It's the Boston Globe that is first up today.
"Deadly blast prompts Karzai to appeal to Taliban leaders; Offers to hold talks as means to end attacks" by M. Karim Faiez, Los Angeles Times September 30, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan - President Hamid Karzai, expressing horror at a suicide bombing in Kabul that killed at least 30 people, said yesterday that he wanted to meet with the Taliban leader to stop the carnage and reportedly offered to give militants a government position.
Karzai spoke at an emotional press conference hours after the early morning blast tore through a bus carrying soldiers to their posts in the Afghan capital. The explosion was so powerful that it ripped the roof and sides from the bus, scattering human remains and debris along a street in the city center.
Nearly all the dead were thought to be soldiers, but at least two victims were civilians who were near the bus when it blew up.
A purported Taliban spokesman calling himself Zabibullah Mujahed claimed responsibility for the attack in text messages sent to Western news agencies.
Several times in recent weeks, Karzai has suggested direct talks with the Taliban, the Islamic militia group driven from power by a US invasion nearly six years ago.
But yesterday's appeal, aimed directly at fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord and former Taliban prime minister, carried more raw urgency than previous overtures from the US-backed president.
[Yeah, because the Taliban are right outside Kabul, and Karzai's government is about to fall!!
That is what the Globe told me yesterday...
After years and years of being told we are winning in Afghanistan, we are presented with this:
"Attacks by Taliban increase, approach Afghanistan capital
Seen capitalizing on public concern, weak government
By John Ward Anderson, Washington Post | September 28, 2007
KABUL, Afghanistan - Preying on a weak government and rising public concerns about security, the Taliban are enjoying a military resurgence in Afghanistan and are now staging attacks just outside the capital, according to Western diplomats, private security analysts, and aid workers.
Of particular concern, private security and intelligence analysts said, is the new reach of the Taliban to the provinces ringing Kabul, headquarters for thousands of international security troops. Those troops are seeking to shore up the government of President Hamid Karzai, help stabilize the country, find Osama bin Laden, and rebuild a nation deeply scarred by almost three decades of warfare. So far, they have had only mixed success.
"The Taliban ability to sustain fighting cells north and south of Kabul is an ominous development and a significant lapse in security," said a recent analysis by NightWatch, an intelligence review written by John McCreary, a former top analyst at the US Defense Intelligence Agency.
While the number of attacks around the capital has been small compared with the number of attacks in other areas of the country, McCreary wrote, the data showed that the Taliban this summer "held the psychological initiative. They still lack the ability to threaten the government, but moved closer to achieving it than they have in six years."
Analyses by the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, a project funded by the European Commission to advise private aid groups about security conditions across the country, found "a significant monthly escalation in conflict" in the first half of the year. Attacks by armed opposition groups increased from 139 in January to 405 in July, according to the project's director, Nic Lee.
"Every month there's a 20 to 25 percent increase in offensive activity," he said, adding that attacks in June and July were 80 percent to 90 percent higher than in the same period last year, showing a general escalation in the conflict, rather than seasonal fluctuations.
"Attacks have spread across the entire southeast border area, with a rapid escalation in the east, and in the last four months in the center" around Kabul as well, Lee said. "These guys have the strategic intent to take back the country."
NATO and US officials have not released their own statistics about attack trends, but they dispute the notion that the Taliban are significantly expanding operations from their traditional base in the south or that Afghanistan is sliding backward.
US Army General Dan K. McNeill, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, said much of the activity attributed to the Taliban and other militant groups probably was not part of the antigovernment insurgency, but probably was related to criminal activity, narcotics trafficking, and tribal disputes. And in some cases, he said, levels of conflict are up because more NATO, US, and Afghan forces are pushing into areas of the country where they had never operated. There are an estimated 50,000 international troops Afghanistan, about half of them American.
"Logic tells you the number of incidents you report are going to be increased," he said.
The Taliban's use of guerrilla warfare tactics - particularly suicide attacks and roadside bombings - is on the rise, largely because the insurgents cannot challenge foreign security forces through conventional means, McNeill said. About 60 percent of Afghanistan - a country slightly smaller than Texas and with 32 million people - experiences on average less than one significant security event a week, he said, although "the south and the east are clearly exceptions."
The rise in attacks reflects "acts of desperation," said Humayun Hamidzada, the spokesman for Karzai. "If you go and blow up 20 civilians, what does it show? Does it show strength? It shows their weakness. It's no resurgence. It's just showing who they really are."
So what does ANNIHILATING people by the hundreds in AIR STRIKES say about the U.S., 'eh, readers?
We are LOSING this war BIG TIME now, even though the stink Zionists Press won't tell you!
They PRESENT what they PRESENT to SELL a WORLDVIEW and PUSH the NaZionist AGENDA!!!!
The Taliban ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001 and promulgated a harsh and often unorthodox brand of Islamic law. The group intimidated and brutalized citizens, particularly women, destroyed Afghan culture, isolated the country internationally, and allowed it to become a base for bin Laden and Al Qaeda, which planned out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, in part, from camps in Afghanistan.
