Remember when we “defeated” the Taliban in 2002? It seems they are bigger, stronger and nastier than they were when we invaded Afghanistan and “defeated” them in 2002. The more money we spend and the more people we kill in the Middle East, the stronger they get. When will we learn the lesson every invading country has learned. These ragheads cannot be defeated. We need to withdraw and let them kill each other as they have done for centuries. Instead, Obama and the neo-cons in Congress will put more boots on the ground and feed more of your money to the military industrial complex. And so it goes.
135 people, mostly students killed by Taliban in Pakistan army school seizure
At least 135 people, most of them students as young as 12, have been killed and at least 114 others injured in a Taliban seizure of a military-run school in the city of Peshawar, Pakistan, according to provincial authorities.
The numbers of dead and injured may still rise as the casualties of the assault are counted. The Health Secretary of Khyber Pakhtunkhaw province, Mustaq Jadoon, told AFP that the number had risen to 135 on Tuesday afternoon, from a previously cited figure of 130.
Some 500 students and teachers were in the Army Public School on Warsak Road at the time of the attack. Pakistan’s military said most of the civilians escaped, but some had been taken hostage by the assailants.
Several militants dressed in Pakistani military uniforms entered the school compound on Tuesday at around noon. They torched a car at the site and proceeded with a raid on the facility.
“Seven to eight people attacked us, then an army soldier came to us and he asked [the] principal and teachers to take the children out of compound from the back gate. There were thousands [of] students in college. They were moved to auditorium, they can’t come out until the fight is ended,” Arshad Khan, a student at the school, told RT’s Ruptly.
The Pakistani Army responded to the emergency, dispatching security forces to cordon off the area and sending military helicopters for surveillance. A commando force arrived at the site.
“As the firing started our teacher asked us to bent down and we went to a corner of the class, after one hour when firing reduced, [an] army officer came and rescued us, but as we came out we saw on the way in corridors our friends were lying dead on ground hit by bullets, some with three, some with four bullets. They were bleeding,” another student, Muhammad Naeem, said.
In the ensuing battle with Pakistani security forces, nine militants were killed, according to the military. One of them is said to have detonated a suicide vest he was wearing, accoridng to local media. The operation drew to a close shortly after 7pm local time, a Pakistani military source told Reuters.
“The operation is complete,” he said after the nine hour battle concluded. Seven army personnel were wounded in the struggle.
At least one Pakistani soldier was reported killed in the gun battle. The military said their progress in clearing the school had been hampered by booby trap explosives left behind by the attackers.
Gun shots and explosions seriously damaged the school building.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif called the attack on the school a national tragedy and said he would personally supervise the army operation in Peshawar.
“I can’t stay back in Islamabad. This is a national tragedy unleashed by savages. These were my kids,” he said in a statement.
The provincial government declared three days of mourning over the tragedy.
The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, but claimed it was not targeting the pupils.
“Our suicide bombers have entered the school, they have instructions not to harm the children, but to target army personnel,” Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani told Reuters.
The militants, however, see older students at the school as legitimate targets for their attack.
The Taliban said it staged the attack in retaliation for the Pakistani Army’s ongoing operations in the North Waziristan tribal area. It said it had targeted the school because “because the government is targeting our families and females” in the military operations.
“We want them to feel the pain,” Khorasani said.
The US has condemned the school attack “in the strongest possible terms”.
“We stand with the people of Pakistan, and reiterate the commitment of the United States to support the Government of Pakistan in its efforts to combat terrorism,” said a statement from the White House.
The school assault in Pakistan is a seemingly new tactic for the Taliban, which has tended to attack security checkpoints, police stations, security troops and other targets of military value. Its strategy has been to avoid civilian casualties to some extent, since it finds recruits, financial support and informants among the population caught in its war with the Pakistani government.
However, the Taliban has attacked girls’ schools, which the group deem un-Islamic, and has targeted political activists, such as this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai.
But the tactic of indiscriminately killing children is painfully familiar in Russia, which experienced one of its worst hostage crises in September 2004, when a group of terrorists seized a school in the North Caucasus town of Beslan.
READ MORE: 3 days in hell: Russia mourns Beslan school siege victims 10 years on
The siege of the school, where 32 militants held over 1,100 people at gunpoint, including 777 children, lasted for three days. With tension alarmingly high on the third day of the stand-off, several blasts inside the school triggered a chaotic chain of events.
Russian security forces and local militia made a desperate attempt to storm the building and save the hostages in apparent danger of being slaughtered. The militants opened fire as hostages tried to run for their lives. The long siege and gunbattle claimed the lives of more than 330 hostages, including 186 children.
“The US has condemned the school attack “in the strongest possible terms”. —- article
How very fucking comforting.
How very fucking hypocritical.
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Pakistani are learning the blowback lesson really well. The Pakustani Army has been in the border area butchering the Taliban, and guess what, it is pay back time.
Someone help me here. If I remember correctly, don’t they have long range nuclear missiles in Pakastan? How smart would it be to let the Taliban get their hands on those?
As far as “these ragheads cannot be defeated” is a correct statement as long as we fight police actions and not wars. The last war we faught was WW2. Find a General Patton and turn him loose, he”ll clean the fucking mess up. It all depends on how bad you want to win and how ruthless your willing to get. If we put our high tech bombers in the air and fly around the clock sorties without regard for civilian casualties, just as we did in WW2, the Middle East would go silent in short order. In the case of Iraq it would be very difficult to hide from a massive aerial bombardment when you are surrounded by sand.
Sensetti
That is your proposal?
How much would that cost?
What would you accomplish?
Do you then occupy those countries as US territory?
