policy institute NUPI is charged with researching strategic challenges in Afghanistan, and told newspaper Aftenposten that Norwegian soldiers are increasingly coming under fire. Last month, nine soldiers were wounded in northern Afghanistan, two of them critically. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=34c_1277824716 Snusmumrikken Norwegian soldiers killed in Afghanistan Sunday named Afghanistan, Norwegian soldiers Tue, 16 Feb 2010 04:40:07 -0500 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b15_1266312679 PutzwithNutz By ROD NORDLAND Published: February 15, 2010 KABUL, Afghanistan - The Taliban's suicide bombers have been selling their lives cheaply of late. From Jan. 24 to Feb. 14, a total of 17 suicide bombers took aim at one coalition member after another but failed to kill any of them, according to a compilation of reports from Afghan police and military officials, and from the American-led International Security Assistance Force. The latest failures were three suicide bombers who attacked an Afghan headquarters outside Marja on Sunday; local people reported them to the authorities, who shot them before they could set off their explosives, according to a spokesman for the Helmand Province governor. ISAF officials credit better training of Afghan forces, and disruption of the bomb-makers' networks by NATO-led raids. Analysts say the Taliban no longer have foreign expertise in preparing suicide bombers, and have a hard time finding competent recruits in a society that until recent years had little history of suicide attacks. According to a New York Times tally, at least 480 people were killed in 129 suicide bombings in Afghanistan in 2007, not counting the bombers themselves. That death toll dropped to 275 in 2009, even though the number of bombings had increased. A spokesman for ISAF, Maj. Steve Cole, said bombings in recent months have averaged 15 or 16 a month. In three episodes during the last three weeks, the bombers killed innocent bystanders instead of their coalition targets. Six of the last 17 suicide bombers did not wound anyone beyond themselves. In all, those 17 bombers wounded 23 members of NATO or Afghan security forces, while killing 6 civilians and wounding 27 others. A series of four episodes last Thursday, Friday and Saturday were illustrative of the recent attacks and near misses. On Saturday, at a village in Kandahar Province, a suicide bomber on a motorcycle drove into a joint American-Afghan foot patrol and struck, wounding six American soldiers and five civilians, two of them children, but killing no one, according to the provincial governor's spokesman. (An ISAF spokesman said earlier reports that three Americans were killed were incorrect.) On Friday, a suicide car bomber took aim at an American convoy in Khost Province, detonating as it passed, according to a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, who claimed that all the soldiers in two trucks were killed. A NATO spokesman, Maj. Matthew Gregory, scoffed at that, saying no coalition personnel were hurt. Also on Friday, a suicide bomber being pursued by ISAF forces blew himself up rather than surrender, according to the ISAF. On Thursday, a man reportedly wearing a vest of explosives under an Afghan Border Police uniform penetrated a joint Afghan and American military base in Paktia Province in eastern Afghanistan, and exploded close to five American servicemen, wounding all five - but again killing none of them, according to the spokesman for the province's governor. Asked about the attacks, Mr. Mujahid, the Taliban spokesman, argued that ISAF forces were covering up the damage. "We fill those cars and vests using good techniques and lots of explosives but the American military will not let journalists go to the site of the incidents and make honest and real reports," he said. Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, an ISAF spokesman, called the recent phenomenon "a cumulative effect" of many factors. "The Afghan National Security Forces, in quality and quantity, are getting better and getting more experience," he said. "We're also targeting their command and control nodes and degrading their capacity," he added, "both for bomb making and supplies." In the Thursday episode, for example, the suicide bomber got close enough to kill the American soldiers, but his explosives were not powerful enough, General Tremblay said. "If they had the right recipe, then those soldiers could not have survived," he said. Where suicide bombers have succeeded in Afghanistan, they have often been imports, not local people. A Jan. 18 attack involving at least two suicide bombers and other gunmen paralyzed Kabul for a day and killed five people, two of them police officers. The bombers, it later developed, had been smuggled into Afghanistan from Pakistan, according to Afghanistan's intelligence service. Similarly, while the Taliban claimed responsibility for the Dec. 30 attack in which a Jordanian double agent blew himself up at a C.I.A. base, killing seven Americans and a Jordanian intelligence officer, the bomber's family maintained that he was working for Al Qaeda. In any case, he was not an Afghan. "The Taliban cannot reach their strategic goals, so they just go and blow themselves