Afghanistan

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  • HughFreakingDillon
    HughFreakingDillon Winnipeg Posts: 39,473
    mcgruff10 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    Yeah I get it. In a place where you can get beheaded, being allowed to do your job without incident is friendly. But it’s still funny rhetoric when there’s a death chant going on. It’s like the “die” chant in Creeping Death and James Hetfield yelling “Come on friends!” during it. 

    She’ll be fine (hopefully), but it sucks for the women and girls that actually live there. I wonder who’s really to blame for the Afghan military’s failure. Biden was putting blame on them today, understandably, but I wonder how good of a job our military (military leaders and strategists, not soldiers) did in training them. 
    this was something my wife asked me after watching the biden speech. it's a good question. i mean, if they were confident in their training, why turn tail and run?
    If they wanted to fight but they were poorly trained they would have fought,  poorly.  They didn't.  As it stands,  you can now get an American rifle cheap. Never shot,  dropped once.  

    This is an intelligence failure. 
    I don't think it's that simple. if you know you are going to die, you generally don't fight. if you are confident you can win and survive, you do. I don't think it comes down to simple "want" or "don't want". 
    There's nothing I saw that said the Taliban greatly outnumbered or out gunned the military.  What I read in the Post is that there were massive bribes from the leaders on down to melt away.  That's an intelligence failure.  Was there even one battle??
    your first sentence is confusing, since I never said anything about numbers. 

    I hadn't read about the bribes. Interesting. 

    Not that I'm aware of.  
    The point I was making is why would the soldier know he was going to die if they had equal or superior numbers to the Taliban? And I don’t think there was a real battle either.  The military and political leaders literally just abdicated without a fight.  The article about the bribes was in the post.  I’ll see if nbc reposted it.
    because of sub-par training, not numbers, which I specifically bolded from Ledbetterman's post, and also commented myself, when I responded to him. 
    How do you figure it was sub-par training?  From what I've read the downfall seems to be from corruption and a lack of fight from the Afghans as soon as Trump made the deal with the Taliban. 
    come on guys. it was a theory my wife and i had. nothing more. 
    By The Time They Figure Out What Went Wrong, We'll Be Sitting On A Beach, Earning Twenty Percent.




  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
    edited August 2021
     I have authorized 6,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan to assist in the departure of U.S. and Allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan — and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside the country.

    Our current military mission will be short in time and focused in its objectives:
     
    Get our people and our allies to safety as quickly as possible.  
     
    And once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military withdrawal. We will end America’s longest war.

    Post edited by mickeyrat on
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  • mrussel1
    mrussel1 Posts: 30,879
    mcgruff10 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    Yeah I get it. In a place where you can get beheaded, being allowed to do your job without incident is friendly. But it’s still funny rhetoric when there’s a death chant going on. It’s like the “die” chant in Creeping Death and James Hetfield yelling “Come on friends!” during it. 

    She’ll be fine (hopefully), but it sucks for the women and girls that actually live there. I wonder who’s really to blame for the Afghan military’s failure. Biden was putting blame on them today, understandably, but I wonder how good of a job our military (military leaders and strategists, not soldiers) did in training them. 
    this was something my wife asked me after watching the biden speech. it's a good question. i mean, if they were confident in their training, why turn tail and run?
    If they wanted to fight but they were poorly trained they would have fought,  poorly.  They didn't.  As it stands,  you can now get an American rifle cheap. Never shot,  dropped once.  

    This is an intelligence failure. 
    I don't think it's that simple. if you know you are going to die, you generally don't fight. if you are confident you can win and survive, you do. I don't think it comes down to simple "want" or "don't want". 
    There's nothing I saw that said the Taliban greatly outnumbered or out gunned the military.  What I read in the Post is that there were massive bribes from the leaders on down to melt away.  That's an intelligence failure.  Was there even one battle??
    your first sentence is confusing, since I never said anything about numbers. 

    I hadn't read about the bribes. Interesting. 