Inquiring minds want to know. I’m sure the Republicans have the answers. Right?
“faught” … what is the meaning of this? Gen.Patton would have kicked your ass over this. 🙂
Admin
Remember when I spoke angry words to you for posting dead-baby pics? The good old days. I have followed in your footsteps, and I’m sure you are proud of me.
“It all depends on how bad you want to win and how ruthless your willing to get.” —Sensetti
OK. Exactly how ruthless would you suggest?
How about fire-bombing the ragheads … as in Dresden? Exactly how many tens of thousands of dead civilians would do the trick?
Admin not my proposal at all. But fighting these half assed police actions and trying to win hearts and minds is bullshit. Either go balls deep or don’t go.
As far as Middle East politics is concerned, I wish you would address the Petrodollar and what’s going to happen when that fails. The US dollar is backed by the sale of oil in dollars. That’s why we stay there, it’s all about oil. If and when the petrodollar collapses it will be a game changer. That my friend is when the next World War starts. So if we pull completely out of the Middle East and allow oil to be sold in any currency, the US dollar will collapse, without question. That will be the day driving to work through the 30 blocks of squalor will not be an option. 50 million people without food stamps might just raise a little hell.
Stucky
I’am Scotch Irish
Faught= Scottish variant of fight
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/faught
Please apologize, at your earliest convenience
Stucky says:
“It all depends on how bad you want to win and how ruthless your willing to get.” —Sensetti
OK. Exactly how ruthless would you suggest?
Answer is.
Sensetti’s Rules of engagement concerning all things war.
1. Don’t engage in foreign affairs unless you have no other options
2. Never go to war to overthrow the head of State of another country.
3. If as a last resort must go to war with a country, go all in, do whatever it takes to win in the shortest amount of time, limiting loss of life on your side and maximizing losses on the other.
If we would have faught WW2 like we fight today all of Europe would be under Nazi control to this very day.
Damn it
If we would had faught WW2 like we fight today all of Europe would be under Nazi control to this very day.
Aside from maybe Grenada or St Maarten, we can’t occupy any other country. We don’t have the troops, the money, the will or the knowledge. Hopefully the more secular element of the ISI will go scorched-earth on those Taliban animal in the tribal regions. You start killing the children of army people and you deserve to have a bunch of mosques flattened. On a Friday.
Had or have which is it?
That was Tali-ben. younger brother of Tali-ban we defeated in the last war on turror ..money well spent if you ask me.Just look at all the hundred of thousands of unemployed kids we put to work defeating turror around the globe…but make no mistake Tali-ban is a tougher hombre altogether than was hos younger bro and so we must spend more tax money and employ more heroes , to win this mostest important war even to be waged in all the history of bored oligarchs looking for fun and profit….and a good thing we’ve got those warmongering neocons back in power….not that they ever were out..sheesh what was I thinking.
We all know if the US really wanted to win a war in the Middle East, we could and we would.
But what reason do we have to wage real war? Just because? We don’t want to win a war, we just want to fight, good for the economy and all that.
Sensetti,
Scotch-Irish here too. Grammy was born in Glasgow. A little Scottish humor.
Bob.
How tough are Scotsmen?
The scene is set – a dark night, cold wind blowing, campfire flickering,
stars twinkling in the dark sky.
Three hang-glider pilots are sitting by the campfire, one from Scotland ,
one
from Seth Efrika and one from New Zulland. Each embroiled in the bravado
for which they are famous.
The night of tales begins…
Kiven the Kiwi says, ‘I must be the meanest, toughest, heng glider there es.
Why, jist the other da y I linded in a field and scared a crocodeale, who
came out of the swamp and ate sux min who were standen close by. I grebbed
the crocodeale and wristled him to du ground and killed em with my beer
hends’
Hansie from Seth Efrika who typically can’t stand to be bettered said, ‘Well
you guys, I lended orfter a 200 mile flight in my heng glider on a tiny
trail, and a Namibian snike slid out from under a rock and made a move on
me. I grebbed de borsted with me bare hinds and beet it’s head off ind then
sucked the poison from it’s body down in one gulp. End I’m still here today’
Colin the Scotsman remained silent, slowly poking the fire with his penis.
Re: Boston Bob-Just to let you know the wife & I are rolling on the floor laughing. Good dey!
“A pre-emptive war in ‘defense’ of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.”
J. William Fulbright
Sensetti you have it right. If you find it necessary to fight a war, kill as many of the enemy as it takes(even if that means all of them). Count on it, the other side will do the same.
That being said ,the Taliban and similar Mohammedan organizations sure know how to motivate others to support them. They are ruthless but effective.
Bostonbob that’s some funny stuff right there!!! Thank you.
V. Day predicts soft targets are the shape of things to come as rule of law is replaced by rule of terror.
http://www.voxday.blogspot.com/2014/12/homeschool-or-die-pakistan.html
“We selected the army’s school for the attack because the government is targeting our families and females,’ said Taliban spokesman Muhammad Umar Khorasani. ‘We want them to feel the pain.'”
Speaking of soft targets: “Over 1,000 schools have been destroyed by the Pakistan Taliban since 2010.”
The answer is not to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here. It is to send them back over there so we don’t have to fight them here.
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.
Voltaire
Call the trumpeters, assemble the young men, the fourth turning is upon us. The sins of our past will only be purged by the blood of our youth, dress them in our finest war raiment, offer up words of duty and calls for sacrifice. Draw the lines,……trumpeter,…… signal the advance, history calls the millennials to their destiny. Those fucking Boomers,…. they really did have it all, they really did take it all.
Ramblings of a drunken lumberjack …. I switched beer, I’am drinking Modelo now. It’s a fine mexican beer,