[ballingham]

Rearmed with new guns the Taliban on Friday vowed this would be the deadliest year for foreign soldiers in Afghanistan since the Islamists were toppled in 2001.

"This year will prove to be the bloodiest for the foreign troops. It is not just a threat, we will prove it," senior commander Mullah Dadullah told Reuters by satellite phone. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/SP100413.htm

Meanwhile, in the War on Terror, the Taliban strengthens because the United States is busy with a civil war in Iraq.

Our allies in Pakistan says:

Senior Pakistani officials are urging Nato countries to accept the Taliban and work towards a new coalition government in Kabul that might exclude the Afghan president Hamid Karzai.


Pakistan's foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, has said in private briefings to foreign ministers of some Nato member states that the Taliban are winning the war in Afghanistan and Nato is bound to fail. He has advised against sending more troops.

Western ministers have been stunned. "Kasuri is basically asking Nato to surrender and to negotiate with the Taliban," said one Western official who met the minister recently. Accept defeat by Taliban, Pakistan tells Nato | International News | News | Telegraph

New York Times editorial opinion I agree with it completely:

Having failed to finish off Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Washington now finds itself fighting Qaeda-affiliated groups on multiple fronts, most recently in Somalia. Al Qaeda’s comeback in Pakistan is a devastating indictment of Mr. Bush’s grievously flawed strategies and misplaced Iraq obsession. Unless the president changes course, the dangers to America and its friends will continue to multiply. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/op...25sun1.html?hp


People, we are losing the war. We are losing it in a bad way. If Pakistan tells us to surrender to the Taliban, then that means they KNOW we are stretched and weak, otherwise they wouldn't have place such a brazen comment into the diplomatic arena.

Now, many of you complain that nobody is reporting the good. I think my post here makes it clear that we are not posting enough of the failures to really see what is going on as far as the War on Terror and the War in Iraq.