    Not that I'm aware of.  
    The point I was making is why would the soldier know he was going to die if they had equal or superior numbers to the Taliban? And I don’t think there was a real battle either.  The military and political leaders literally just abdicated without a fight.  The article about the bribes was in the post.  I’ll see if nbc reposted it.
    because of sub-par training, not numbers, which I specifically bolded from Ledbetterman's post, and also commented myself, when I responded to him. 
    How do you figure it was sub-par training?  From what I've read the downfall seems to be from corruption and a lack of fight from the Afghans as soon as Trump made the deal with the Taliban. 
    come on guys. it was a theory my wife and i had. nothing more. 
    Ok sorry. Didn't mean to beat a dead horse. 
  • cincybearcat
    cincybearcat Posts: 16,830
    mrussel1 said:
    Yeah I get it. In a place where you can get beheaded, being allowed to do your job without incident is friendly. But it’s still funny rhetoric when there’s a death chant going on. It’s like the “die” chant in Creeping Death and James Hetfield yelling “Come on friends!” during it. 

    She’ll be fine (hopefully), but it sucks for the women and girls that actually live there. I wonder who’s really to blame for the Afghan military’s failure. Biden was putting blame on them today, understandably, but I wonder how good of a job our military (military leaders and strategists, not soldiers) did in training them. 
    She said “it’s bizarre”.  So I don’t understand why you’re taking a shot at CNN. No offense, but it looks like you got manipulated by right wing Twitter.

    Btw, my understanding is that Death to America isn’t literal in the Middle East.  It would be the equivalent of us chanting Down with the Soviet Union.  That didn’t mean we wanted to murder every Russian.
    I heard this on the radio as it happened…I think anyhow. They were commenting on how it’s crazy that they are acting friendly yet chanting death to America. It was the juxtaposition.  People are really gullible 
    hippiemom = goodness
  • mace1229
    mace1229 Posts: 9,825
    tbergs said:
    Jesus that video of people falling off that plane is insane.  Not sure how they thought it would actually work but very sad regardless.
    Sad indeed and horrible for all involved who are just puppets in this game of war; the citizens left behind who are now fucked, the pilots who had to just take off no matter what and now have to live with what happened and the military personnel in general who now can truly see how worthless the last 20 years will end up being. The only bright spot are the people who were able to get out or do something during that time before it all went to shit again. War never resolves a problem. 
    Thought the same. Instantly reminded me of the people who jumped on 9/11. My guess is this was suicide, they'd rather die than be left to deal with what's coming. They had to know there was precisely a 0.0% chance of successfully hanging on during a flight like that. 
  • mace1229
    mace1229 Posts: 9,825
    mrussel1 said:
    mrussel1 said:
    Yeah I get it. In a place where you can get beheaded, being allowed to do your job without incident is friendly. But it’s still funny rhetoric when there’s a death chant going on. It’s like the “die” chant in Creeping Death and James Hetfield yelling “Come on friends!” during it. 

    She’ll be fine (hopefully), but it sucks for the women and girls that actually live there. I wonder who’s really to blame for the Afghan military’s failure. Biden was putting blame on them today, understandably, but I wonder how good of a job our military (military leaders and strategists, not soldiers) did in training them. 
    She said “it’s bizarre”.  So I don’t understand why you’re taking a shot at CNN. No offense, but it looks like you got manipulated by right wing Twitter.

    Btw, my understanding is that Death to America isn’t literal in the Middle East.  It would be the equivalent of us chanting Down with the Soviet Union.  That didn’t mean we wanted to murder every Russian.
    Oh please with the right-wing Twitter manipulation bullshit. On Twitter, I saw “death to America” trending, clicked the trend, and the first thing I saw was the chant and her response. And yes, it reminded me of the “fiery but peaceful protest. But not in a political way, though I think that’s how you’re taking it. I do think that that the “fiery but peaceful” thing is political and has an agenda, like “We’re covering for rioters.” But here, no. I’m not like “See? CNN are praising the terrorists! They’re friendly she said!” No. Just as when I see a guy standing in front of a “fiery but peaceful protest” graphic, when I hear a death chant and someone says “they’re friendly,” I laugh at the absurdity.
    So posting it, posting the riots from the summer ans saying “good ole cnn” was you NOT drawing comparisons?  I must have imagined it.
    More like “another dumb quote/headline” from CNN. “Cuomo with the giant cotton swab” for his brother sort of stuff. 
    I didn't see anything wrong with the headline.
    My take on watching the video before reading all these comments was just that she was implying its bizarre in that if it wasn't being translated and you didn't know what was actually being said, you'd think they're just selling some bootleg DVD's and not chanting a violent death chant. And I would agree with that. She wasn't saying they are peaceful, but that their behavior doesn't match their chant.  It'd be like if the capitol rioters were chanting "death to to the Senate" to the tune of "Its A Small World."
  • lastexitlondon
    lastexitlondon Posts: 14,890
    Russia believes taliban will restore order. Direct  quote.
    Holy mother of god. What world do we live in. 


