In what's being described as the biggest US military operation since Fallujah, the Marines moved into Helmand Province today in massive force. Over 4000 troops, supported with armored columns, hundreds of Afghan government personnel, and the largest assault airlift by the Marines since Vietnam, pushed into the Helmand River Valley. Dubbed Operation Khanjar, the offensive is designed to take the fight to areas where the Taliban have never been challenged. One Marine has been killed and several wounded so far.
In a statement issued by the Marines, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson said "What makes Operation Khanjar different from those that have occurred before is the massive size of the force introduced, the speed at which it will insert." In a departure from previous US and Nato offensives, the idea is that the troops will remain in place, "and where we stay, we will hold, build and work toward transition of all security responsibilities to Afghan forces," said Nicholson.
This is the first test of the Obama administration's attempt to transplant the "clear and hold" strategy used in Iraq to Afghanistan. In an AP interview, Obama said he has a "very narrow definition of success when it comes to our national security interests" in the region. "And that is that al-Qaida and its affiliates cannot set up safe havens from which to attack Americans. I think we can measure it by whether or not they've got training camps where people are coming in and getting trained in explosives, being sent out and directed in carrying out terrorist activity."
Our military presence in Afghanistan is growing daily, and the total number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan will reach 68,000 by year's end. That's double the number of troops in Afghanistan before the build up began but only half as many as are still in Iraq.
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Seriously, I hope they find the missing marine...
An interesting post Jeff. While I despise war and the war in Iraq in particular, I have a grudging support for what is happening in Afghanistan. As you know, Canada has been there since the beginning. We fully support our troops. This region has so much history and heartbreak that it is hard to know what is right. I really, really, really hope we find the right mix this time.
Mr. Mustard, going off what I know of Taliban treatment of prisoners, we're not likely to find the guy alive unfortunately.
And Sirenita, the word is that the Pakistani military is deployed all along the border south of Helmand to catch the Taliban as they flee. And Santa Claus is real:)
"Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say.
A Pakistani official, who spoke on the condition that he not be named because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the going price for child bombers was $7,000 to $14,000 - huge sums in Pakistan, where per-capita income is about $2,600 a year.
"[Mehsud] has turned suicide bombing into a production output, not unlike [the way] Toyota outputs cars," a U.S. Defense Department official told reporters recently. He spoke on the condition that he not be named because of ongoing intelligence efforts to catch Mehsud, a prime target for a U.S. and Pakistani anti-Taliban campaign."
that Taliban mentality has got to go.
Will be interesting truly to see how much ass we put behind the words
clear and hold.
Sorry if I'm off base with your post Jeff. The Taliban do have to be stopped. They should have been the primary and only focus under Bush, but of course that would have made too much sense.
Rated
And hi Sharon:) 'Make peace, not war." There's nothing wrong with dreaming, especially if we're willing to stand up for it. I just wish Bush hadn't left this legacy for Obama, and the rest of us, to deal with. It'll be a long time 'til we're at peace again and that sucks a giant one.
~sigh~
*neverminde* (said in a Rosanna rosanna Dana voice)
*walks away sheepishly*
http://www.launc.tased.edu.au/online/sciences/agsci/alkalo/popindus.htm
all caught up now
The industry is highly efficient. It produces about 50% of the world's concentrated poppy straw (CPS) for morphine and related opiates from merely 10.7% of the production area. (Concentrated Poppy Straw is actually the extracted opiates crystallized out of solution, not the poppy heads and stalks in the photo.)
Other major players are Turkey with 23% of morphine CPS, France with 21% morphine CPS and Spain with 4%. India, by contrast, produces traditional opium from which the US extracts opium alkaloids. India's morphine production is similar to Tasmania. Tasmania has an alkaloid yield of about 9.3 kg/ha compared with France at 7.0 kg/ha, Spain 4.9 kg/ha and Turkey at 1.1 kg/ha.
Most of Tasmania's exports are codeine, thebaine and other opiates. GlaxoKlineSmith exports to Port Fairy poppy straw which is processed to produce norphine, codeine and thebaine.
