I can’t believe I am actually going to say this. It’s time to leave Afghanistan and bring the troops home. It was a valiant effort that killed many enemy muslims, and that is a good thing. Now that the amateurs are in charge, we have lost the momentum and the initiative. The enemy is inside our OODA loops and we are losing soldiers so that we can be PC Warriors.  I’m done, bring ’em home. No more blood for islam. (sorry spell check, i refuse to capitalize islam or muslim).

63 NATO dead so far this month for what?  Really, for what?

Gen. Stanley McChrystal coming to Washington to explain anti-administration comments

By Ernesto Londoño and Michael D. Shear
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, June 22, 2010; 10:04 AM

KABUL — The top U.S. general in Afghanistan was summoned to Washington for a White House meeting after apologizing Tuesday for flippant and dismissive remarks about top Obama administration officials involved in Afghanistan policy.

The remarks in an article in this week’s Rolling Stone magazine are certain to increase tension between the White House and Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.

The profile of McChrystal, titled the “Runaway General,” also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander appointed by President Obama last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.

McChrystal and some of his senior advisers are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted as calling national security adviser James L. Jones a “clown,” who remains “stuck in 1985.”…

U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired three-star general, isn’t spared. Referring to a leaked cable from Eikenberry that expressed concerns about the trustworthiness of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, McChrystal is quoted as having said: “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ “

The magazine hits newsstands Friday and could be posted online earlier in the week. The Washington Post received an advance copy of the article from its author, Michael Hastings, a freelance journalist who has written for The Post.

“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile,” McChrystal said in a statement issued Tuesday morning. “It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and it should have never happened.”

McChrystal’s civilian press aide, Duncan Boothby, submitted his resignation Tuesday as a result of the article, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because it was a personnel issue.

You know what General, be a real man and resign. Take your pension and go on a  speaking tour to air your problems instead of murdering your soldiers to further your career.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said she had no immediate comment on the piece.

The story features an exchange in which McChrystal and some of his aides appear to mock Vice President Biden, who opposed McChrystal’s troop surge recommendation last year and instead urged a more focused emphasis on counterterrorism operations.

“Are you asking me about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal asks the profile’s reporter at one point, laughing. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” an unnamed aide is quoted as saying. “Did you say Bite me?”

Lt. Col. Joseph Breasseale, a U.S. military spokesman, said McChrystal called Biden and other senior administration officials Tuesday morning (Monday evening in Washington) in reference to the article. “After these discussions, he decided to travel to the U.S. for a meeting,” the spokesman said in an e-mail.

Officials in Washington who were familiar with the situation said the general apologized during the phone call. Biden has been highly skeptical of McChrystal’s insistence that more troops be sent to Afghanistan.

McChrystal’s remarks were made public on the eve of the president’s monthly meeting with his top advisers on Afghanistan, which is scheduled to take place on Wednesday. McChrystal typically joins that meeting by a secure videoconference from Afghanistan, but he was summoned to Washington to participate directly and explain his remarks, a senior administration official said Tuesday morning.

The meeting, which includes Biden and many of the other advisers whom McChrystal or his staff mocked in the article, is likely to be tense as the general attempts to make amends in person.

It is not the first time that McChrystal has been dressed down by Obama. Shortly after the general’s assessment of the situation in Afghanistan was made public last year, McChrystal gave a speech in London in which he publicly criticized those who advocated a scaled-back effort in Afghanistan.

White House officials declined to comment publicly Tuesday morning, but the latest public relations blunder by McChrystal was viewed as sure to further strain his relationship with a president who puts a premium on message discipline and loyalty.

Let that above statement sink in….MESSAGE DISCIPLINE?????????

The magazine story shows that McChrystal is also facing criticism from some of his own troops, who have grown frustrated with new rules that force commanders be extraordinarily judicious in using lethal force.

A few weeks ago, according to the magazine, the general traveled to a small outpost in Kandahar province, in southern Afghanistan, to meet with a unit of soldiers reeling from the loss of a comrade, 23-year-old Cpl. Michael Ingram.

The corporal was killed in a booby-trapped house that some of the unit’s commanders had unsuccessfully sought permission to blow up.

One soldier at the outpost showed Hastings, who was traveling with the general, a written directive instructing troops to “patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourself with lethal force.”

During a tense meeting with Ingram’s platoon, one sergeant tells McChrystal: “Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir.”

McChrystal has championed a counterinsurgency strategy that prioritizes protecting the population as a means to marginalize and ultimately defeat the insurgency. Because new rules sharply restrict the circumstances under which airstrikes and other lethal operations that have resulted in civilian casualties can be conducted, some soldiers say the strategy has left them more exposed.

Great idea General, murder your Christian soldiers so that the muslims will love you, bastard. I pray that you will rot in Hell for this. upon further review, that might have been a bit harsh. He is the executive on the ground, any lives lost due to his support of the ROE’s is blood on his hands for not saying NO to them. The muslims see your COIN as weakness, we have lost because of you and those who think like you.

We have lost the initiative and the will to win.  The muslims now view us as weak and hold us in contempt instead of fearing us. We are finished in Afghanistan and in the Middle East.

From one of our own.

background

more background

updating as we go

Addedum by Rodan: Security Contractors paying off Taliban

It’s bad enough our troops have restrictive ROE in Afghanistan and we are protecting China’s economic interests, but this just tops the cake. Private security contractors, who are responsible for resupplying American troops, have been bribing the Taliban to not attack the convoys. The money they are using is US Taxpayer dollars! In short, we are funding the Taliban who use the money to get weapons and kill our troops!

WASHINGTON — Private security contractors protecting the convoys that supply U.S. military bases in Afghanistan are paying millions of dollars a week in “passage bribes” to the Taliban and other insurgent groups to travel along Afghan roads, a congressional investigation released Monday has found.

The payments, which are reimbursed by the U.S. government, help fund the very enemy the U.S. is attempting to defeat and renew questions about the U.S. dependence on private contractors, who outnumber American troops in Afghanistan , 130,000 to 93,000.

The report’s author called the findings of the six-month investigation “sobering and shocking.”

Read the rest: Report finds U.S. tax money may be funding Afghan insurgents

As we have mentioned before, Hamid Karzai has been playinga double game with us. Well, one of the major offenders that is paying off the Taliban has ties to the corrupt Karzai regime.

Nearly every company listed in the report is associated with senior Afghan officials, including President Hamid Karzai , the minister of defense, a provincial governor and a senior Afghan army official.

One of those companies, Host Nation Trucking , transports about 70 percent of all goods to U.S. troops stationed at 200 bases and combat outposts throughout Afghanistan , running 6,000 to 8,000 delivery missions a month. The $2.16 billion contract called on HNT truckers to provide their own security, but didn’t call for any oversight into how HNT and other companies did that.

This is a disgrace to our service men. They are dying for a corrupt regime, a pedophile based society and Chinese mining interests. Now our tax money is going to the Taliban who are killing our soldiers. Our military deserves better than this crap.