Talk about promoting the pack of lies that Zionists want, here is another great example.
Following the attacks, US-led forces invaded Afghanistan, toppled the Taliban, and began an intense manhunt for bin Laden, who remains at large.
In the aftermath of the invasion, senior American, Afghan, and Pakistani officials described the Taliban as a spent force. Today, that assessment is widely doubted.
"The question is, were they ever defeated, and I don't think they ever were," McNeill said.
Many analysts say they believe the Taliban continue to draw support from elements in Pakistan, an assertion hotly disputed by the government in Islamabad. The consensus among independent intelligence analysts is that the Taliban leadership is headquartered in Quetta, Pakistan."
... so REMEMBER THAT!!!!
As we return to your regularly scheduled Globe lies:
"If I find their address, there is no need for them to come to me - I'll personally go there and get in touch with them," Karzai said at his presidential palace.
Apparently paraphrasing the question he would put to them, he asked: "Esteemed mullah, sir, and esteemed Hekmatyar, sir, why are you destroying the country?"
Karzai said he has contacts with Taliban militants through tribal elders but that there are no direct government communication channels with the fighters. Omar's whereabouts are uncertain, although Karzai believes he is in Quetta, Pakistan, a militant stronghold across the border from Afghanistan's Kandahar Province.
The Associated Press quoted Karzai yesterday as saying: "If a group of Taliban or a number of Taliban come to me and say, 'President, we want a department in this or in that ministry or we want a position as deputy minister . . . and we don't want to fight anymore,' . . . I will accept it because I want conflicts and fighting to end in Afghanistan."
US diplomats and military officials in Afghanistan would not comment directly on Karzai's appeal, although one American official, speaking on condition of anonymity, cautioned that the offer was unlikely to lead to direct talks, which the United States has opposed in the past.
The Taliban had no immediate response to Karzai's statement. The group has responded to the president's previous overtures by demanding that all foreign forces leave Afghanistan before any talks could take place. NATO, in turn, has said it would consider negotiations only with fighters who were willing to lay down their arms.
Karzai met with President Bush on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York on Wednesday, where the two discussed the battle against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, but is not known whether the two talked about negotiations with militants.
Earlier this year, Karzai said he would never negotiate directly with Omar. Karzai also is believed to have never offered government positions to Taliban fighters, although several former members of the Taliban government are members of Parliament or hold provincial government positions.
A State Department duty officer said yesterday that he could not immediately comment on Karzai's offer to meet with Omar, noting that most policy makers were still in New York.
In intensified fighting in the last 18 months, insurgents have made little headway against the forces of the US-led coalition and NATO but have extracted a heavy toll in civilian lives and rendered large swaths of the country unsafe.
[Yup, just shelling the outskirts of KABUL, and another article earlier in the week told me that the Taliban TOOK GROUND in August -- but the stink Zionist press made me destroy my loving, beautiful creation by shoving the Christian Korean hostages down my throat in August!
Never reporting on the 50-75 air bombings a DAY, never reporting on the patrols and battles killing who knows how many?
Hey, stink NaZionists newspapers will never say!]
As in Iraq, Afghans have become accustomed to attacks carried out during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but Karzai said the timing rendered the attack particularly heinous.
"It was a terrible tragedy, no doubt an act of extreme cowardice," he said. "Whoever did this was against people, against humanity, definitely against Islam. A man who calls himself Muslim will not blow up innocent people in the middle of Ramadan."
[That's why I think it is all BULLSHIT!!!
First, it has never been the Pashtun/Taliban way.
Second, the shit is also happening in Iraq where it shouldn't be, and third, this crap never happened until western powers with their false-flagging, black ops forces got in there.
So SHIT a BRICK, MSM!!!
We don't need this shit, which is why you are going down!]
Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross said four of its employees kidnapped last week had been freed unharmed. Franz Rauchenstein, deputy head of the organization's delegation in Kabul, called the release of the two foreigners and two Afghan nationals "a great relief" and said no ransom had been paid for them or other concessions made."
Here is how the Times covers it, as I give you my routine:
"Bomber Attacks Bus of Afghan Soldiers; 30 Dead" By KIRK SEMPLE
KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 29 — A suicide bomber wearing an Afghan military uniform detonated his concealed explosive vest near a bus full of Afghan soldiers on their way to work here in the capital early Saturday, killing at least 30 people, including two civilians, officials said. The bombing was among the deadliest in Afghanistan this year.
Later in the day, President Hamid Karzai said that he was willing to travel to the hide-out of the Taliban’s leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, to conduct peace negotiations, and that he was prepared to allocate the leadership of some ministries to Taliban officials if they renounced further violence.
The comments seemed to reflect a more conciliatory and open posture toward peace negotiations with the Taliban, and they came a day after Mr. Karzai’s return from a trip to the United States that included talks at the United Nations and the White House. Earlier this year he forswore direct negotiations with Mr. Omar and has apparently never publicly said he was prepared to name Taliban fighters as ministers.
[Something I have been saying for YEARS and YEARS!!!
Let's talk!!!!!!
Especially since THEY NEVER DID ANYTHING TO US, and we have SLAUGHTERED them with our AIR BOMBS!!!!