    this song is meant to be called i got shit,itshould be called i got shit tickets-hartford 06 -
  • Meltdown99
    Meltdown99 None Of Your Business... Posts: 10,739
    There was never a chance to restore order.  Afghanistan has always been a clusterfuck…

    Biden is right…if the Afghan cowards won’t fight for their own country, then why should the US commit troops to help them…

    it’s time to get all those who helped NATO countries out…


    Give Peas A Chance…
  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
    mickeyrat said:
     I have authorized 6,000 U.S. troops to deploy to Afghanistan to assist in the departure of U.S. and Allied civilian personnel from Afghanistan — and to evacuate our Afghan allies and vulnerable Afghans to safety outside the country.

    Our current military mission will be short in time and focused in its objectives:
     
    Get our people and our allies to safety as quickly as possible.  
     
    And once we have completed this mission, we will conclude our military withdrawal. We will end America’s longest war.


    statement Biden made 8-16
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  • brianlux
    brianlux Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,662
    IN today's Letter, Heather said:
    "But none of them is about partisan politics, either; they are about defining our national interest."

    But then goes on to imply that it is partisan by, though not stated, she seems to be talking about Republicans here:

    "It strikes me that some of the same people currently expressing concern over the fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls work quite happily with Saudi Arabia, which has its own repressive government, and have voted against reauthorizing our own Violence Against Women Act. Some of the same people worrying about the slowness of our evacuation of our Afghan allies voted just last month against providing more visas for them, and others seemed to worry very little about our utter abandonment of our Kurdish allies when we withdrew from northern Syria in 2019. And those worrying about democracy in Afghanistan seem to be largely unconcerned about protecting voting rights here at home. 

    Most notably to me, some of the same people who are now focusing on keeping troops in Afghanistan to protect Americans seem uninterested in stopping the spread of a disease that has already killed more than 620,000 of us and that is, once again, raging. "


    But I've also read that many Democrats are criticizing Biden for pulling troops out of Afghanistan (his reasoning seems sensible to me), so isn't Heather contradicting herself a bit here?


    God, what a mess!



    "It's a sad and beautiful world"
    -Roberto Benigni

  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
    brianlux said:
    IN today's Letter, Heather said:
    "But none of them is about partisan politics, either; they are about defining our national interest."

    But then goes on to imply that it is partisan by, though not stated, she seems to be talking about Republicans here:

    "It strikes me that some of the same people currently expressing concern over the fate of Afghanistan’s women and girls work quite happily with Saudi Arabia, which has its own repressive government, and have voted against reauthorizing our own Violence Against Women Act. Some of the same people worrying about the slowness of our evacuation of our Afghan allies voted just last month against providing more visas for them, and others seemed to worry very little about our utter abandonment of our Kurdish allies when we withdrew from northern Syria in 2019. And those worrying about democracy in Afghanistan seem to be largely unconcerned about protecting voting rights here at home. 

    Most notably to me, some of the same people who are now focusing on keeping troops in Afghanistan to protect Americans seem uninterested in stopping the spread of a disease that has already killed more than 620,000 of us and that is, once again, raging. "


    But I've also read that many Democrats are criticizing Biden for pulling troops out of Afghanistan (his reasoning seems sensible to me), so isn't Heather contradicting herself a bit here?


    God, what a mess!




    the preceding 2 paragraphs are what she refers to as nonpartisan, not what comes after that sentence.
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  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
     This is the complete thought for going forward, what followed was the bar against that. she is calling out hypocrites.
    • But the attacks on Biden for the withdrawal from Afghanistan do raise the important question of when it is in America’s interest to fight a ground war. Should we limit foreign intervention to questions of the safety of Americans? Should we protect our economic interests? Should we fight to spread democracy? Should we fight to defend human rights? Should we fight to shorten other wars, or prevent genocide?

