I was speaking of incentives, not what happened, so you are attempting to misuse my words.

Bullshit.

And my main source on the Taliban is Ahmed Rashid, a Pakistani journalist.

So it was from Rashid that you learned the the Taliban and the anti-Soviet Mujaheddin supported by the Americans were, as you put it, . Such as when he wrote this:
And it was from Rashid that you learned of the comparative irrelevance of pipelines and oil concerns to US involvement in Afghanistan, such as when he wrote this: or when he titled his book "Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia".

And it was from Rashid that you learned that the people on this forum who claimed US CIA money was funding the Taliban in Pakistan, through the ISI, were all ignorant and idiots and claiming nonsense; such as when he said this:
And it was from Rashid that you learned to mock the fringe leftists and people who got their information from socialist garbage websites, when they pointed out that where John Negroponte goes death squads and disappearances and dirty wars in support of military dictators spring up like dandelions; such as when he said this: Informative journalist, Mr. Rashid. His viewpoints, or anything similar, are not much featured on the mainstream US media. Yours, on the other hand, are.

Oh, wow. You can google.

As for your conclusions, I don't rate them, nor do I think Rashid's views confirm your own.

What do you think of your main source, Rashid`s views as pointed out?

I agree with some of them, disagree with others. But I see no point in playing Ice's game and going through his cherry-picking, point by point. I am under no obligation to agree with EVERYTHING Rashid writes. And I have other sources, many of which I've talked about in this thread in others.

To take just one example, the first I've dealt with the whole Muj/Taliban identity issue before. They are NOT the same people. The fact some cross-pollination, so to speak, occurs does NOT make them the same people, nor do I think Rashid is saying that.

Ice believes that whenever people don't agree with him and his kooky conclusions, then it must be because they are stupid, biased or just uninformed. Meanwhile, the subject of the thread goes begging, because he has nothing to say about the arguments he does not like, other than the people making them must be misinformed by his perennial bogey man - the Western Media.

Update on civilian casualties.
Is this acceptable?

The Taliban do not rape people .
Please educate yourself .
Hamid Karzai is an American puppet who was working for the CIA before 9/11 .
Gee....do you people really know any politics at all ?.

You've been asked to prove this claim several times. I'm asking again. If you can't, you should be reported for trolling.

One side is trying not to kill civilians, the other has that as a main thrust of their military doctrine. Can you really post such statistics and not account for the moral discrepancy it entails?

With singular lack of success, in that endeavor.

The means chosen have some obvious flaws, if that has been truly the effort. Odd.

Bullshit. Civilian casualties overwhelming come from Taliban-led attacks. And then, of course, there are the drug gangs and various other non-state actors who create chaos in Afghanistan.

And yet for some reason, Predator drone strikes and errant bombs, both of which McCrystal has tried to reign in, are what headlines.

Even more odd is the agreement between people like you and the Taliban. You both seem to think that just because it's easier to portray the US in such negative light that doing so should be the order of the day. The Taliban's excuse for such ridiculousness is that they are playing propaganda. What's yours?

It baffles me that some one who has never been to afghanistan can spend so much time talking about it off of new paper articles biased by p.a.o.

The afghan army and police force are some brutal cold hearted killing bastards. Pardon my langauge. But they can definitely take on the taliban in a fight. However, the talibans methods of fighting is ever changing.

Taliban is arabic for student in the afghanis general dialect. Which they in many ways are students. Since 2001, they have learned more from the way we fight than any other country we have fought. They know how to break down the afghani nationals because of pure experience.

It's an ultimate guerilla war. Where they have gone a step beyond Che. They don't fight directly, as much as they get your friends and friends of your friends. They murder, and are murdered as quickly as it happens. Because the afghani police take it quite serious when their friend dies. They wil bring a whole new meaning to a river of blood if they catch the taliban who are suspected of murdering their commrades.


They're capable of holding them off, they're capable of fighting them. They're just not capable of "preventing" them.

Destabilization 101. In order to make "America" safer from AQ and militant extremists, the US pressurizes the Pakistan government (miles away from the US) into fighting harder against militants, (originating from a war initiated by the US) and in reaction to this, the militants bomb their fellow countrymen to smithereens.

There is clearly something wrong with this picture. Who is winning what?

Better the Pakistanis than us. Or should we invade Pakistan too?

You already have.

Depends on what you mean by invade. We have had or presently have special forces in every hot spot around the world.

Yeah, and can you imagine how freakin' bad it would be in Pakistan now if we hadn't invaded and kept things a little bit under control?? Geez, those Taliban would have already conquered Pakistan, and would already be beating women and throwing acid in the faces of little girls.

Baron Max

Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth.