Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2022 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Uncategorized

Taliban Assassinate Deputy Intelligence Director, Kill 21

Juan Cole 09/03/2009

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares

A Taliban suicide bomber killed the deputy director of Afghanistan intelligence along with 21 other people in the eastern Laghman province. This sort of successful strike at a high government official suggests an inside job, with foreknowledge of the official’s itinerary. It makes you wonder how many figures in the government of Hamid Karzai are actually working for the other side.

ITN has video:

Karen DeYoung reports on the amazement of US commanders at how much better the Taliban are getting at sophisticated military operations. It is almost, they tell her, as though the Taliban are getting Ranger training somewhere. But I wonder if their improvement isn’t just a side effect of fighting US and NATO troops for the past few years. You saw the Mahdi Army in Iraq get better, too, over time.

CBS reports on how thin on the ground US troops are in Afghanistan:
Watch CBS Videos Online

Meanwhile, AP reports that members of the mercenary outfit supposedly guarding the US embassy in Kabul have actually been partying in the nude and hazing one another.

I can’t understand why the US army isn’t assigned to tasks like guarding the embassy; why farm that task out to geriatric frat boys? The cult of private contracting, which is promoted in the name of a free market but is actually a kind of socialism, is bankrupting the US government– and we aren’t even getting our money’s worth.

End/ (Not Continued)

Filed Under: Uncategorized

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

Support Us

Help keep independent journalism alive and donate online, or make checks payable to:
"Juan Cole"
P. O. Box 4218,
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-2548
(No parcels, please)

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2022 All Rights Reserved

Posting....