IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN WARS WILL COST $4-6 TRILLION

"Costs to U.S. taxpayers of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will run between four and six trillion dollars, making them the most expensive conflicts in U.S. history… While Washington has already spent close to two trillion dollars in direct costs related to its military campaigns in the two countries, that total “represents only a fraction of the total war costs”… The single largest accrued liability of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is the cost of providing medical care and disability benefits to war veterans…"

http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/iraq-afghanistan-wars-will-cost-u-s-4-6-trillion-dollars-report/>http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/03/iraq-afghanistan-wars-will-cost-u-s-4-6-trillion-dollars-report/

AFGHANS DEMAND WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. FORCES

"Hundreds of residents of Afghanistan's eastern province of Wardak are marching on Kabul Saturday demanding US special operations forces pull out of their territory...  the Karzai-appointed Ulema Council, whose members represent the country’s Islamic clerics, issued a statement seconding the call for withdrawal... "
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/16-1>http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/03/16-1

KARZAI ORDERS U.S. FORCES OUT OF PROVINCE

"... Last week President Karzai banned Afghan forces from calling in US or NATO airstrikes on residential areas, following the deaths of 10 civilians on a raid in the eastern Kunar province... (This week)... Karzai... said that troops belonging to the U.S. military's special forces are “harassing, torturing and murdering innocent civilians... and ordered NATO's International Security Assistance Force to stop all special force operations out in Afghan's Wardak province and demanded that all U.S. special forces must be gone from the province within two weeks..."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/24>http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/02/24

U.S. LOST THE IED WAR

"... an ...  important story has been quietly unfolding: the U.S. loss of the pivotal war of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to the Taliban... the U.S. troop surge could not reverse the very steep increase in IED attacks and attendant casualties that the Taliban began in 2009... the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organisation (JIEDDO)... spent more than 18 billion dollars on high-tech solutions aimed at detecting IEDs before they went off... (but) the Taliban simply produced and planted even larger numbers of bombs to continue to increase the pressure of the IED war...
"The counterinsurgency strategy devised by Gen. David Petraeus... pushed thousands of U.S. troops out of their armoured vehicles into (dismounted) patrols on foot in order to establish relationships with the local population... The main effect of the strategy, however, was a major jump in the number of “catastrophic” injuries to U.S. troops from IEDs...

"A June 2011 Army task force report described a new type of battle injury – “Dismount Complex Blast Injury”– defined as a combination of “traumatic amputation of at least one leg, a minimum of severe injury to another extremity, and pelvic, abdominal, or urogenital wounding”... the number of triple limb amputations in 2010 alone had been twice the total in the previous eight years of war..."

http://www.ipsnews.net/2012/10/how-the-u-s-quietly-lost-the-ied-war-in-afghanistan/

AFGHAN GOV'T COULD COLLAPSE AFTER NATO LEAVES

"A new report on Afghanistan warns that the departure of Nato forces in 2014 could be followed by the government's collapse and even civil war... (because) the Afghan police and army are unprepared for security responsibility..." 
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19868043>http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19868043

AFGHAN CASUALTIES OUTNUMBER U.S. BY 10:1


"As 2,000th American soldier killed in Afghanistan makes headlines, estimates put Afghan civilian dead at over 20,000... for every US soldier killed in a war that fewer and fewer seem willing to defend or explain, ten innocent Afghan civilians—doing their best to go about their under constant violent threat—are killed in war that eleven years later shows no sign of ending."

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/09/30

JOINT PATROLS CURBED
U. S. anti-Islam film part of reason

"Nato says it is restricting operations with Afghan troops following a string of deadly attacks on its personnel by rogue Afghan security forces... Fifty-one Nato troops have been killed by Afghan soldiers so far this year - 15 in August alone... Only large operations will now be conducted jointly, with joint patrols evaluated on a case-by-case basis... "events outside of and inside Afghanistan" related to the anti-Islam film were part of the reason for its restrictions on joint operations..."

http://bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19632779