Way off topic, anyone wondering why Disaster at Fukushima is being ignored?
Greenpeace is watching at least

State of the Reactors

New tests performed on reactor #2 at the Fukushima Daiichi plant show that conditions are far more dire than previously thought. In addition to discovering that water levels in the containment vessel are only 60 cm, as opposed to three meters, TEPCO detected fatally high radiation levels measuring 72,900 millisieverts per hour: enough to kill a person after being exposed for just seven minutes. The new revelations mean that decommissioning the reactors, which TEPCO previously estimated would take 30 to 40 years, may now take even longer. Company officials say that they will need to develop new equipment, since the soaring radiation levels will quickly destroy robots and endoscopes currently being used. Conditions in reactor #1 (where radiation levels may be even higher, as experts believe that more fuel melted and breached the reactor’s core) and reactor #3 remain unknown, because TEPCO has no way to safely examine them.

The situation is leading many experts to question TEPCO’s and the government’s assertion in December that the Fukushima Daiichi plant is “under control” and in cold shutdown status. Some fear that with water levels so low, melted fuel could soon become exposed and is in danger of reheating and once again melting down. Should that happen, increasing pressure could cause another explosion, allowing lethal levels of radiation to escape into the atmosphere. TEPCO continues to pump nine tons of water an hour into the reactor, but a large number of leaks is making it difficult to maintain adequate water levels. Kazuhiko Kudo, a nuclear engineering professor at Kyushu University, noted, “The plant is still in a precarious state. Unfortunately, all we can do is to keep pumping water inside the reactors and hope we don’t have another big earthquake.”

TEPCO reported yet another leak of radioactive water from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant this week, announcing that 120 tons of waste water containing radioactive strontium had leaked from pipes, and approximately 80 liters of that had run into the ocean. Beta particles in ocean water measured .25 Bq/cm3. If it enters the food chain, radioactive strontium, which has a half-life of 29 years, can accumulate in bones and cause leukemia and bone cancer.

Hoping for no earthquake in Japan? Oy

But David, we can’t get out. What about that oil pipeline, and those rare earth elements? (You know, the ones where we are providing the security for the Chinese companies who do the mining.)

Feng Shui.. lol…

Also, we have to make sure the commie Russians don’t try to get in. Iranians too! And Pakistan’s ISI/Taliban and the “free” taliban. They also have lithium, which the US will need to medicate its own cheese eating surrender monkeys with.

Brzezinski said in his 1997 book, “The Grand Chessboard American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives”:
Nation states, says Brzezinski, will be incorporated in the “new order” and he articulated it all for us in these concise and choice words: “To put it in a terminology that harkens back to the more brutal age of ancient empires,” he says, “the three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.”

I think they’ve lost the strategery game in Afghanistan, but that’s just my opinion.

one member of the unit is required to be armed and on alert for possible fratricide attacks,

aka the prime target.

BTW if you think revenge attacks of U.S. military against civilians were bad before, wait until you see how they escalate in the future. And then of course, “fratricide” will escalate, wash, rinse, repeat. (How can they call it fratricide anyhow, since prolly every Afghani, including everyone U.S. military has ‘trained,’ hates the U.S. military.)

If we were invaded, I would shoot the MF invaders , poison them, strangle ,knife them or whatever, they set up the kill or be killed.. They have a right to “Stand Your Ground” too

The invaders are all psyco killers over there, get real. Then the psyco killers are coming home to roost.

First things first. You have to allow the invaders to train you & arm you so you know how to get them better and they have given you the weapons to do so.

“… I am a moderate Republican, fiscally conservative; a fan of small government, accountability, self-empowerment, and sound science …”

Trying to understand when any part of that statemen ever represented Republicanism.

Ha ha ha ha Like the they have never been invaded before, I read somewhere they were invaded before “God blessed America “was a gleam in God’s eye.

One of the funniest Scott Horton interviews on antiwar.com was of some Australian military guy who was whining about how difficult it was to train Afghan troops. A few of the comments (mine included if I can pat myself on the back) were priceless. One listener pointed out your point. Another said that training an army promoted violence. Interviewee checked later and demurred, said he’d been doing troop training for 36 years and if anyone was against violence, it was he.

I left 2 comments: (1) How many wars had the troops he trained won? (2) Hmmm. He hates violence but has spent 36 years in the military….

I just went to look for it to link, but can’t remember the guy’s name so couldn’t find it.

Don’t forget, if you’re holding aces and eights, DUCK!!!!! (eye roll)

“Rearranging the desks in Kandahar” is the new “Rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”.

Every Empire Leaves Afghanistan. It’s Our Turn! “There’s a bill in the House of Representatives that would speed it up to RIGHT NOW. The bill has 70 cosponsors. Let’s add 30 more.” Roots Action Petition here.

fragging — the act of attacking a superior officer in one’s chain of command with the intent to kill that officer.

The US corporate enforcement arm has to stay in Afghanistan until the Taliban is properly punished for walking out of their meeting with Big Oil in Houston without capitulating to their demand for the TAPI pipeline.

In addition, soldiers working in headquarters buildings or as advisors in Afghan ministries have been told to move their desks so that their backs are no longer facing the door, said the official, who spoke anonymously because he was discussing sensitive security measures.

Not farce but human nature and possibly the first common sense thing done in these wars of aggression. From A Pattern Language:

You feel more comfortable in a workplace if there is a wall behind you. (If your back is exposed you feel vulnerable – you can never tell if someone is looking at you, or if someone is coming toward you from behind.) The data supports this hypothesis at the 1 percent level of significance.

If the US doesn’t take steps to immediately withdraw, we are looking toward a Vietnam- or Somalia-style exit–for which Obama and the “soft on national security” Democrats will be blamed (Dolchstoßlegende again).

Forget the figleaf of staying behind to train Afghans. They know how to shoot and they have already decided who they are taking orders from–and it is not US-ISAF.

If the US doesn’t have the logistics planning handled by now, it’s tough but the endgame is closing in.

What fool anywhere sits with his back to the door?

The top U.S. politicians better hope the Taliban are only reading their Korans and not Giap.

The Afghans should also consider having ‘guardian angels’ in their homes to guard against US raiding parties, and they probably have.

“Military intelligence” at its finest.

But who’s going to guard our ginormous new Embassy compound, the “Emerald City” of Afghanistan?

With all the money that was put into it, it’s not “self-defending”?

I guess KBR will come up with some sort of public-private deal.

Military intellengence

Years ago I remember reading a scathing critique of American military incompetence by military historian Martin van Creveld to the effect that “The only things Americans can train Iraqis to do is kill Americans. How stupid can they be?”

Stupid enough to train the Afghans how to kill Americans, too — and give them every reason to do so.

History doesn’t repeat itself, someone said, but America almost always does.

With their tails tucked proudly ‘tween their legs
Advancing towards the exit march the dregs
Of empire, whose retreat this question begs:
“No promised omelet, just the broken eggs?”