      These are not easy questions, and reasonable people can, and maybe should, disagree about the answers.

      But none of them is about partisan politics, either; they are about defining our national interest.


    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • tempo_n_groove
    tempo_n_groove Posts: 41,359
    Wobbie said:
    hearts and minds boys and girls, hearts and minds....

    yep....it's never gonna happen. they never wanted us there. time to go.
    I'm surprised this isn't a bigger story on here?

    Russia was there occupying for 10 years and the Soviet backed govt lasted 3 years or so.  

    We occupied Afghanistan for 20 years and the collapse was almost immediate.

    At this point can we all agree that they just don't really want to change?
  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
    has there been any indication before this announcement they've changed to make this believable?


    Taliban announce 'amnesty,' urge women to join government
    By AHMAD SEIR, TAMEEM AKHGAR, KATHY GANNON and JON GAMBRELL
    3 mins ago

    KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban declared an “amnesty” across Afghanistan and urged women to join their government Tuesday, seeking to convince a wary population that they have changed a day after deadly chaos gripped the main airport as desperate crowds tried to flee their rule.

    Following a blitz across Afghanistan that saw many cities fall to the insurgents without a fight, the Taliban have sought to portray themselves as more moderate than when they imposed a brutal rule in the late 1990s. But many Afghans remain skeptical.

    Older generations remember the Taliban’s ultraconservative Islamic views, which included severe restrictions on women as well as stonings, amputations and public executions before they were ousted by the U.S-led invasion that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

    While there were no major reports of abuses or fighting in the capital of Kabul as the Taliban now patrol its streets, many residents have stayed home and remain fearful after the insurgents’ takeover saw prisons emptied and armories looted. Many women have expressed dread that the two-decade Western experiment to expand their rights and remake Afghanistan would not survive the resurgent Taliban.

    Germany, meanwhile, halted development aid to Afghanistan over the Taliban takeover. Such aid is a crucial source of funding for the country — and the Taliban's efforts to project a milder version of themselves may be aimed at ensuring that money continues to flow.

    The promises of amnesty from Enamullah Samangani, a member of the Taliban's cultural commission, were the first comments on how the Taliban might govern on a national level. His remarks remained vague, however, as the Taliban are still negotiating with political leaders of the country’s fallen government and no formal handover deal has been announced.

    “The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan with full dignity and honesty has announced a complete amnesty for all Afghanistan, especially those who were with the opposition or supported the occupiers for years and recently,” he said.


    continues....



    _____________________________________SIGNATURE________________________________________________

    Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
    you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
    memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
    another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
  • tempo_n_groove
    tempo_n_groove Posts: 41,359
    But there's a lot of herion and cellphone raw materials there, not to mention the Pakistan border and Iran's border, it's just so damn special. oh ya and the spread of democracy and stuff.


    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/04/world ... wanted=all

    Reports link Karzai's brother to heroin trade
    By James Risen

    WASHINGTON — When Afghan security forces found an enormous cache of heroin hidden beneath concrete blocks in a tractor-trailer outside Kandahar in 2004, the local Afghan commander quickly impounded the truck and notified his boss.

    Before long, the commander, Habibullah Jan, received a telephone call from Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of President Hamid Karzai, asking him to release the vehicle and the drugs, Jan later told American investigators, according to notes from the debriefing obtained by The New York Times. He said he complied after getting a phone call from an aide to President Karzai directing him to release the truck.

    Two years later, American and Afghan counternarcotics forces stopped another truck, this time near Kabul, finding more than 110 pounds of heroin. Soon after the seizure, United States investigators told other American officials that they had discovered links between the drug shipment and a bodyguard believed to be an intermediary for Ahmed Wali Karzai, according to a participant in the briefing.

    The assertions about the involvement of the president's brother in the incidents were never investigated, according to American and Afghan officials, even though allegations that he has benefited from narcotics trafficking have circulated widely in Afghanistan.

    Both President Karzai and Ahmed Wali Karzai, now the chief of the Kandahar Provincial Council, the governing body for the region that includes Afghanistan's second largest city, dismiss the allegations as politically motivated attacks by longtime foes.

    "I am not a drug dealer, I never was and I never will be," the president's brother said in a recent phone interview. "I am a victim of vicious politics."

