NATO disasters stack up in Afghanistan - LA Times
More dead GIs and more dead civilians in a lost war fought for "tough on terra" PR.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-afghan-violence-20120917,0,3894338.story
In a disastrous day for the NATO force in Afghanistan, four American troops were gunned down Sunday by Afghan police, a U.S. airstrike killed eight Afghan women foraging for fuel on a rural hillside, and military officials disclosed that a Taliban strike on a southern base had destroyed more than $150 million worth of planes and equipment — in money terms, by far the costliest single insurgent attack in 11 years of warfare.
The confluence of events underscored some of the conflict's most damaging trends: an unrelenting tide of "insider" attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their weapons on coalition allies; the daily loss of civilian lives to war's ravages; and the continuing ability of insurgent forces to inflict disproportionate havoc on the far more powerful Western military.
The eight women killed in an airstrike in Laghman province, in eastern Afghanistan, were poor villagers who were gathering brush for cooking fires, provincial authorities said. In addition to those killed, seven others were reported injured. Villagers loaded their bodies into trucks and drove them to the provincial governor's office, parading them through the streets in protest.
The NATO force acknowledged that between five and eight civilians were accidentally killed in a strike targeting a group of insurgents, and expressed regret.
= new reply since forum marked as read
