"U.S. Could Win War, Lose Peace - Ex Soviet Minister"

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khephra (6979 posts) Nov-09-01, 08:47 AM (ET) "U.S. Could Win War, Lose Peace - Ex Soviet Minister" U.S. Could Win War, Lose Peace - Ex Soviet Minister America's use of massive military force in Afghanistan could win the war but lose the peace, the former Soviet defense minister who withdrew Moscow's troops from the Asian nation said on Friday. ``If you carry out carpet bombing as the Americans are doing now you can win, but what will be left? You could destroy the entire population,'' Dmitry Yazov told Reuters. ``The Americans don't understand that by fighting bin Laden, they are provoking the wrath of the whole Afghan population,'' Yazov said in a rare interview. ``You can have a military breakthrough but lose politically.'' Yazov, 78, was Mikhail Gorbachev's defense minister in 1989 when the Soviet Union pulled out from Afghanistan after a nine-year war. The top-ranking Soviet marshal later broke with Gorbachev and backed a failed coup against him in August 1991. The United States has bombed Afghanistan heavily in its fight against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, whom they blame for the World Trade Center attack. Washington says its bombing is carefully aimed at military targets. Yazov said Washington could outdo Soviet military efforts in Afghanistan because Moscow held back from all-out war. ``Do you really think that having defeated Germany, Japan, practically every European government, we could not deal with Afghanistan?'' he said. ``If we had done everything correctly we should have not gone in at all. But once we had intervened, we should have acted more decisively.'' ``We didn't try to win. We wanted to help, but not everyone accepted our help so we left,'' he told Reuters. MORE............. http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/politics/politics-attack-afghanistan-soviet.html "The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words." -- PKD   Alert Edit | Reply | Top

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Subject     Author     Message Date     ID    daisy bombs PATRICK Nov-09-01 1

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PATRICK (87 posts) Nov-09-01, 11:25 AM (ET) 1. "daisy bombs" A stupid showy bomb used currently to titillate the media. The entire media coverage and most of the military noise is useless and neglects the excruciating crisis facing the native population while the Taliban plays cards in its buried castles. Stupid. Misapplied, misdirected or misguided intelligence ruthlessly applied. If there is a real strategy developing we still await while the geopolitical risks multiply. I suspect it is just to pass the time while our forces build up in that out of the way strange territory. But then what?   Remove | Alert Edit | Reply | Top

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