    But the assertions about him have deeply worried top American officials in Kabul and in Washington. The United States officials fear that perceptions that the Afghan president might be protecting his brother are damaging his credibility and undermining efforts by the United States to buttress his government, which has been under siege from rivals and a Taliban insurgency fueled by drug money, several senior Bush administration officials said. Their concerns have intensified as American troops have been deployed to the country in growing numbers.

    "What appears to be a fairly common Afghan public perception of corruption inside their government is a tremendously corrosive element working against establishing long-term confidence in that government — a very serious matter," said Lieutenant General David Barno, who was commander of coalition military forces in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and is now retired. "That could be problematic strategically for the United States."

    The White House says it believes that Ahmed Wali Karzai is involved in drug trafficking, and American officials have repeatedly warned President Karzai that his brother is a political liability, two senior Bush administration officials said in interviews last week.

    Numerous reports link Ahmed Wali Karzai to the drug trade, according to current and former officials from the White House, the State Department and the United States Embassy in Afghanistan, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity. In meetings with President Karzai, including a 2006 session with the United States ambassador, the Central Intelligence Agency's station chief and their British counterparts, American officials have talked about the allegations in hopes that the president might move his brother out of the country, said several people who took part in or were briefed on the talks.

    "We thought the concern expressed to Karzai might be enough to get him out of there," one official said. But President Karzai has resisted, demanding clear-cut evidence of wrongdoing, several officials said. "We don't have the kind of hard, direct evidence that you could take to get a criminal indictment," a White House official said. "That allows Karzai to say, where's your proof?"

    Neither the Drug Enforcement Administration, which conducts counternarcotics efforts in Afghanistan, nor the fledgling Afghan anti-drug agency has pursued investigations into the accusations against the president's brother.

    Several American investigators said senior officials at the DEA and the office of the Director of National Intelligence complained to them that the White House favored a hands-off approach toward Ahmed Wali Karzai because of the political delicacy of the matter. But White House officials dispute that, instead citing limited DEA resources in Kandahar and southern Afghanistan and the absence of political will in the Afghan government to go after major drug suspects as the reasons for the lack of an inquiry.

    "We invested considerable resources into building Afghan capability to conduct such investigations and consistently encouraged Karzai to take on the big fish and address widespread Afghan suspicions about the link between his brother and narcotics," said Meghan O'Sullivan, who was the coordinator for Afghanistan and Iraq at the National Security Council until last year.

    Humayun Hamidzada, press secretary for President Karzai, denied that the president's brother was involved in drug trafficking or that the president had intervened to help him. "People have made allegations without proof," Hamidzada said.

    Spokesmen for the Drug Enforcement Administration, the State Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment.

    An Informant's Tip

    The concerns about Ahmed Wali Karzai have surfaced recently because of the imprisonment of an informant who tipped off American and Afghan investigators to the drug-filled truck outside Kabul in 2006.

    The informant, Hajji Aman Kheri, was arrested a year later on charges of plotting to kill an Afghan vice president in 2002. The Afghan Supreme Court recently ordered him freed for lack of evidence, but he has not been released. Nearly 100 political leaders in his home region protested his continued incarceration last month.

    Kheri, in a phone interview from jail in Kabul, said he had been an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration and United States intelligence agencies, an assertion confirmed by American counternarcotics and intelligence officials. Several of those officials, frustrated that the Bush administration was not pressing for Kheri's release, came forward to disclose his role in the drug seizure.

    Ever since the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, critics have charged that the Bush administration has failed to take aggressive action against the Afghan narcotics trade, because of both opposition from the Karzai government and reluctance by the United States military to get bogged down by eradication and interdiction efforts that would antagonize local warlords and Afghan poppy farmers. Now, Afghanistan provides about 95 percent of the world's supply of heroin.

    Just as the Taliban have benefited from money produced by the drug trade, so have many officials in the Karzai government, according to American and Afghan officials. Thomas Schweich, a former senior State Department counternarcotics official, wrote in The New York Times Magazine in July that drug traffickers were buying off hundreds of police chiefs, judges and other officials. "Narco-corruption went to the top of the Afghan government," he said.

