President Obama said the U.S. troops are in Afghanistan to disrupt, dismantle ultimately defeat
al Qaeda. By the sounds of this exchange with Carney, it's past time for America to end the Afghanistan occupation - there is no sane reason to put off continuing this war until 2014.
When Did the United States Last Kill an Al Qaeda Fighter in Afghanistan?
George Zornick on March 1, 2012 - 10:43 AM ET
Earlier this week, White House press secretary Jay Carney took a beating on the issue of Afghanistan, following a spate of bad news from the war zone—including more American deaths at the hands of supposed Afghan allies. He was peppered with questions from reporters about the viability, purpose and waning public support for the American mission there. No less than ten times, Carney repeated some version of this justification:
What the President did when he reviewed U.S. policy in Afghanistan was insist that we focus our attention on what our absolute goals in the country should be, and prioritize them. And he made clear that the number-one priority, the reason why U.S. troops are in Afghanistan in the first place, is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat al Qaeda. It was, after all, al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, that launched the attacks against the United States on September 11th, 2011.
Finally, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked Carney when was “the last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda.” Carney didn’t have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense Department and NATO’s International Security Assistance Force.
I queried those agencies Tuesday and got an answer today. According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011—ten months ago. However, there was an “Al Qaeda foreign fighter” captured near Kabul in May 2011, and an “Al Qaeda facilitator” captured in the Paktiya province on January 30 of this year.
By comparison, there have been 466 coalition fatalities since April 2011.
http://www.thenation.com/blog/166539/when-did-united-states-last-kill-al-qaeda-fighter-afghanistan
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