Military Resistance 12A15
Taliban Attack Kills 16 At Restaurant Favored By Westerners:
Two Americans Among Dead Occupation Personnel;
Taliban Say Operation Was Launched In Retaliation For A Foreign Military Attack On Tuesday That Killed Seven Afghan Children And One Woman
The Kabul restaurant that was the site of yesterday’s attack (Photo: Scanpix)
[Thanks to Dennis Serdel, Vietnam Veteran, for sending.]
JAN. 17, 2014 By MATTHEW ROSENBERG, The New York Times Company & 18th January 2014 LBC.Co & Liverpoolecho.co.uk/ & AP [Excerpts]
KABUL, Afghanistan —
The Taliban struck a restaurant popular with Westerners in downtown Kabul on Friday in what appeared to be a well-coordinated assault, with a bomber clearing a path for two insurgents, who rushed in and fired on diners, the police said.
The Taliban claimed responsibility. Spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the attack was launched in retaliation for an operation on Tuesday that killed seven children and one woman. He said the bombing had delivered a "heavy admonitory blow to the enemy which they shall never forget".
At least 16 people were killed, most of them foreigners.
One of the two Britons killed was a Labour candidate in the forthcoming European Elections. Party leader Ed Miliband confirmed Del Singh, who was standing for the South East region, had died.
Friday, a statement from the office of Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, said, “Four United Nations personnel, along with a number of those from other international organizations, are now confirmed dead.”
On Friday evening, the International Monetary Fund said its representative in Afghanistan, Wabel Abdallah, was among those killed.
The dead included a Danish female police officer, a member of the European Police Mission in Afghanistan, and her British bodyguard, and a Malaysian — while the UN in Kabul said its three staff members included a Pakistani, a Russian and a Somali-American.
About eight Afghans, mostly the kitchen staff, survived.
The choice of a lightly guarded restaurant was a departure for the Taliban, which claimed responsibility for the attack. The insurgents have more often sought to strike fortified government buildings and high-profile symbols of the Western presence in Afghanistan, like the American Embassy and a building believed to house the C.I.A. station in Kabul.
The restaurant, Taverna du Liban, which serves Lebanese food and has a clientele made up largely of expatriates, had almost none of the security enjoyed by official installations, like concrete blast walls or checkpoints blocking off the street it is on.
The attack was carried out at a time when the restaurant would have been busy with diners.
The initial blast appeared to have been powerful. It was heard miles away and shook windows in the immediate neighborhood, which is home to numerous embassies and shops that serve Western aid workers, journalists and other foreign civilians who live in the city.
The Taliban claimed to have inflicted heavy casualties and said they had killed a high-ranking German official.
The German Foreign Ministry in Berlin, reached by phone, would say only that it was “dealing with the incident and is working hard to clarify the facts.”
Gen. Zaher Zaher, the police chief of Kabul, said at least 16 people had been killed in the attack. He said that a number of other people had been seriously wounded and that the death toll was likely to rise.
The American Embassy said all United States diplomats, development workers and other officials based in Kabul were accounted for.
Atiqullah, an assistant chef who witnessed the attack, said: "There was blood everywhere, on tables, on chairs, apparently the attackers had shot people from a very close range."
Police officers swarmed through the neighborhood, Wazir Akbar Khan, after the blast, blocking off streets. They were soon joined by smaller groups of coalition soldiers, along with Afghan Army troops and operatives from the National Directorate of Security, the country’s main intelligence agency.
A tight cordon kept most people from going near the restaurant. Late into the night, relatives of the Afghans who worked there waited nervously behind the police lines in near-freezing temperatures for word of those they had been unable to reach.
A tearful teenage boy, who gave his name only as Muhammad, said his older brother was a guard at the restaurant. A few police officers tried to comfort him, but he could not stop crying and repeating, “My brother, my brother.”
The Twitter account of a woman named Mona Hamade said her father owned the restaurant and was inside at the time of the attack. She could not reach him and was asking for help in finding him.
According to Afghan and Western officials, the attackers appear to have approached the restaurant on foot. The bomb killed three Afghans guarding the entrance to the restaurant and blew through a thin steel door that is usually bolted from the inside and opened only after patrons are patted down.
The insurgents then rushed in and began shooting diners.
According to a statement on the I.M.F. website, Mr. Abdallah, 60, had been the bank’s resident representative in the country since 2008. Mr. Abdallah, who was Lebanese, had previously worked at Lebanon’s central bank.
But for the most part, the thousands of Western civilians who live in Kabul have felt very little of the threat posed by the insurgents.
Outside of embassies and other official missions, few expatriates have altered what is a fairly vulnerable existence, even as security in other parts of Afghanistan continues to deteriorate.
Many expatriates still live in houses guarded only by the high walls that usually surround Afghan homes. They frequent a handful of well-established restaurants, many of which serve alcohol, and loud parties at private homes are still weekly occurrences.
Two Canadians, senior auditors at the financial services firm Samson & Associates, were among the foreigners killed. Company president Pierre Samson said they had been in the country for less than a week, working for Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada and overseeing an audit. They were due back in Canada next week.
POLITICIANS REFUSE TO HALT THE BLOODSHED
THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE WAR
MILITARY NEWS
U.S. Veterans Return North Vietnamese Soldier’s Helmet To Family In Huong Non Village
Vietnam veterans John Abbey, front left, Fred Grimm, front right, Daniel Gregg, second row left, and Mike Breuker, second row right, carry a helmet belonging to slain North Vietnamese soldier Bui Duc Hung, who was killed in the war, in Huong Non village, on Jan. 14. The helmet, which had been kept as a war souvenir by an American veteran for 46 years, was returned to Hung’s family. (Tran Van Minh/AP)
Jan. 14, 2014 By Tran Van Minh, The Associated Press
HUONG NON, VIETNAM — In 1968, young American soldier John Wast was scouring a battlefield in central Vietnam for weapons and intelligence when an enemy helmet with an image of a dove scratched onto it caught his eye. He tied it to his rucksack, and five months later took it home as a war souvenir, where for 46 years it had sat on a shelf.
