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KABUL -- The idea of talking to the Taliban -- a strategy advocated by Afghan officials -- has become increasingly seductive as the Western death toll in the conflict mounts. Obama administration officials openly ponder an outreach to the leadership of Islamist militants, something that has been long advocated by European allies. Gen. Stanley McChrystal has already told the U.S.-led forces under his command here that "reintegrating" lower-level Taliban gunmen into Afghan society is as desirable as killing or capturing them. In his assessment of the Afghan war, Gen. McChrystal explained that conflicts of this kind typically end with a...

The Obama administration is considering an almost complete surrender in Afghanistan, if the report this weekend by the BBC's Katty Kay is accurate.Speaking as a panelist on the Chris Matthews Show, a weekend public affairs broadcast, Kay reported on the internal debate at the White House, "There are real questions being asked, I think, about whether even with a big injection of troops this is a real country, a real war that you can win."And there's a new phrase which is floating around the White House which is 'minimum security'. That we're not actually aiming for a country which is...

Rush said earlier that he doesn't believe Obama really cares what happens in Afghanistan...only what the war can do for him, and now the dithering liberal is dithering some more. 10 months wasn't enough you see: Axelrod said Obama would announce a war strategy "within weeks." A senior U.S. official told The Associated Press that Obama has still not yet decided what to do, and it remains unclear whether he will decide before he goes to Asia on Nov. 11. Here is what Rush said earlier and it's dead on accurate: WALLACE: Let’s talk about a couple of the big...

Six Chinese Muslims who were held in the Guantánamo Bay prison camp for almost eight years have arrived on the tiny Pacific island of Palau. The detainees from the Turkic Uighur minority were arrested in Afghanistan during the opening days of military operations in 2001 and held as suspected militants until last year when a US military tribunal decided they were not 'enemy combatants'. The release of the men, who were greeted on arrival by Palau's President, Johnson Toribiong, is another small step in US President Barack Obama's struggle to close the controversial prison camp by January. Palau, situated 500...

Yesterday, a squad of Navy SEALs engaged in combat operations in Afghanstan had several men badly wounded by RPG explosions. Freeper "Wardaddy" is related to one of them. Navy SEAL Bryan Stuart is Wardaddy's close cousin's son. He has been medevaced to Germany for surgery. Other details are sketchy as of yet.

The New York Times neglects to inform its readers that an op-ed writer slamming Israel earns a handsome living courtesy of overseas Arab money. Henry Siegman is a self-styled Middle East expert who has a simplistic view of the Middle East: Israel is always at fault. He has called Israel an apartheid state -- but that is only the tip of the iceberg. In Monday's New York Times he characterizes Israelis as being pathological and filled with hostility toward Barack Obama because he wants to bring peace between Israel and the Arab world. Polls show that only 4% of Jewish...

The Rasmussen presidential monthly approval polls show a breathtaking drop in Obama's approval ratings, something we might miss in the daily reports: I don't remember ever seeing anything like this.

Despite what some conservatives say, we now have a president of whom we can be proud. Doing something that his predecessor never did in eight years in office, President Barack ObamaBarack Obama made an after-midnight visit to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware Friday night to welcome home the fallen dead from the war in Afghanistan. He was somber and dignified, and he showed America that he understands the other side of the decision he is making whether to send more American troops into harm's way in Afghanistan. Not only did his predecessor never visit Dover for one of these...

Barbara Boxer apparently holds meetings on the streets of Oakland, according to her companions, who didn’t want to allow a constituent with a camera to question Senator Ma’am on policy in Afghanistan. Boxer finally responds long enough to insist that Congress will not allow more troops to go into Afghanistan, which then prompts the question of whether we should keep troops there at all if we’re not going to fight to win there. Boxer walks away, even though the constituent calls her “Senator” … repeatedly:

CHAHAR BAGH, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The mission was simple. Some 20 U.S. soldiers were to patrol a riverbed in the dead of night, camp until morning, and provide backup to Afghan troops and their Canadian mentors in a clearing operation in Chahar Bagh village, an insurgent hotbed on the outskirts of Kandahar City. Less than 12 hours later, seven of the soldiers and their Afghan interpreter would be dead, killed by a massive homemade bomb buried deep under pebbles along the dried-out riverbed. The attack illustrates how a more aggressive U.S. military strategy of going into Taliban strongholds risks mounting...

