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Did you hear that Karzai? If you do not do the right thing, Obama might just let the Taliban thugs takeover. Oh, he is already on the way to doing that.... Obama warns Afghan president: Time for new chapter By BEN FELLER WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama greeted Hamid Karzai's election victory with as much admonishment as praise on Monday, pointedly advising America's partner in war he must make more serious efforts to end corruption in Afghanistan's government and prepare his nation to ultimately defend itself.

If media leaks are to be believed, President Obama will attempt to chart a middle way in Afghanistan, sending more soldiers but not as many as General Stanley McChrystal would like. The New York Times describes the emerging strategy as “McChrystal for the city, Biden for the country,” a blend of the diametrically opposed approaches advocated by the general (who favors a counterinsurgency strategy) and the vice president (who wants to do counterterrorism operations only). The Times writes that "the administration is looking at protecting Kabul, Kandahar, Maza-i-Sharif, Kunduz, Herat, Jalalabad and a few other village clusters, officials said." In...

President Obama has run out of "excuses" for delaying a decision on whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, House Minority Leader John Boehner said Monday after Afghan President Hamid Karzai was declared the winner of his nation's presidential election by default. Obama administration officials had suggested that a decision on American troop levels should be withheld until Afghanistan's runoff election was over. But now that Karzai's challenger, Abdullah Abdullah, has dropped out of the race and handed the election over to Karzai for another five-year term, lawmakers are urging the U.S. president to finalize his overhaul of America's...

President Obama's lack of leadership is beginning to effect morale in the United States. Its been three months since General McCrystal sent his report on next steps for the War In Afghanistan. Since the President has been sitting on his military assets, confidence in the War on Terror has plummeted, and now the confidence is falling for both Iraq and Afghanistan. A Rasmussen study that reports that only 34% of voters say the United States and its allies are winning the War on Terror. That’s down nine points from a month ago and 14 points since McCrystal first filed his...

11/2/2009 - QALAT, Afghanistan (AFNS) -- Air Force security forces members along with Army Soldiers from the Zabul Provincial Reconstruction Team met with prison officials as part of an on-going mentoring project at a nearby prison here Oct. 28. The prison, located close to the PRT compound, has become an important project for the team due to activity this summer. "We had seen the prison have some real troubles this summer," said Lt. Col. Andy Veres, the PRT commander. "Some of the trouble had been from the inside and some from the outside, so we thought it was important to...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 2, 2009 – Combined Afghan and NATO forces detained several insurgents in operations in southern and eastern Afghanistan in recent days, military officials reported. A combined Afghan-International Security Assistance Force operation detained an insurgent in Kandahar province yesterday while in pursuit of a Taliban district leader and senior commander of a sizable militant element in the area. The force targeted a location outside of the village of Daylanur, north of Kandahar City, after intelligence indicated militant activity. The force used “escalation of force” procedures to stop two motorcycles traveling south toward the city, detained a suspect and seized...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 2, 2009 – More than 250 Afghan National Police graduated from basic training Oct. 29 at the police headquarters in Herat, Afghanistan. Afghan National Police prepare to graduate from a police academy in Herat, Afghanistan, Oct. 29, 2009. The hundreds of graduates are part of an initiative to double the size of the Afghan National Police to 160,000 by 2013. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Stephen Decatur  (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. The graduates were some of the first to be trained in an effort to boost the national police’s current strength of 81,000 to 161,000...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Nov. 2, 2009 – Air Force Maj. John Loftis has a Pashto name, Esan, and people frequently ask him what it means. The public information officer is deployed to Forward Operating Base Smart, a small military compound located in the heart of Qalat, a southern Afghan city. He leaves quite an impression with the Afghan community where he lives and works as a provincial reconstruction team member, even if that community happens to be in the middle of a war zone. While on foot patrol, Loftis is bombarded by swarms of Afghan children. Laughing and smiling, they follow...

James Galyean is a candidate running for South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District. Prior to that time, Galyean was an Assistant United States Attorney and also has some pretty direct connections to the War on Terror. It was Galyean who helped helped write both the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006. As a result, he has a bed of knowledge and massive amounts of contacts that others do not. And his contacts are telling him that, protestations to the contrary from the Pentagon, Barack Obama has every intention of sending GTMO terrorists to the Charleston,...

Manager claims ignorance of his own candidate's past, including Rev. Wright Obama campaign manager David Plouffe claims President Obama's campaign staff had done "zero research" on its candidate and was not aware of the inflammatory statements and views of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Plouffe, whose firm was hired to run Obama's presidential campaign, made the statement in a forthcoming book. While Plouffe and his staff may not have done their homework on Obama's radical associates, it may be hard for political insiders to believe some of Obama's other key advisers during the campaign were not aware of Wright's controversial views. One...