    Suspicions of Corruption

    Of the suspicions about Ahmed Wali Karzai, Representative Mark Steven Kirk, an Illinois Republican who has focused on the Afghan drug problem in Congress, said, "I would ask people in the Bush administration and the DEA about him, and they would say, 'We think he's dirty.' "

    In the two drug seizures in 2004 and 2006, millions of dollars' worth of heroin was found. In April 2006, Jan, by then a member of the Afghan Parliament, met with American investigators at a DEA safe house in Kabul and was asked to describe the events surrounding the 2004 drug discovery, according to notes from the debriefing session. He told the Americans that after impounding the truck, he received calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai and Shaida Mohammad, an aide to President Karzai, according to the notes.

    Jan later became a political opponent of President Karzai, and in a 2007 speech in Parliament he accused Ahmed Wali Karzai of involvement in the drug trade. Jan was shot to death in July as he drove from a guesthouse to his main residence in Kandahar Province. The Taliban were suspected in the assassination.

    Mohammad, in a recent interview in Washington, dismissed Jan's account, saying that Jan had fabricated the story about being pressured to release the drug shipment in order to damage President Karzai.

    But Khan Mohammad, the former Afghan commander in Kandahar who was Jan's superior in 2004, said in a recent interview that Jan reported at the time that he had received a call from the Karzai aide ordering him to release the drug cache. Khan Mohammad recalled that Jan believed that the call had been instigated by Ahmed Wali Karzai, not the president.

    "This was a very heavy issue," Mohammad said.

    He provided the same account in an October 2004 interview with The Christian Science Monitor. Mohammad said that after a subordinate captured a large shipment of heroin about two months earlier, the official received repeated telephone calls from Ahmed Wali Karzai. "He was saying, 'This heroin belongs to me, you should release it,' " the newspaper quoted Mohammad as saying.

    Languishing in Detention

    In 2006, Kheri, the Afghan informant, tipped off American counternarcotics agents to another drug shipment. Kheri, who had proved so valuable to the United States that his family had been resettled in Virginia in 2004, briefly returned to Afghanistan in 2006.

    The heroin in the truck that was seized was to be delivered to Ahmed Wali Karzai's bodyguard in the village of Maidan Shahr, and then transported to Kandahar, one of the Afghans involved in the deal later told American investigators, according to notes of his debriefing. Several Afghans — the drivers and the truck's owner — were arrested by Afghan authorities, but no action was taken against Karzai or his bodyguard, who investigators believe serves as a middleman, the American officials said.

    In 2007, Kheri visited Afghanistan again, once again serving as an American informant, the officials said. This time, however, he was arrested by the Karzai government and charged in the 2002 assassination of Hajji Abdul Qadir, an Afghan vice president, who had been a political rival of Kheri's brother, Hajji Zaman, a former militia commander and a powerful figure in eastern Afghanistan.

    Kheri, in the phone interview from Kabul, denied any involvement in the killing and said his arrest was politically motivated. He maintained that the president's brother was involved in the heroin trade.

    "It's no secret about Wali Karzai and drugs," said Kheri, who speaks English. "A lot of people in the Afghan government are involved in drug trafficking."

    Kheri's continued detention, despite the Afghan court's order to release him, has frustrated some of the American investigators who worked with him.

    In recent months, they have met with officials at the State Department and the office of the Director of National Intelligence seeking to persuade the Bush administration to intervene with the Karzai government to release Kheri.

    "We have just left a really valuable informant sitting in jail to rot," one investigator said.
    I can remember reading about Afghan and heroin and Saffron.  2 of their biggest money makers.

    The reason for going lax on the heroin was for a few reasons.
    1- In the beginning it was reported the people had no other way of making that much money so switching to say soy beans, the people said no.  Forcing them to grow another crop would only make more enemies.
    2- The drug trade was much bigger than anything else out there and had to leave it be.  Examples being the above article.
  • Halifax2TheMax
    Halifax2TheMax Posts: 42,105
    Maybe she’d like to answer the Taliban’s call and join their/there/they’re government?
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  • tempo_n_groove
    tempo_n_groove Posts: 41,359
    Maybe she’d like to answer the Taliban’s call and join their/there/they’re government?
    Taliban aren't going to be stopped unless genocide is committed.  Being called out on using Their wrong really bothers you still?  
  • mickeyrat
    mickeyrat Posts: 44,370
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