President Obama is within weeks of making a decision on sending additional troops to Afghanistan, Chief White House Advisor David Axelrod said on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Everything has a fundamental essence, a quality that makes it uniquely itself. Take an orange, for example. It's not only a citrus fruit -- it's an orange-colored citrus fruit. Horticulturists can alter its size, its texture, its sweetness, and even (to a limited extent) its color, but as long as its color is orange, the fruit remains "an orange" because that color is its definition. Change the color, however, and suddenly you have the un-orange, the anti-orange. You have something completely different that no longer contains the essence of the original fruit. Lose the essence and you lose the orange....

What would it take for your kids to give up most of that candy they collected while trick-or-treating on Halloween? Or all that candy you've got left over today because you had fewer than expected kids come to your door. Here's a suggestion: Donate the candy to U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq so they can hand the sweets out to local kids there to help show them we're not a country of monsters and bullies. More than 1,200 dentists around the country have registered to buy back Halloween candy from kids for $1 a pound. They'll give the donated...

KABUL – President Hamid Karzai's challenger withdrew Sunday from next weekend's runoff election, effectively handing the incumbent a victory but raising doubts about the government's credibility at a time when the U.S. is seeking an effective partner in the war against the Taliban.

Rush on Obama, "We never seen this kind of radical leadership at this high level." Rush hits a grand slam on today's Foxnews Sunday...

Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch brought up a claim he said "some people" have made, that President Barack Obama is waiting until after this year's gubernatorial election in New Jersey and Virginia before making a decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan. “Some people have even been, I think, hyper-critical in suggesting that he’s waiting until after the election because they have some tough governorships up for election” Hatch said In an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union with John King, “I hope that’s not the case.” Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown said he knows Hatch didn’t say he...

Rush Limbaugh's interview with Chris Wallace is going to be the only thing the MSM is talking about Monday. When asked what he thought of Obama's trip to Dover to visit the remains of soldiers brought home from Iraq. Limbaugh said "It was a photo-opt. It was a photo-opt precisely because of hes having big time trouble on this whole Afghanistan dithering situation." He didn't stop there, though. He hit on everything you wanted him to. Even why he calls President Obama a man-child. Here's the link for the videosHe's the transcript from part 1. I'm working on part 2...

Abdullah's announcement came after the failure of last-minute attempts to head off another crisis in the presidential election saga. Kai Eide, the senior United Nations official in Afghanistan, led a series of talks with Karzai to lay the ground for a power-sharing deal in which Abdullah would concede defeat, making a second round unnecessary. In return, the former foreign minister had asked for a number of changes to the Afghan election body, including the sacking of its lead commissioner. But almost all of Abdullah's demands were rejected, leaving him no choice but to drop out, his supporters say. "He knows...

Obama Requests More Options for Troop Levels The Washington post reported two officials as saying late Friday Obama asked the Pentagon's top generals to provide him with more options for troop levels in Afghanistan. President Barack Obama grappled Friday with the costs and consequences of a long-term commitment to Afghanistan, but reached no decisions about troop levels, a top aide said, as military advisers briefed the president on an armed services already taxed by challenges around the globe. The president reviewed his options with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made clear he wants at least one more meeting with...

Patriotic Americans who love their country were furious and embarrassed when President Obama began his administration by apologizing to various countries (especially Muslim countries and throughout Europe) for the supposed misdeeds and slights by past administrations. Some of this appalling behavior was conducted in the shadow of thousands of crosses and stars over the graves of American servicemen buried in Europe (a list of many of the countries freed by American soldiers is at the end of this piece). Then, to raise the level of ignorance and stupidity to new heights, Obama overturned decades of American commitment to freedom by...

U.S. helicopters watch as insurgents blow themselves up. Apache gunships with the 82nd Combat Aviation Brigade, TF Pegasus, observe insurgents in the act of emplacing an Improvised Explosive Device in southern Afghanistan. But before the Apaches moves in for the strike, the insurgents’ bomb goes off, killing them in the act.

In his slick PR fashion, Obama's answer to the charge that he is "dithering on Afghanistan" is to feed the hungry media a military photo op. Yes, Obama can be seen in the pic saluting a US Soldier's flag-draped casket coming back from Afghanistan. Now we know why the White House insisted that our battlefield casualties should not be shielded from the media. You need tame media access for photo ops. So Obama is finally showing some respect. For the Hollyweirdos, appearance is reality. We now have a Commander in Chief who knows how to salute. He must therefore be...