Have a good day sweetie.
And I love you too :D
I don't know why I flashed on Star Trek above. And what think you of the military action, Nan?
Great post..
I'm of two minds Delia. This is being heralded as a new thing for our strategy in Afghanistan. Instead of going in, killing the Taliban, then leaving, we're going to go in, kill the Taliban, and stay, with the goal being to buld close relations with the locals and eventually transition the area to governement control. It worked fairly well in Iraq, but I'm not sure if it necessarily will get traction in Afghanistan.
Tony; I hope it plays out that way.
And Janie; why do you know so much about opioids? I do trust your figures, but I was referring to the illegal trade in opium for heroin production, not legal opium for the pharma industry. A larger quantity of legal opium may come out of Tasmania and such places, but I doubt it makes as much money as the illegal, Mafia-bound kind from Afghanistan. Which is yet another good reason to de-criminalize drugs in my opinion, but that's something for another p0st:)
Thanks Fireeyes, and bringing our guys and gals home would be great. Don't hold your breath though.
M B; thanks, and major investment in Afghanistan, not just military help, is definitely going to be needed. What's so maddening about this is that Bush had a window after 2001/2002 where it would have been relatively easy to fix things, or at least improve them to the point where it wouldn't be the mess it is now, but he chose in his wisdom to funnel all our resources towards invading Iraq instead.
Bob, it does seem like an insoluble mess. It may BE an insoluble mess. Dubbya left us a massive clusterfuck over there, and as you point out, the clusterfuck was going on well before him. For one thing, there likely wouldn't even be a Taliban or Al Qaeda except for policies pursued by the US during the Cold War. We were so fixated on swatting the Soviets that we didn't even bother to think about the nature of the monster we were creating.
And Jay, I know, I don't know what I was thinking, writing about something that's not Michael related:)
:)
Anyways, --- 1st off, if we had to get into a war, at least Afghanistan there's a target that actually had something to do with attacks on our ass, on our own blessed red, white and blue soil, fuck this lets love them, we got stuff to test, weapons of mass destruction that were designed and built in the U.S. of Fucken A brutha, and they need to be tested. Big Bomb of Destruction ain't doing no good just sitting in some warehouse, it needs to be dispensed from the ocean, to ram into some hide out of some of those Tailiabans or whatever the hell they're called!
Damn the civilian casualities, we'll give them a five minute warning to get the fuck out of Dodge and then we release the dogs of War, level the mountains down to a nice smooth parking lot and put up some Walmarts and Big Burgers and stuff.
Yeah, I have been hanging out with my neighbor across the street again, why do you ask? ;')
Seriously, war is a killer of generations. To me, we shouldn't have gone into Iraq. We should have just used our Super Killer Laser Canon in the nose of Abrahama Lincoln of Mt. Rushmore, destroyed those countries completely that oppose us in our pursuit to shove democracy down their throats.
"Don't want democracy? Or allow us to take your drugs? Well take this Spain!" ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzZZzzzzzzzz!!!
:)
It completely sucks. When Obama was elected I was hopeful and so happy I cried for hours and deep down I knew some of the tears were because I felt so sorry for him.
I don't believe in God as most people know "it" but I feel a force which seems to flow between people and unites us into the mass of humanity. I believe we can send positive energy to people. Yes I'm a bit weird.
After reading your reply I realized that we need to send as much positive energy his way as we can because he is chin deep in a mess of shit.
Jon, thanks for visiting. You say "sometimes it can be difficult to assess what the real issue is for the politicians." Absolutely right, and the fact that they ordinarily are lying through their teeth doesn't make it any easier:)
Sharon, you're right; Obama (and the rest of us for that matter) are chin deep in a mess of shit. Afghanistan's only one of the disasters left to us by Bush and Cheney and the rest of the assholes, who if there was any justice should be tried as murderers and traitors and war criminals.
People, think of the drug lords and war chiefs when discussing such plans, what would we do with this folks?
Ship them off to California and New York to become new gangsta rap icons?
Hey, not a bad idea!! :)