21 August 2012

Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff's
Plane Hit By Taliban Rocket Attack

Bagram Airfield

Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan: Though there's been a bit of damage to the C-17 regularly used by General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff -who was thankfully off sleeping in his quarters at the time of today's pre-dawn,
two-rocket volley- was not hurt.

 No fatalities reported either, but two ground crew were injured and -of course- the Taliban are suspected, who else.

General Martin Dempsey
Periodic shelling of Bagram
-which is situated north of Kabul- has been known to occur, though it is rare for them to hit anything of value. But General Dempsey was in town for a pow-wow with NATO commanders and Afghan top brass- so his presence may have been leaked to the Talibs.

The hastily-arranged meeting regarded dealing with a surge of attacks on security forces by Afghan federal troops: there have been 32 of these in 2012 already, and ten soldiers (mostly American) have lost their lives in such assaults over the last two weeks: this comes all at the hands of nominal Afghan 'allies'- same ones we were planning to hand the country over-to ASAP.