Topic: Afghanistan Proves To Be Killing Field, Too

New York Daily News
March 25, 2008 By James Gordon Meek, Daily News Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON — The U.S. is close to reaching another somber milestone: 500 Americans killed in Afghanistan.
The U.S. has lost 488 members of the military in the forgotten war since the invasion after 9/11, including 24 New Yorkers who were killed fighting Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to iCasualties.org.
Last year, 117 Americans perished in the Afghan war — a record — amid a NATO offensive. But now, top U.S. commanders concede they’re losing ground.
In overlooked remarks last month, Bush administration intelligence czar Mike McConnell said despite theTaliban’s loss of three leaders and hundreds of fighters in 2007, it “does not yet appear to have significantly disrupted insurgent operations.”
“The security situation has deteriorated in some areas in the south, and Taliban forces have expanded their operations into previously peaceful areas of the west and around Kabul,” said the director of national intelligence.
McConnell made the remarks in written testimony— which he did not read aloud — submitted for a Feb. 27 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
He told the panel that the insurgency has “expanded in scope” from the Pakistan border in the east to once-quiet areas on the Iranian border on the west and also in the north, whereNATOallies are doing reconstruction projects instead of risky combat missions.
Michael Scheuer, who as a former top CIA counterterror officer once aided Afghans fighting the Russians, said it’s troubling that the war is escalating in spite of last year’s U.S.led NATO offensive.
“I think Afghanistan is much closer to being lost than Iraq is,” Scheuer told the Daily News.
Other officials have recently expressed similar worries about the war, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen, and the commander in Afghanistan, Army Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez.
“I’m concerned” about the war’s progress, Mullen said this month.
Rodriguez told reporters the same day as McConnell’s hearing that a rejuvenated Al Qaeda has emerged as the “central player” in the Afghan fight.