EVERETT, Wash. - A 61-year-old man accused of beating his brother to death in Lynnwood told Snohomish County sheriff's detectives it was an honor killing to avenge an insulting remark. Mehdi M. Matin says more than 20 years ago his brother uttered words about his bride-to-be so terrible the wedding was called off. Both men are from Afghanistan. Matin was visiting his brother Monday when he repeated the remark.

Under the harsh sunlight, a lone grey donkey sauntered across one end of a silent street; halfway down the far end, a US marine lay in the dirt, exposed and alone — brushing the dust from a pressure plate linked to a massive bomb. A few days ago this town, deep in Taliban territory, was thronged with up to 800 residents and traders. This is Helmand’s biggest drugs market, but today all but a handful of Kuchi, the Afghan nomads, have vanished. Somehow the Taliban knew the marines were coming. Rather than fight openly, they left behind a booby-trapped ghost...

Show me who he hangs with and I'll show you who (and what) he is. Sammy writes: The White House has been barraged with requests to release the names of its visitors. Today they release the first 500 visits, all from the period of Jan 20-July 31. Some of the Names you can find on the list are Bill Ayers 2x, George Soros 4x, Michael Moore 8X, the head of the ACORN affiliated Union the SEIU Andrew Stern 20x,Jeremiah Wright, GE/NBC head Jeff Immelt 5x, Jesse Jackson 6x, John Edwards2x, Al Sharpton 2x, and of course television goddess Oprah Winfrey....

The most senior British soldier to die in Afghanistan foreshadowed his own death by warning that a shortage of helicopters was endangering troops. Less than a month before he was killed by a roadside bomb, Lieutenant Colonel Rupert Thorneloe told his superiors that soldiers would die because they were being forced to take more trips by road. The officer, who was commander of the 1st Battalion Welsh Guards, said in a memo to the Ministry of Defence, classified "Nato secret", that the system for managing helicopter movements in Afghanistan was "very clearly not fit for purpose" and there were not...

KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdullah Abdullah, the chief rival to President Hamid Karzai, plans to announce on Sunday his decision to withdraw from the Nov. 7 Afghan runoff election, handing a new five-year term to Mr. Karzai but potentially damaging the government’s credibility, according to Western diplomats here and people close to Mr. Abdullah. But Mr. Abdullah seemed to be keeping his options open until the last second, as he has done through the Afghan political crisis. Those close to him, speaking on condition of anonymity on Saturday, said Mr. Abdullah was still trying to decide whether to publicly denounce Mr....

New Delhi - Former US president George W Bush on Saturday warned that the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan must be won else the world would face "serious threats."Addressing a conference in New Delhi, Bush said defeating the radical Islamic groups was necessary to stop a return to "brutal tyranny" in that country. "The mission in Afghanistan has been long and difficult and costly but I believe it is necessary for stability and peace," he told the conference organized by the Hindustan Times. "If the Taliban, al-Qaeda and their extremist allies were allowed to take over Afghanistan...

Another soldier from Nevada has been killed in Afghanistan, the second Silver State-related casualty in a week, according to the Department of Defense. Sgt. Josue E. Hernandez Chavez, 23, of Reno was one of seven soldiers killed Monday when a helicopter crashed in Darreh-ye Bum, Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said in a news release Thursday. Chavez was on a MH-47 heavy lift helicopter with four other soldiers from the 3rd Battalion, 160th Special Operations Regiment from Hunter Army Airfield, Ga., and two from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Special Forces Group out of Fort Bragg, N.C.

It is crunch time on Afghanistan, so here’s my vote: We need to be thinking about how to reduce our footprint and our goals there in a responsible way, not dig in deeper. We simply do not have the Afghan partners, the NATO allies, the domestic support, the financial resources or the national interests to justify an enlarged and prolonged nation-building effort in Afghanistan. I base this conclusion on three principles. First, when I think back on all the moments of progress in that part of the world — all the times when a key player in the Middle East...

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama will lay out broad strategic guidelines for Afghanistan after November 7 runoff elections there but will not "micromanage" the generals fighting the war, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. Clinton made the remarks when asked whether forces would be pulled back from the Pakistan-Afghanistan border under a new strategy that reportedly will refocus the US-led military effort on protecting Afghan population centers. "The president is not going to micromanage what our generals do," she said in an interview with PBS television. "The president is going to say, 'Here's our strategic objectives, here's what...