When a U.S. veterans’ charity approached him asking whether he would like to see the helmet returned to the family of its onetime owner, he said yes, so long as it didn’t cause them any more pain. The group, the Development of Vietnam Endeavors Fund, located the family of the soldier, Bui Duc Hung, who was killed in the war, his remains never recovered.
An image of a dove scratched onto the inner rim of a dented helmet belonging to Bui Duc Hung, a North Vietnamese soldier who died during the Vietnam War, is seen on Jan. 14. (Tran Van Minh/AP)
On Tuesday, four U.S. veterans returned the helmet in a ceremony in the Hung’s family’s village 45 miles northwest of Hanoi that stressed the need for peace and reconciliation.
“This is a very sacred moment for my extended family,” said Bui Duc Duc, the 52-year-old nephew of the slain solider.
Duc wept as the helmet was placed in front of a family altar in his house. The Americans, along with around 100 villagers and local officials gathered for the ceremony, looked on. A bust of Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam’s victorious war time leader, was also in the room.
“We consider this helmet as part of him and we will keep as a reminder for our family’s future generations,” he said.
Up to 3 million Vietnamese were killed in the war, which the United States undertook to stop the spread of Communism in Southeast Asia.
Wast, a 67-year-old from Toledo, Ohio, didn’t travel back to Vietnam. But in a statement that was read out at the ceremony, Wast said that Hung had “fought with skill and courage.”
“The time has now come for me to return this helmet to those who knew and cared for Bui Duc Hung,” he said. “I do this with thoughts of love and peace to you all.”
700 From Fort Bragg Off To Obama’s Imperial Slaughterhouse
January 16, 2014 By Martha Quillin, Newsobserver.com [Excerpts]
More than 700 troops from Fort Bragg are in the process of deploying to Afghanistan, including about 500 from the 18th Airborne Corps’ Headquarters Battalion, which is taking over at the International Security Assistance Force Joint Command. There, they will work with their Afghan counterparts to manage the ground war throughout Afghanistan.
The group had gathered on the main parade field at Fort Bragg for a flag-casing ceremony, at which the unit’s flag is rolled up and stashed in its casing before traveling to a new post. It will be unfurled in another ceremony when the unit arrives at the Joint Command headquarters in Kabul.
Most of the soldiers going with the 18th Airborne Corps to Afghanistan have likely deployed at least once; some, many times.
The unit was last sent to Afghanistan in 2002, early in the war. After that, it went three times to Iraq, the last time in 2010-11.
About 200 members of the 4th Brigade Combat Team, paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, are scheduled to leave for Afghanistan Sunday night. They will provide base and convoy security for U.S. and NATO forces.
Sgt. 1st Class Charles Clevenger is going with the headquarters unit. The yearlong deployment will be his fourth, his second to Afghanistan. He went twice to Iraq.
“Hopefully, we’ll shut out the lights and go home,” he said.
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Food For The Hungry?
Housing For The Homeless?
Unemployment Benefits For The Laid Off?
Fuck That Shit!
“A Massive Us Government Spending Bill Introduced Monday Evening Would Ramp Up War Spending For The First Time In Four Years, And It Includes Billions For New Weapon Systems”
Jan. 14, 2014 By JOHN T. BENNETT, Defense News [Excerpts]
A massive US government spending bill introduced Monday evening would ramp up war spending for the first time in four years, and it includes billions for new weapon systems.
A trillion-dollar, government-wide omnibus spending measure crafted by the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate Appropriations committees includes $5 billion more for America’s overseas conflicts than requested by the White House.
Included in the $85 billion war-funding section, also called the overseas contingency operations (OCO) budget, is more than $6 billion in procurement funds spread across the Defense Department.
“It appears Congress used the OCO loophole to increase the base defense budget without breaching the budget caps they just agreed to,” said Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
The proposed war-funding hike would, if approved by both chambers this week and signed by President Barack Obama, swell the OCO account over the previous year’s level for the first time since 2010.
That year, the war account received around $160 billion, up from just over $140 billion in 2009, according to the Council on Foreign Relations. The war account has been steadily shrinking since then.
Lawmakers were able to use the OCO account, which is immune from sequestration cuts, to provide the Pentagon some relief from another across-the-board cut (about $20 billion) from its coming 2014 allocation.
Mirroring the base Pentagon budget section of the omnibus, the OCO section features $669 million for Army aircraft purchases. The Army also would receive $653 million to buy other equipment, and a $128.6 million allotment for missiles.
Within those accounts, $386 million is slated for Boeing CH-47 helicopters; $142 million for Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters; $54 million for Lockheed Martin Hellfire missiles; and $117 million for upgrades to Bell OH-58 helicopters.
One analyst and industry consultant said the Army and industrial base will benefit from the aircraft funds.
“Boeing Vertical (the new name of its rotorcraft unit) and Bell Helicopter Textron look to be major beneficiaries of OCO procurement funds.”
The war-funding bill calls for $57 million for AV-8B Harrier jet work; $49 million for electronic countermeasures; $35.5 million for Boeing-built F/A-18 fighters; $20.7 million for electronic warfare items for Marine air-ground task force aircraft; and $13 million for Northrop Grumman MQ-8 Fire Scout drone helicopters.
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