Astonishing though it may be, there are Americans who actually believe that Barack Obama’s vist to Dover was an authentic expression of concern for our troops and empathy for their loved ones. Of all the Obama fabrications, this has to be one of the more preposterous. The Narcissist in Chief was not showing empathy because he doesn’t have any.

The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator John Kerry (D-Mass) labeled General Stanley McChrystal’s proposal to send 40,000 additional U.S. combat troops to Afghanistan “ill-considered.” “This kind of blind blustering and saber-rattling might have sold in the Bush era, but it’s a new day under Democratic leadership,” Kerry boasted. “A more cautious and deliberate approach must guide us.” In support of his position, the Senator cited a resolution passed unanimously by the Berkeley City Council calling for “an end to the United States’ barbarous ravaging of Afghanistan with cowardly remote attacks.” “At least the so-called jihadis have the...

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said Monday that President Barack Obama needs to make a decision immediately on a strategy for Afghanistan now that that country's runoff election has been canceled. "There are no more excuses," Boehner said. "It’s time for the Obama administration to give our commander on the ground the resources he needs to protect our troops and achieve the goals the president has said he supports.” Obama, who has held a series of meetings with his national security team to devise a new strategy for the region, had hinted that he would not announce a decision...

A British soldier was killed as he tried to defuse a roadside bomb on the last day of his deployment to Afghanistan, it has emerged. Staff Sgt Olaf Schmid, 30, from Winchester, was serving in the Royal Logistic Corps when he died on Saturday near Sangin in Helmand province. His wife, Christina Schmid, said he was her "soulmate" and she took comfort knowing he had saved "countless lives". A total of 224 UK military personnel have died in Afghanistan since 2001. 'Phenomenal husband' Staff Sgt Schmid, who had been in the Army for 13 years, had been commanding a bomb...

When Obama stated that he was going to reach out to the Islamic world, he was not kidding. The weakness of Obama has lead to the Taliban getting stronger. He has even given the Taliban the OK to participate in the future political landscape of Afghanistan. Apparently none of this was enough though, and now Obama is willing to share power in Afghanistan with the Taliban thugs. This is straight out of the Twilight Zone. US Offers Taliban 6 Provinces for 8 Bases By Aamir Latif, IOL Correspondent

As a Marine, Operation Iraqi Freedom veteran, and Honorably Discharged Sergeant, I know a thing or two about mission accomplishment versus troop welfare. As a matter of fact, any Marine can tell you the clearly stated objective of the Marine Corps is mission accomplishment. Troop welfare comes secondary. Commanders and military leaders learned long ago that success on any battlefront depends chiefly upon mission accomplishment. Troop welfare, while important, does not trump mission accomplishment. For the enlisted Marine on the ground, this is sometimes a hard pill to swallow. But we understand. And actually, this is one of the reasons...

I support a phased withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan, starting Jan. 1 and ending no later than Dec. 31, 2012. The Afghan people have suffered enough and the U.S. government should promote a negotiated settlement to the war. Afghanistan has been at war almost continually since 1979. We’ve been over there since 2001. At the end of 2012 we’ll have been there 11 years. That’s more than long enough to achieve our mission. And 32 years of war is too long for the Afghans. Afghanistan is an impoverished country. Sixty-eight percent of its population has never known...

White House officials downplayed Afghan presidential challenger Abdullah Abdullah's decision to pull out of this week's scheduled runoff election and said they would work with President Hamid Karzai. Mr. Abdullah, the country's former foreign minister, withdrew Sunday from the presidential contest against Mr. Karzai, almost certainly handing the incumbent another five-year term in office. Mr. Abdullah had accused Mr. Karzai of not allowing for a fair vote. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said in a statement that she understood Mr. Abdullah's concerns and hoped he would continue to stay active in the political process in the war-torn nation but...

The Afghanistan commander warned his political master that “Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions… [But] without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time.” This wasn’t an exchange between Gen. Stanley McChrystal, U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and President Obama at last Friday’s White House strategy meeting, but it could portend a future meeting. Rather, the speaker was Gen. Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, testifying before the Soviet Union’s Politburo in 1986 to explain why 110,000 Russian soldiers were losing in Afghanistan. Russian generals...

Let me see if I have the facts straight. Last May, President Obama removed Gen. David D. McKiernan as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and replaced him with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who in September issued a dire report warning that, without as many as 40,000 more troops for the fight in Afghanistan, the mission "will likely result in failure." President Obama rebuffed that he would make no quick decision but take as long as needed to do a broad study first on the issue. Is this about genuine concern, or could this delay simply be a politically driven...

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...