Afghan presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah plans to boycott next week's runoff against incumbent Hamid Karzai following a breakdown in talks on how to fix the country's electoral crisis, two people familiar with the discussions said. A boycott would severely undermine a vote intended to affirm the Afghan government's credibility. However, an Abdullah spokesman said no final decision had been made on the candidate's pullout. It was possible that word of the boycott was a negotiating tactic by the Abdullah camp. The political stalemate in Kabul comes as President Barack Obama has been meeting with his advisers to try to determine...

Today, President Obama will lead another meeting to debate strategy in Afghanistan. He will presumably discuss the questions that have divided his advisers: How many troops to commit? How to define plausible goals? Should troops be deployed broadly or just in the cities and towns? For the past few days I have tried to do what journalists are supposed to do. I’ve called around to several of the smartest military experts I know to get their views on these controversies. I called retired officers, analysts who have written books about counterinsurgency warfare, people who have spent years in Afghanistan. I...

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been meeting tribal leaders in north-west Pakistan on the last day of a testing visit to the country. During her three-day trip Mrs Clinton hoped to strengthen ties between the US and Pakistan and tried to address a rising tide of anti-American feeling. In an interview with the BBC she urged Pakistanis to "realise the connection" between al-Qaeda and the Taliban. But her arrival was overshadowed by a deadly bombing in the city of Peshawar. More than 100 people died when a car bomb exploded in a busy market on Wednesday. The BBC's...

At today's White House briefing, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Barack Obama has spent "close to 20 direct hours" in meetings on Afghanistan since Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for tens of thousands of reinforcements was submitted over two months ago with a warning the war would be lost in twelve months without more troops.Gibbs says Obama also spends "quite a bit of time" thinking about the war in Afghanistan.Gibbs was asked about a statement by the mother of one of the fallen soldiers, Sgt. Dale Griffin, killed in Afghanistan this week whom Obama met with at Dover early Thursday morning....

More than 1,000 American troops have been wounded in battle over the past three months in Afghanistan, accounting for one-fourth of all those injured in combat since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. The dramatic increase has filled military hospitals with more amputees and other seriously injured service members and comes as October marks the deadliest month for American troops in Afghanistan. Expanded military operations, a near-doubling of the number of troops since the beginning of the year and a Taliban offensive that has included a proliferation of roadside bombings have led to the great increase in casualties. U.S. troops in...

The extreme delay in getting decisions out of Washington that were urgent many months ago, on how to proceed in Afghanistan, was made sickly comic on Monday when President Barack Obama told a military audience that he would not "rush the solemn decision of sending you into harm's way." Morale had been descending in Afghanistan, from what I could make out, among an under-manned allied force in serious need of reinforcement; casualties rising on uncovered flanks. And then they hear this strange man in Washington, playing Hamlet with himself, dramatizing his own role in what should be a clear-headed and...

Note: The following text is a quote: Combined Force Detains Suspected Militants American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 30, 2009 – Afghan and international security forces detained several suspected militants in Afghanistan’s Paktia and Helmland provinces today and yesterday, military officials reported. A combined force detained a group of suspected militants in Paktia province today after searching buildings known to be used by a Haqqani network leader responsible for the financing and supply of terrorist camps in the Khowst-Gardez Pass area. The security force targeted the buildings near Kandaw Kalay village after intelligence indicated militant activity. The joint force detained...

Pres. Obama met today with the Joint Chiefs of Staff for just the second time since taking office. The president grilled the commanders on strategy and troop requests for Afghanistan during the nearly three hour meeting, but no final decision were made, according to both senior White House and Pentagon officials In fact, the president has asked the Joint Chiefs to come back to the White House possibly as early as next week to present him with more options. The president is not happy with the choices that he has in front of him, which include Gen. Stanley McCrystal's request...

Late last week, in the dead of night. President Obama made an unannounced trip to Dover, Delaware, where he was photographed saluting some flag-covered coffins that were coming in from Afghanistan. There were 18 coffins on this day. And afterwards, Obama said that this experience “would influence his decision” on troop levels and future policies in the war in that Afghanistan. Well, first I fault the press. I’ve been saying for years that reporting on war casualties, in Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever, is defective. The national importance of casualties should be gauged by relative casualties in other, American wars. It’s...

Rather than give the troops the reinforcements they need, Obama instead uses the dead for a photo op! What an ASS! Obama's one and only trip to the Dover Delaware Air Force Base which is the gateway for the bodies of all the nation's war dead was a photo op that almost didn't happen. 17 out of the 18 families refused their permission for the news media to cover this event. Instead of a row of coffins coming back from Afghanistan, Obama got to use only one as a prop. Readers may recall that President Bush met privately on numerous...