9/11 was an INSIDE JOB!!!]
The Taliban movement, which has had a resurgence across southern Afghanistan in the past two years, has accelerated its use of suicide bombings and kidnappings this year. Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, said in a telephone interview that the group was responsible for the bombing on Saturday.
[I always love it; they can get these guys on the phone but never find them.
Yet I need to be bugged by a surveillance apparatus the likes of which the world has never seen?
Pfffffftttttt!!!!!!]
The blast was so powerful that it peeled the sides off the bus, crushed the frame, catapulted a huge piece of the vehicle into a park across the street and shattered windows in shops and homes throughout the neighborhood.
Numerous people were wounded in the attack, including day laborers who had gathered nearby in the hope of finding work, according to a statement from the Interior Ministry.
Neighborhood residents and shop owners described a deafening blast followed by bedlam as bloody survivors stumbled around wailing for help. Ghulam Jelani, 48, the owner of a bakery no more than 100 yards from the attack, said he was toiling in his kitchen when the bomber struck.
“I went outside, and there was a lot of dust and I couldn’t see anything,” he recalled. “After five minutes I could finally see the bus.”
Initially there were conflicting accounts from officials on the scene about whether the bomber had made it onto the bus. But the Interior Ministry said later in the morning that the bomber had detonated himself on the street.
“It’s a very painful incident,” said Gen. Muhammad Razzaq Yaqubi, deputy police chief of Kabul, as Afghan and French forensic investigators sifted through the wreckage and two Afghan police officials wandered the street picking up body parts and dropping them into a blue plastic bag.
Mr. Karzai, in a news conference at the presidential palace, called the attack “an act of extreme cowardice.”
“Whoever did this was against people, against humanity, definitely against Islam,” he said.
[That might rule the Taliban out, no matter what the Zionist press reports.
I simply don't believe a word they print anymore, or rather the CONTEXT since they REPEAT LIES!!!
They will say one thing one day, and another the next!
Can't have it BOTH WAYS, shitters!]
There have already been 100 suicide bombings this year, killing at least 290 people, according to Afghan and international officials. The tempo of attacks is on a pace to surpass last year’s record total of 123, which inflicted 305 deaths.
One of the larger suicide bombings of the year also came this month, on Sept. 10 in a crowded market in the south, killing at least 26 Afghans, half of them civilians.
Amid the Taliban’s stepped-up campaign of violence, Mr. Karzai has been under increasing pressure from NATO countries to try to forge a political peace process that would resolve the insurgency, which many Western and Afghan officials in Afghanistan say cannot be beaten militarily.
[After we have been told for so long, "we are winning!"
Sick of being LIED TO, guys!!!!!!!!!]
He said Saturday that he was willing to meet face to face with Mullah Omar, the Taliban’s leader, and with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an extremist insurgent leader, but said he would reject the Taliban’s main condition for talks: a pullout of all foreign troops.
[O.K. They are just outside Kabul, so bye-bye Kar-zai!!!!]
“If I find their address, there is no need for them to come,” the president said. “I’ll personally go there and contact them.”
He also said he was willing to fold Taliban officials into crucial positions in his government, including ministerial positions in his cabinet, if they agreed to lay down their arms.
“If we are asked this, we will give that job to them instantly,” he said. “I wish there would be a demand as easy as this.”
The Afghan government has always offered a right to return home to members of the Taliban who gave up violence and formally recognized the government. Several thousand low-level members of the Taliban have gone through the reconciliation process and been allowed to return home with an amnesty.
Several former members of the Taliban government serve in Parliament, and a few more hold positions in provincial governments. Prominent members of Mr. Hekmatyar’s party have been given government positions and have taken part in parliamentary elections.
Yet few high-level insurgent leaders have come forward to take advantage of the amnesty program, and several are still wanted by the United States for harboring Al Qaeda during the Taliban rule here. Much of the high-level Taliban leadership has sought refuge in Pakistan.
This month, Mr. Karzai renewed a call for talks with the Taliban. The group initially said it might be open to negotiations, but it later said it would talk only on condition that all foreign troops leave Afghanistan.
Mr. Karzai rejected this demand on Saturday.
“It should be very clear that until all our roads are paved, until we have good electricity and good water, and also until we have a better Afghan national army and national police, I don’t want any foreigners to leave Afghanistan,” Mr. Karzai said.
[So what have they been doing the LAST SIX YEARS?!?!
Just BOMBING and KILLING, huh?
And this fucking hand-puppet president rejects talks?!
I agree with the Taliban; in fact, we should LEAVE ALL MUSLIM LANDS!
We DON'T BELONG THERE, and I AM TIRED of my shithole government engaging in MASS-MURDER of people who NEVER DID ANYTHING TO US!!!!!!
Also on Saturday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said that four of its employees, who were kidnapped Wednesday while negotiating the release of a group of hostages, were freed."
[What is with these Taliban freeing prisoners?
They only killed two Koreans, and now this?
Why ain't they chopping off heads like my stink Zionists press would have it?
Is that why this is in the back-end of the story?]
