Afghanistan Strategy: Destroy and Rebuild! Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan!

NATO said they made sure there were no civilians in the area in Kunduz after 2 fuel tankers were hijacked by the Taliban and attacked by NATO warplanes as they were being emptied by civilians supposedly recruited to help the Taliban unload them. We first heard 90 civilians were killed in our latest effort to win hearts and minds NATO admitted to zero with promises of an investigation meanwhile alliance chief Anders Fogh RasmussenAnders Fogh Rasmussen later acknowledged that some civilians may have been killed. NATO officials are investigating. A village wiped out by NATO is a far cry from "some civilians may have been killed" The Afghan village devastated by Nato strike on Taliban Gen. McChrystal visits Afghanistan site of disputed NATO airstrike

This kind of "success" as we supposedly search and destroy in our battle to win hearts and minds of course has been reaping rewards since day one and is only getting worse like everything else there with the passing of every year there and despite an increased call from the public to get out we keep adding troops with the promise of more to come as this continues to get worse and Obama vows to see it through!

* Civilian casualties 2001-2003: Somewhere between 3,100 and 3,600 civilians were directly killed by U.S. Operation Enduring Freedom bombing and subsequent Special Forces attacks between October 7, 2001 and June 3, 2003. This estimate counts only so called "impact deaths" deaths that occurred in the immediate aftermath of an explosion or shooting, That number does not count deaths that occurred later as a result of injuries sustained or deaths that occurred as an indirect consequence of the U.S. airstrikes and invasion. We continue to parse numbers and facts to get the results officials want. I am sick of this crap!

* Civilian and overall casualties 2005: All together An estimated 1,700 people were killed in 2005 according to an AP count. Everyone is lumped together this time. We are including civilians, insurgents and security forces members. Some 600 policemen were killed between Karzai's election in early December 2004 and mid-May 2005.

* Civilian and overall casualties A 2006 report by Human Rights Watch said that 4,400 Afghans were killed in 2006. More than 1,000 of them were civilians. and they think 2,077 militants were killed in Coalition operations between September 1 and December 13 and we have to assume another 1,100 or 1,200 were Afghan security forces. Things are not getting better here!

* Civilian and overall casualties continue to increase: More than 7,700 people were killed in 2007, including: 1,019 Afghan policemen, 4,478 militants; 1,980 civilians and 232 foreign soldiers. Professor Marc W. Herold of the University of New Hampshire estimated in September 2007 that between 5,700 and 6,500 Afghan civilians had been killed so far in the war by American and NATO military forces He stressed that this was an "absolute minimum" and probably "a vast underestimate" because the figures do not include what I consider to be the whole wider scope of the nightmare known as life in Afghanistan. I invite you to look at what is a majority of deaths ignored to get more pleasing numbers at the link below!

* Civilian and overall casualties: In 2008 The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 2,118 civilians were killed as a result of armed conflict in Afghanistan in 2008. It is getting higher but until 2009 this is the highest civilian death toll since the end of the initial 2001 invasion and represents an increase of about 40 percent over UNAMA's figure of 1,523 civilians killed in 2007.

* Civilian and overall casualties 2009: For the first half of 2009 UNAMA recorded 1,013 Afghan civilian deaths for the six months from January 1st to June 30. This represents an increase of 24% over the same period in 2008, when 818 civilians were killed. Civilian casualties of the War in Afghanistan (2001–present ... Last weeks civilian deaths if they happened go a long way in making this worse for the civilians than last year or any year prior.

US Official Reaffirms Need for Afghanistan Society Building

* After looking at the breakdown of civilian casualties by year I will only ask how much more of this search and destroy, winning hearts and minds Nation building will Afghani's tolerate before...

James Joiner

Gardner,Ma

www.anaveragepatriot.com