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Talks between Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his election opponent, Abdullah Abdullah, have broken down, a Western source close to the Afghan leadership told CNN's Christiane Amanpour on Friday. According to the source, Abdullah will likely announce this weekend that he will boycott the runoff presidential election slated for November 7, a runoff that had been scheduled after intense diplomatic arm twisting by the United States.

After all the harping by the left on the "evil" war in Iraq and the "good" war in Afghanistan, you might expect them to be more aggressive about pursuing victory in the "good" war. Sadly, that's not the case, as Obama and his Czars are showing us - liberals can't even win a "good" war. We should all pray for the safety of our abandoned troops in Afghanistan as their commander-in-chief ponders their fates. Commentary begins approx halfway through (7:00) segment 1 of Evil Conservative Radio from 10/27/09.

It's been another dreadful week in the war of civilizations. On Sunday, 153 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in back-to-back car bombings in Baghdad. On Tuesday in Kabul, five UN staffers and three Afghans were killed in an attack on a UN guesthouse. And on Wednesday in Pakistan, 100 people - mostly women and children - were killed and 160 wounded in a shopping district bombing in Peshawar. The week also saw 24 American service personnel killed in Afghanistan, making 58 fatalities for the month - the deadliest since 9/11. This is a war of civilizations in...

ABC News' Pentagon correspondent Luis Martinez reports that Barack Obama brought twenty-four reporters, photographers and videographers from fourteen media outlets to Dover Air Force Base to cover his 'surprise' visit there early Thursday morning.The New York Times reported earlier that there was a "small contingent" of media at Dover. However, two dozen is a crowd, especially when vulnerable grieving families are involved.Liz Cheney is being attacked (and here) for pointing out that Obama imposed the question of media coverage on the families by his presence at Dover. Seventeen out of the eighteen families of the fifteen soldiers and three DEA...

WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 (UPI) -- Matthew P. Hoh is a former U.S. Marine Corps captain and, until recently, the U.S. Department of State senior civilian representative in Zabul province, Afghanistan. His recent resignation was based not on "how we are pursuing this war" but "why and to what end." As resignation letters go, Hoh's was a masterpiece. In my opinion, many of his observations ring true, but one could offer alternative interpretations. Terrorism directed against the United States and Western countries originates primarily from sanctuaries in failed, unstable or rogue states. That is, nations that either cannot constrain them or...

Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. "Niki, I'm dying. Don't have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble." A few years later, first crisis. Khrushchev opens envelope 1: "Blame everything on me. Uncle Joe." A few years later, a really big crisis. Opens envelope 2: "Blame everything on me. Again. Good luck, Uncle Joe." Third crisis. Opens envelope 3: "Prepare three envelopes." In the Barack Obama version, there are 50 or so such blame-Bush free passes before the gig is up. By my calculation, Obama...

In a flashback to Viet Nam, we get a foreshadowing of the Obama strategy in Afghanistan. Apparently disappointed by his handpicked General, Stanley McChrystal’s request for 40,000 more troops, General-in-Chief Obama has decide to run the Afghan war from Washington. To do that, according to the Washington Post, he has asked for a detailed report on that country, province by province. In a short while, McChrystal will be relegated to a powerless background position, just close enough to the action to act as a sacrificial lamb when the whole thing goes bust. ... That’s how we lost Viet Nam. Remember...

As Baker's flag-draped casket was lowered from a small charter jet into the hands of six fellow Marines, his family and friends stood arm-in-arm, weeping on the tarmac at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. Stillness and silence dominated the scene. The sound of passenger planes taking off and landing was drowned out by the weight of the scene unfolding at ground level. That silence was broken only when a police bagpiper began playing "When the Saints Go Marching In." Baker's casket then was loaded into a waiting hearse, and scores of policemen and firefighters — from no fewer than 25 area...

Note: The following text is a quote: U.S. Seeks to Counter Enemy’s ‘Weapon of Choice’ By John J. Kruzel American Forces Press Service WASHINGTON, Oct. 29, 2009 – The Defense Department expects U.S. forces in Afghanistan to continue to be targeted by improvised explosive devices -- which have claimed more lives there than any other weapon -- while it seeks ways to counter the threat, officials said. As President Barack Obama and his advisors weigh decisions on the next phase of the Afghan war, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is working to protect against and defeat the growing threat from...