up on the roads," said Brig. Gen. Nawab Khan of the Afghan National Army. "In the end, they don't have any achievements." Mia Bloom, a researcher at the International Center for the Study of Terrorism at Pennsylvania State University, says their relative lack of recent success is due to a lower level of education, training and willingness among bombers here. "Many of them are coerced or duped into becoming bombers, and the bombers are generally not very excited about the prospect," she said. "Less-motivated, less-educated guys are more likely to make mistakes," she added. The Taliban's success in their suicide campaign, particularly in 2007, was largely due to foreign fighters from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, but that has become much more difficult now because of better border enforcement, she said. Suicide bombings are an imported tactic that took root slowly here. In the first four years of the conflict, there were only five suicide attacks, according to a United Nations report in 2007. The report also noted that 80 percent of the victims were civilians. In 2007, the Taliban enlisted a 6-year-old boy, put a bomb vest on him and told him to go up to a group of soldiers and push a button. They told him flowers would shoot out, but the boy was not na"ive enough to fall for it; instead he told authorities and they managed to get the vest off safely. "It just shows you they're not able to get the kind of volunteers in Afghanistan that you get in Israel, Sri Lanka or anywhere else," Ms. Bloom said. The Taliban's suicide bombers should not be dismissed simply because their body count is so low, General Tremblay cautioned. "They still are projecting terror." Dr. Bloom of the terrorism study center said, "There's also still a terror factor of course, but if the only person being killed is the bomber himself, it's sort of like Darwinian selection." The martyrdom testament videos that are so common in other countries are unknown here. "Such individual recognition," said the United Nations report, "is largely absent in Afghanistan." Instead, these suicide bombers are buried secretly at a potter's field in a wasteland at the foot of a mountain, at Kol-e-Hashmat Khan, a neighborhood of junkyards on the outskirts of Kabul. A policeman on duty there said no one ever visited. Many of the unmarked graves have been dug open by starving dogs, which feast on the remains. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul, and employees of The New York Times from Khost, Kandahar and Helmand Provinces. http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b15_1266312679 PutzwithNutz Afghan Suicide Bombings Less Effective as a Tactic Taliban suicide bombers Fri, 03 Apr 2009 17:52:07 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c0b_1238795407 _Byron_ By ROD NORDLAND BAGHDAD - Ali al-Hilli is a happy man. He has a wife and three kids, a prosperous business and - this is the important part - a Hummer in his driveway. In a country with at least 20,000 Humvees and a war-weary population, who would think there would be a market for the civilian version? Mr. Hilli did. "I just knew there'd be a huge demand for this in Baghdad," he said. Now Mr. Hilli and his brother Dhafir run a car dealership specializing in Hummers. It is called, in English, "Al Sultan for Trading Cars." An American diplomat declared that it was the biggest Hummer dealership outside of the United States, a fact that seemed too good to check. Unfortunately, Mr. Hilli has checked. "It's the biggest one in Baghdad, though, that's for sure," he said. Never mind that General Motors, Hummer's struggling parent company, may scrap the brand or sell it to someone else. "Iraqis love them because they're really a symbol of power," said Mr. Hilli, a chubby 37-year-old who could not stop chuckling. Nonetheless, he spoke with authority, since he was his own first customer. Hummers in Baghdad are symbols of much more besides: increasing security, returning normality and a yearning for the trappings of sovereignty. Mr. Hilli allowed that there was something else, too, a little more indefinable, which in Arabic is "hasad thukuri," and which in English will be translated later. The Hilli brothers first got their coals-to-Newcastle brainstorm a couple of years ago, during the height of the sectarian violence. "Even if we imported these back then, no one would have dared to drive around in them," Ali al-Hilli said. Insurgents were taking aim at anything that looked foreign, let alone an analogue of an American military vehicle. Then the war started quieting down and, about a year ago, they found an online auction for repossessed nearly new cars in the United States. They put in the winning bid on a Humvee H3, which they air-freighted in through Dubai, followed by a second one. "Everyone thought we were crazy," Mr. Hilli said. "Or they thought we were Iraqi government officials," who can most easily afford such cars. At first the Hummers sat on the lot and attracted little interest. "We took such a risk, it's such an expensive car, and all our money was in it," said Dhafir al-Hilli, 38. So the brothers got in the cars and began driving around their Kadhimiya neighborhood, a largely Shiite area that had so often been a target of