ReadingJones,

Point taken.

Patrick Henry your post on Pashtun/Taliban…

I agree with one minor quibble,“empire occupying their
lands” should read “attempting to occupy.”

I can’t recall any empire that succeeded in occupying
them for any significant period. That said my powers of
recollection seem to be deteriorating.

David,

The ‘taliban’ who are a political religious party (like the likud and republicans} represent about 10% of the pashtun people.

The insurgents being trained in those mountains most likely are being trained to rid themselves of the latest empire occupying their lands.

David—- The Taliban is too deeply entrenched in the Mountains of Afghanistan
and Pakistan——

they can stay up in the mountains and live by themselves and we’re just fine with
that…..... we can stay comfortably in our camps and marginalize them as we’re
marginalized…when they mass or try to train large numbers of transnational
terrorist we can drop them a few reminders that discretion is the better part of not
getting blown to bits.

quite right, Full.

Karzai must be getting tired of the pretence of
governing the ungovernable and must be thinking as
soon as the Americans get out, I can, He may be just
another “A” hole, but he’s a rich one and will be
welcomed anywhere if the Taliban don’t get him before
before flight time.

As for the photo op with body parts, this is the face
and reality of war and it’s influence on some
people.The bravado may have something to do with
trying to trivialize for sanity’s sake the horror of
the gore and goo of dismembered bodies.

“accelerated ”  but speeded-up is close enough for Truthdig work.

Speeded up is correct also but is perhaps archaic,
certainly unusual, and to my ear clumsy. Either faster
or quicker would be a better choice.

Perhaps the headline was written by someone whose first
language was not American English.

My bet is that he won’t live long enough to spend it.

It will all be converted into a slush fund for black ops.

PH—you underestimate Karzai if you think that he’ll
be content to skip with only the money he’s already
filched….he’ll have made plans for grabbing
everything electronically transferable and whatever’s
laying around loose in the central bank.

gerard—- the history of Afghanistan evidences a pretty fair amount of butchery.

My bet is that Karzai is beginning to notice that, if he doesn’t get the traumatized kill-crazy Americans out of his country pronto, the entire Afghan people will also go utterly mad and nobody on either side will be more than a walking zombie.
Obviously, human beings aren’t made for this kind of
butchery.

Karzai is telling the U.S. to not let the door hit us in the ass on the way out.

I believe we should oblige him and right away, post haste.

He will last for 2 weeks after we’re gone then have to flee for his life to his swiss bank account to spend the money he skimmed, one of those ‘footballs’ which got intercepted.

and, oh yeah, Karzai demands that they get out but before they go, sign a contract
guaranteeing him at least $2 billion per year.

Karzairunning against the incumbents!!!!!!

hoping to postpone moving to all that luxury property in Dubai that he and his
cronies bought with the aid dollars that they filched.

Whoaa now Mr. Karzai.. it’s election season over here buddy, we can’t just pull out of your country because our soldiers are massacring innocent civilians in your country and posing for spring-break style photos with their corpses.  Jeez, the nerve of some people.

The entire chain of command above these soldiers should
be court-martialed for dereliction of duty. The first
times this sort of thing happened it should have
brought such swift,certain and severe punishment that
it would never have been repeated. This kind of
stupidity costs the lives of other soldiers. Their
parents must be so proud,,,,not!