Warmongering sonofabitches.
Instead of the number 11, US military officials actually meant the number 14 — President Obama on announcing his so-called ‘Afghan surge’ last year blubbered US troops would begin a drawdown in July 2011, but now it seems he was some three years off.
Defense honcho Bullet-Bob Gates and a warmongering warning to the Taliban: “It’s not and they’re going to be very surprised come August, September, October and November when most American forces are still there and still coming after them,” Gates said.

(Illustration found here).

Just to not soil the bloomers: UK Major General Nick Carter, commander of British forces in southern Afghanistan on Thursday presented “a devastating assessment:”

Carter admitted that “In my tour I lost 302 soldiers. Most of them American. The cost in blood and treasure has been enormous.”
He added that NATO wouldn’t know if it was winning — whatever that word signifies in a war already in its tenth year and escalating to new heights by the day — until June of 2011, “when the fighting season begins again” and the Atlantic Alliance and the Pentagon can “compare Taliban attacks with this year.”

What is happening there?
In most of the evaluations on the current status of the Afghan war have been negative, keeping the plot in line with the country’s known moniker of the “graveyard of empires” — and one of those ’empire’ guys, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, warned the West last month:

Gorbachev said if the US and NATO do not pull their troops out of Afghanistan, another Vietnam would be in the making.
“It will be more difficult for America to get out of this situation. But what’s the alternative? Another Vietnam? Sending in half a million troops? That wouldn’t work,” Gorbachev told the state-run BBC.
“Victory is impossible in Afghanistan.
Obama is right to pull the troops out no matter how difficult it will be,” he added.
Gorbachev said that the US was in trouble as it was Washington that trained militants in Afghanistan decades ago, adding that those same militants are terrorizing the region now.

Indeed, what comes around, goes bad around.
Mainly there’s been no intelligent intelligence on the war.
The Taliban rules 80 percent of the country and can not be beaten.
Robert Robert Baer, a Middle East expert with the US CIA, believes any chance the US and its allies had of defeating the Taliban have already been squandered because victory required reliable intelligence: ”[US intelligence agencies] have the same problem they had before 9/11. It is a system that doesn’t work.”

Even nit-wit GOP head Michael Steele can see the writing on the spattered wall, though the language is jibberish if one knows Steele: He said last summer the Afghan war “can’t be won because everyone who’s tried over a thousand years of history has failed…”

Meanwhile, back at the ranch Afghan Defense Minister Gen. Abdul Rahim Wardak commented during ceremonies last week marking a year of supposedly increased national forces training that the local boys are doing better:

“This year we led some operations,” he said. “Next year we hope that we will be able to lead more operations and take the responsibility for the physical security in more districts and provinces.”
He ended his passionate address with the word “Giddy-up.”

The US needs to actually saddle up, and get the living-shit out of Dodge.