terrorists that it was walled off and relatively safe. "It helped that in Kadhimiya we didn't have such a bad opinion of the Americans," Ali al-Hilli said. "People often asked the soldiers to stop their Humvees so they could get their pictures in front of them." Idling through the city's relentless traffic jams, the Hummers were their own advertising campaign. "We couldn't go a block without people stopping us to ask, 'What is it?' " Mr. Hilli said. "We looked like astronauts from outer space." Soon conditions improved enough to drive all over the city. Hummer H3s began rumbling off the lot, at 50 to 60 grand apiece, in dollars and all the money down, fully loaded. (No one wanted them any other way.) Canary yellow and fire engine red proved the favorite colors. "No one complains that they remind them of the American military," Mr. Hilli said. "It's much more trouble driving around in a Samand." Made in Iran, the car is the surrogate object of many Iraqis' scorn for Iran itself. The Hillis said they had sold more than 20 H3s, about one every 10 days, even in the midst of plummeting oil prices and economic turmoil. Their biggest customers tend to be government officials. That is not necessarily a sign of corruption, since the new government has voted itself enormous pay raises. Iraqis are paying historically high prices for gasoline. At $1.40 a gallon, that would not break any American hearts, but not long ago it was 19 cents. The increase had no effect on sales of these notorious gas-guzzlers, though. "If you can afford this car, you don't care how much gasoline costs," Mr. Hilli said. Iraqis love their cars. "In Iraq, people judge you by your car, and you're not a man without one," he said. When it comes to Hummers, he added, they will nearly always be bigger than anyone else's vehicle. That is where "hasad thukuri" comes in; roughly translated, it means "penis envy." In prewar years, red-blooded Iraqis lusted after the Mercedes, especially the costly Ghost sedan, which only the best-heeled Baathists could afford. During the early war years, it was the nimble little BMW 3 Series, until that car got a bad rap as the insurgents' favorite getaway car. (At one time, black BMWs were actually banned from the roads.) "Now Iraqis are obsessed with the Hummer," Dhafir al-Hilli said. It beats being obsessed with, say, car bombs. Who knows, the Hillis may yet see the day when there are even more Hummers on the streets than Humvees. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/world/middleeast/30hummer.html?ref=automobiles http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c0b_1238795407 _Byron_ Most Popular Vehicle in Iraq, The Hummer The Hummer, Iraq's, Most, Popular, Vehicle Tue, 29 Apr 2008 18:18:58 -0400 http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=796_1209507538 AndyBIue By Tom Engelhardt TomDispatch.com Sunday 27 April 2008 You simply can't pile up enough adjectives when it comes to the general, who, at a relatively young age, was already a runner-up for Time Magazine's Person of the Year in 2007. His record is stellar. His tactical sense extraordinary. His strategic ability, when it comes to mounting a campaign, beyond compare. I'm speaking, of course, of General David Petraeus, the President's surge commander in Iraq and, as of last week, the newly nominated head of U.S. Central Command (Centcom) for all of the Middle East and beyond - "King David" to those of his peers who haven't exactly taken a shine to his reportedly "high self-regard." And the campaign I have in mind has been his years' long wooing and winning of the American media, in the process of which he sold himself as a true American hero, a Caesar of celebrity. As far as can be told, there's never been a seat in his helicopter that couldn't be filled by a friendly (or adoring) reporter. This, after all, is the man who, in the summer of 2004, as a mere three-star general being sent back to Baghdad to train the Iraqi army, made Newsweek's cover under the caption, "Can This Man Save Iraq?" (The article's subtitle - with the "yes" practically etched into it - read: "Mission Impossible? David Petraeus Is Tasked with Rebuilding Iraq's Security Forces. An Up-close Look at the Only Real Exit Plan the United States Has - the Man Himself"). And, oh yes, as for his actual generalship on the battlefield of Iraq... Well, the verdict may still officially be out, but the record, the tactics, and the strategic ability look like they will not stand the test of time. But by then, if all goes well, he'll once again be out of town and someone else will take the blame, while he continues to fall upwards. David Petraeus is the President's anointed general, Bush's commander of commanders, and (not surprisingly) he exhibits certain traits much admired by the Bush administration in its better days. Launching Brand Petraeus Recently, in an almost 8,000 word report in the New York Times, David Barstow offered an unparalleled look inside a sophisticated Pentagon campaign, spearheaded by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, in which at least 75 retired generals and other high military officers, almost all closely tied to Pentagon contractors, were recruited as "surrogates." They were to take Pentagon "talking