And gives the finger to the American people!
"Gates recommends additional troops for Afghanistan"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that additional troops be sent to Afghanistan to augment NATO forces....
Gates has forwarded a recommendation to the White House in prelude to discussions with President George W. Bush and other top administration officials, the officials said."
Here's what you'll be stepping into, kids:
"Attack on Kabul luxury hotel kills 6"
KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- Militants with suicide vests, grenades and AK-47 rifles attacked Kabul's most popular luxury hotel Monday evening, killing six people in a coordinated assault rarely seen in the Afghan capital, witnesses and officials said.
The storming of the Serena Hotel appeared to be the first direct attack on a hotel in Kabul since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. The 6:12 p.m. attack came on a night the Norwegian embassy was holding a meeting at the Serena.
The militants killed six people and wounded six, said Interior Ministry spokesman Zemeri Bashary. One of the attackers was shot to death and the Taliban spokesman said a second died in the suicide explosion.
More than 30 U.S. soldiers in a half dozen Humvees rushed to the hotel as part of a quick reaction force. Suzanne Griffin, an American who works with the aid agency Save the Children, said she was in the gym's locker room when the attack started.
"Thank God I didn't get into the shower because then we heard gunfire, a lot of it. It was very close, close enough that plaster came off the ceiling," said Griffin, her voice shaking. "We all just sat on the floor and got as far as we could from any glass and huddled on the floor. We turned our phones on silent."
Griffin, 62, from Seattle, Wash., said hotel staff evacuated the women to another part of the hotel. "We had to step over a woman's dead body. She was one of the gym people," she said.
She contacted the U.S. embassy, which told her to not open the door unless she heard an American voice. U.S. soldiers evacuated her.
"There was blood on the floor all the way to the kitchen. There was a lot of blood in the lobby. There were empty shell casings outside," she said.
Stian L. Solum, a photographer from the Norwegian photo agency Scanpix, said a Norwegian journalist from the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet and a Norwegian diplomatic staff member were wounded in the attack. He said Norway's Foreign Minster Jonas Gahr Stoere, currently visiting Kabul, was not injured and was safe in the hotel basement.
"There were two or three bombs, and there was complete chaos," Solum said on the state radio network NRK. "When I started to walk out (of the elevator) a bomb went off, a little way from me. There were shots fired by what I think was an ANA (Afghan National Army) soldier."
The 177-room Serena is a newly built luxury hotel frequently used by foreign embassies for meetings, parties and dinners. The nicest hotel in the city, visiting Westerners often stay or eat dinner there. Located in downtown Kabul, it is near the presidential palace though separated by fences, blast walls and checkpoints. It is also near several government ministries and a district police station.
On its Web site, the hotel claims it is an "oasis of luxury in a war-ravaged city."
Aftenposten journalist Tor Arne Andreassen told the Oslo paper's Internet edition that he heard a grenade explode.
"Out the window I could see shots being fired at the guardpost by the gate," Andreassen said. He said he saw a female hotel employee so badly wounded that he did not believe she could have survived.
"The plaster flew around our room and the whole building shook," Andreassen said.
A second American who was exercising in the hotel's gym said she heard gunfire after the explosion, and saw a body she believed to be dead and pools of blood in the lobby area, and bullet marks in the gym area. She said three foreigners had been wounded. She asked not to be identified for her safety.
Vanessa Valentino, an American working in the Afghan capital, was at a meeting at the central bank around the corner when she heard a series of explosions and gunfire.
Valentino described an explosion faraway, then gunfire, another distant explosion followed by a large explosion very close -- all within a couple of minutes.
"I think it shook the building," Valentino said. "We're just not leaving the building, and we can't figure out what's happened, so we decided to stay inside."
In 2003, a rocket exploded near the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, knocking some guests from their restaurant chairs and shattering windows across the lobby and in many bedrooms. No injuries were reported."
Happy touring, 'Murkn shit-eater!
