7 American Troops Killed In Afghanistan Attacks

From the AP via HuffPo:

Seven U.S. service members were killed on Saturday in one of the deadliest days for Americans in Afghanistan in recent months, as the Taliban continued attacks against foreign troops as part of their spring offensive.

And

At the news conference, Karzai said he had met earlier in the day with the Kabul station chief of the CIA and was reassured that the agency's payments to the Afghan government would continue. The New York Times had reported that for more than a decade, the CIA had given the Afghan National Security Council tens of millions of dollars in monthly payments delivered in suitcases, backpacks and plastic shopping bags.

And

He said talks had been delayed because of certain conditions that Afghanistan was insisting be included in the pact, which will govern a U.S. military presence after 2014 when nearly all foreign combat troops are to have finished their withdrawal from Afghanistan. The talks, which started in late 2012, are set to last up to a year.

President Barack Obama has not said how many troops will remain, although there have been estimates ranging from 8,000 to 12,000. It is unlikely such an announcement will be made until the security agreement is signed. Those troops would help train Afghan forces and also carry out operations against al-Qaida and other militant groups.

More here.

Why are we still there?  

We killed Bin Laden already.  Al Qaeda is no longer the Marvel Comics super villain group it once was.  The ostensible goals for the invasion as expressed when it happened have been accomplished.  So what's the deal?  We're still there to clean up the mess we created?  In ten years we haven't been able to pull off this nation-building experiment started by President Bush, something he promised not to do when he ran in 2000, and Obama hasn't done much better.  The government we established continues to rule only the capital, and it's totally corrupt, and we hand over millions of dollars to them in bags like it was some Mafia enterprise.  If we're trying to nation-build, we've failed dramatically, and the prospects for eventual success are bleak.

But Obama says we're pulling out, even though leaving apparently means keeping eight to twelve thousand soldiers there, anyway.  Some withdrawal.  This is the war that never ends, and we don't even know why we're fighting it.  

The world never made much sense to me in the first place.  But it makes less and less sense as the years wear on.

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