points" (aka "themes and messages") about the President's War on Terror and war in Iraq into every part of the media - cable news, the television and radio networks, the major newspapers - as their own expert "opinions." These "analysts" made "tens of thousands of media appearances" and also wrote copiously for op-ed pages (often with the aid of the Pentagon) as part of an unparalleled, five-plus year covert propaganda onslaught on the American people that lasted from 2002 until, essentially, late last night. Think of it, like a pod of whales or a gaggle of geese, as the Pentagon's equivalent of a surge of generals. In that impressive Times report, however, one sentence has so far passed unnoticed; yet, it speaks the world of General Petraeus, and of how this administration and its chosen sons have played their cards from the moment George W. Bush mounted a pile of rubble on September 14, 2001, at Ground Zero in New York City and began to sell his incipient War on Terror (and himself as commander-in-chief). From that day on, the propaganda campaign, the selling war, on the American "home front" has never stopped. Here, in that context, is Barstow's key sentence: "When David H. Petraeus was appointed the commanding general in Iraq in January 2007, one of his early acts was to meet with the analysts." In other words, on becoming U.S. commander in Iraq, he automatically turned to the military propaganda machine the Pentagon had set up to launch his initial surge - on the home front. Think of the train of events this way: In January 2007, pummeled in the opinion polls, his Iraq policy in shambles and the Republican Party in electoral disarray, George W. Bush and his advisors decided to launch a last-minute home-front campaign to buy time on Iraq. It was, the President declared in an address to the American people, his "new way forward in Iraq." In Vietnam-era terms, the plan itself involved a relatively modest "escalation" of 30,000 troops, largely into the Baghdad area - that being all the troops the overstretched U.S. military then had available. It gained, however, the resounding nickname, "the surge." (That word, strangely enough, had essentially been pilfered from the heart of "insurgent," a term previously used to designate the enemy.) By then, of course, the President himself was a thoroughly tarnished brand, not exactly the sort of face with which to launch 1,000 ships or even 30,000 troops into a self-made hell against the urgent wishes of the American people. Instead, he pushed forward his all-American general - the smart, bemedaled, well-spoken, Princeton PhD and counterinsurgency guru, beloved by reporters whom he had romanced for years, and already treated like a demi-god by members of both parties in both houses of Congress. He became the "face" of the administration (just as American military and civilian officials had long spoken of putting an "Iraqi face" on the American occupation of that country). In the ensuing months, as New York Times columnist Frank Rich pointed out, the surging Brand Petraeus campaign only gained traction as the President publicly cited the general more than 150 times, 53 times in May 2007 alone. Never has a President put on the "face" of a general more regularly. Now, let's return to that single sentence from Barstow. Having been put forward by Bush as his favorite general and the savior of his Iraq policies, Petraeus seems to have promptly turned to the Pentagon's favored military "analysts" for a hand. The general's initial surge, that is, was right here at home via those figures the Pentagon had embedded in the media and liked to refer to as its "message force multipliers." Let's keep in mind that one of those figures, retired Army general Jack Keane, a "patron" to Petraeus during his rise in the ranks, was, along with Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, an "author" of, and key propagandist for, the surge strategy, as well as the head of his own consulting firm, on the board of General Dynamics, and a national security analyst for ABC News. So, in case you were wondering why the hosannas to Petraeus nearly reached the heavens and why the "success" of the surge was established so quickly in this country (despite four years of promises followed by disaster that might have called for media caution), look first to those surging retired generals and to the general who had already established himself as a military brand name. And let's keep in mind that the Times' Barstow has pulled back the curtain on but one administration program of deception. It is unlikely to have been the only one. We don't yet fully know the full range of sources the Pentagon and this administration mustered in the service of its surge. We don't know what sort of thought and planning, for instance, went into the transformation of any Sunni insurgent who didn't join the new Awakening Movement and become a "Son of Iraq" into a member of "al-Qaeda-in-Mesopotamia" - or, more recently, every Shiite rebel into an Iranian agent. We don't know what sort of administration planning has gone into the drumbeat of well-orchestrated, ever more intense claims that Iran is the source of all our ills in Iraq, and directly responsible for a striking percentage of U.S. military deaths