U.S. STRIKE KILLS 14 CIVILIANS

"... 10 children, two women and two men were killed in a strike in the southern province of Helmand... President Hamid Karza... said such operations amounted to the "murdering of Afghanistan's children and women"... scolded the US military for "arbitrary and unnecessary" missions that kill Afghan civilians, saying it was his last warning on the issue...".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20110529/ts_afp/afghanistanunrestcivilians

U. S. MISSION IN AFGHANISTAN WAR NOW OBSOLETE

"... The world's most important terrorist safe haven is visibly not Afghanistan, but instead next-door Pakistan. (And) Because the U.S. presence in Afghanistan requires cooperation from Pakistan, the Afghanistan mission perversely inhibits the United States from taking more decisive action against Pakistan's harboring of terrorism..."

"The less committed we are to Afghanistan, the more independent we are of Pakistan. The more independent we are of Pakistan, the more leverage we have over Pakistan. The more leverage we have over Pakistan, the more clout we have to shut down Pakistan's long, vicious, and now not credibly deniable state support for terrorism."

http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/05/09/frum.pakistan.trap/index.html?iphoneemail

BIN LADEN -- WE ENABLED ONE MAN TO COST U.S. $3 TRILLION

"... bin Laden cost the United States at least $3 trillion over the past 15 years, counting the disruptions he wrought on the domestic economy, the wars and heightened security triggered by the terrorist attacks he engineered, and the direct efforts to hunt him down... What do we have to show for that tab? Two wars that continue to occupy 150,000 troops and tie up a quarter of our defense budget; a bloated homeland-security apparatus that has at times pushed the bounds of civil liberty; soaring oil prices partially attributable to the global war on bin Laden's terrorist network; and a chunk of our mounting national debt, which threatens to hobble the economy..."

"The... expense we can attribute to bin Laden comes from policymakers' response to 9/11. The invasion of Afghanistan was clearly a reaction to al-Qaida's attacks. It is unlikely that the Bush administration would have invaded Iraq if 9/11 had not ushered in a debate about Islamic extremism and weapons of mass destruction. Those two wars grew into a comprehensive counterinsurgency campaign that cost $1.4 trillion in the past decade—and will cost hundreds of billions more. The government borrowed the money for those wars, adding hundreds of billions in interest charges to the U.S. debt..."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_exclusive/20110506/pl_yblog_exclusive/the-cost-of-bin-laden-3-trillion-over-15-years

EXPENSIVE HIGHWAY, FUNDS FUNNELED TO TALIBAN

"... the Gardez-Khost Highway... The 64-mile highway, which has yet to be completed, has cost about $121 million so far, with the final price tag expected to reach $176 million — or about $2.8 million a mile ... Security alone has cost $43.5 million so far... Despite the expense, a stretch of the highway completed just six months ago is already falling apart and remains treacherous. The unfinished portion runs through Taliban territory, raising questions about how it can be completed. Cost overruns are already more than 100 percent... the failures have financed the very insurgents that NATO and Afghan forces are struggling to defeat. Some American officials and contractors involved in the project suspect that at least some of the money... made its way to the Haqqani group, a particularly brutal offshoot of the Taliban..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/world/asia/01road.html?_r=1