there. Recently, according to the New York Times, "senior officers in the American division that secures the capital said that 73 percent of fatal and other harmful attacks on American troops in the past year were caused by roadside bombs planted by so-called 'special groups'" (a euphemism for Iranian-trained groups of Shiite militiamen). We don't have a full accounting of the many carefully guided tours of Iraq given to inside-the-Beltway think-tank figures like Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, former military figures, journalists, pundits, and congressional representatives, all involving special meet-and-greet contacts with Petraeus and his top commanders, all leading to upbeat assessments of the surge. We don't have the logs of our surge commander's visitors these last months, but we know, anecdotally at least, that, during this period, no reporter, no matter how minor, seemed incapable of securing a little get-together time to experience the general's special charm. Put everything we do know, and enough that we suspect, together and you get our last surge year-plus in the U.S. as a selling/propaganda campaign par excellence. The result has been a mix of media good news about "surge success," especially in "lowering violence," and no news at all as the Iraq story grew boringly humdrum and simply fell off the front pages of our papers and out of the TV news (as well as out of the Democratic Congress). This was, of course, a public relations bonanza for an administration that might otherwise have appeared fatally wounded. Think, in the president's terminology, of victory - not over Shiite or Sunni insurgents in Iraq, but, once again, over the media here at home. None of this should surprise anyone. The greatest skill of the Bush administration has always been its ability to market itself on "the home front." From September 14, 2001 on, through all those early "mission accomplished" years, it was on the home front, not in Afghanistan or Iraq, that administration officials worked hardest, pacifying the media, rolling out their own "products," and establishing the rep of their leader and "wartime" Commander-in-Chief. As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained candidly enough to the New York Times, when it came to the launching, in September 2002, of a campaign to convince Congress and the public that an invasion of Iraq should be approved: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August." Falling Upwards As a general and a personality, Petraeus fit the particular marketing mentality of this administration perfectly. Graduating from West Point too late for Vietnam - he wrote his doctoral thesis on that war - he had, before the President's invasion, taken part only in "peacekeeping" operations in places like Haiti. In March 2003, a two-star general, he crossed the Kuwaiti border as commander of the 101st Airborne Division. After Baghdad fell, his troops occupied Mosul, a relative quiet city to the north, largely untouched by invasion or war. There, he gained a reputation (at least in the U.S.) for having a special affinity for Iraqis and for applying top-notch, outreach-oriented counterinsurgency tactics. In those early months, he always seemed to have a writer in tow. In 2004-2005, for his next tour of duty - already with the ear of the President and of Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz - he returned to Iraq as the Newsweek Can-He-Save-It guy. His giant task was to "stand up" Iraqi security forces. Again, he had writers in tow. The Washington Post's columnist David Ignatius, for instance, twice paid extended visits to the general during that tour, returning from helicoptering around the Iraqi countryside all aglow and writing glowingly of the job Petraeus was doing (as he would again over the years, as so many other journalists and commentators would, too). The general himself wasn't exactly shy on the subject of his accomplishments. He wrote, for instance, a strategically well-placed op-ed in the Washington Post in September 2004, just as the administration was rolling out another "product," the President's run for a second term. In it, with just enough caveats to cover himself professionally, he waxed positive about the glories of Iraqi soldiers standing up. It was a piece filled with words like "progress" and "optimism," just the sort of thing a President trying to outrun a bunch of Iraqi insurgents to the November 4th finish line might like to see in print in his hometown paper. The general picked up his third star on this tour of duty. Next came a stint at home where he oversaw the rewriting of the Army's counterinsurgency manual, while touting himself as the expert of experts on that subject, too. And then, of course, in February 2007, a fourth star in hand, he took charge of the U.S. command in Iraq for its surge moment. Last week, of course, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed him head of the Pentagon's Central Command with responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and for our proxy war in Somalia. His duties will soon stretch from North Africa into Central Asia. The appointment, however, came after the fact. By then, as George W. Bush's personal general, he had already left the actual Centcom commander, Adm. William "Fox" Fallon in the dust. The President dealt with him directly, bypassing the Centcom commander; and, even before Fallon's ignominious resignation, Petraeus was already traveling the Middle East as, essentially, the President's personal representative, engaging in acts normally reserved for the head of Centcom. His appointment was seconded by Presidential candidate John McCain ("I think he is by far the best-qualified individual to take that job..."), signaling the degree to which the Bush administration is now preparing optimistically for McCain's war (or, alternatively, for Obama's hell). But here's the strange thing when you look more carefully at Petraeus's record (as others have indeed done over these last years), the actual results - in Iraq, not Washington - for each of his previous assignments proved dismal. What the record shows is a man who, after each tour of duty, seemed to manage to make it out of town just ahead of the posse, so that someone else always took the fall. On his time in Mosul, former ambassador Peter Galbraith offered this description: "As the American commander in Mosul in 2003 and 2004, he earned adulatory press coverage ... for taming the Sunni-majority city. Petraeus ignored warnings from America's Kurdish allies that he was appointing the wrong people to key positions in Mosul's local government and police. A few months after he left the city, the Petraeus-appointed local police commander defected to the insurgency while the Sunni Arab police handed their weapons and uniforms over en masse to the insurgents." Mosul has remained a hotspot of insurgency ever since. On his next tour, when it came to all the "progress" training the Iraqi army, let Rod Nordland, the author of that "fawning" - his retrospective adjective, not mine - Newsweek cover piece of 2004, suggest an obituary, as he did in 2007: " rose to fame not by his achievements but by his success in selling them as achievements. He's first of all a great communicator... Training the Iraqi military and shifting responsibility to them was the mantra Petraeus sold to hundreds of credulous reporters and hundreds of even more credulous visiting CODELs (congressional delegations)... By the time he left, the training program was clearly on its way to spectacular failure. By the end of last year that had become received wisdom; it became convenient for the brass to blame the fiasco on the politically less popular and media-friendless Gen. George Casey. Entire brigades of police had to be pulled off the street and retrained because they were evidently riddled with death squads and in some cases even with insurgents. The Iraqi Army was all but useless, a feeble patient kept on life support by the American military." Just recently, in hearings before Congress, Petraeus himself introduced two new words to describe the post-surge security situation in Iraq: "fragile and reversible." Take that as a tip for the future. Fragile indeed. The surge landscape the general helped create has, from the beginning, been flammable and unstable in the extreme. It has, in recent weeks, been threatening to break down in Shiite civil strife, even as, under an American aegis, the Sunnis have been rearming and reorganizing for the day when they can take back a Baghdad that was largely cleansed of their ethnic compatriots during the surge months. Americans are once again dying in increasing numbers (though little attention has yet been paid to this in the media), as are Iraqis. It will be a miracle if post-surge Iraq doesn't come apart before November 4, 2008, not to say the end of George Bush's term in January. The problem is: Putting a face - that is, a mask - on something has nothing to do with changing it in any essential way, no matter how you brand it and no matter who's listening to you elsewhere. This August or September, when the general takes over at Centcom, he will leave behind (as he has before) the equivalent of an IED-mined stretch of Iraqi roadside ready to explode, possibly under the coming U.S. presidential election. It remains to be seen whether he will once again have made it out of town in the nick of time and relatively unscathed. The miracle, of course, was that, so late in the game, the American media swallowed the President's (and the general's) propaganda on the surge campaign which, on the face of it, was ludicrous. Stranger still, they did so for almost a year before the situation started to fray visibly enough for our TV networks and major papers to take notice. For that year, most of them thought they saw a brass band playing fabulously when there was hardly a snare drum in sight. That result may be a public-relations man's dream, but it was thanks to a con man's art. The question is: Can the President make it back to Texas before the bottom falls out in Iraq? And will the general continue to fall ominously upward? http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=796_1209507538 AndyBIue Selling the President's General: The Petraeus Story Bush, Cheney, McCain, Petraeus, Wars, Iraq, Military, Missused, Soldiers, Failure, Greed, Death, PTSD, Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Used, Injured, Disgusting, Suicide, Pointless, Nasty, Greedy, Republiturds