Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Philadelphia Inquirer
February 28, 2008 By Pamela Hess, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- More than six years after the United States invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said yesterday.
Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of Afghanistan and that Karzai's government controls 30 percent to 31 percent.
The majority of Afghanistan's population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.
In 2007, insurgency-related violence killed more than 6,500 people, including 222 foreign troops. Last year was the deadliest since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the committee that the Pakistan government was trying to crack down on the lawless tribal area along the Afghan border area where Taliban and al-Qaeda members are believed to be training, and from which they launch attacks in Afghanistan. But neither the Pakistani military nor the tribal Frontier Corps is trained or equipped to fight, he said.
Maples said it would take three to five years to address those deficiencies.
"Pakistani military operations in the [region] have not fundamentally damaged al-Qaeda's position in the region," he said. "The tribal areas remain largely ungovernable and, as such, they will continue to provide vital sanctuary to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and regional extremism more broadly."
Questioned by the committee chairman, Carl Levin (D., Mich.), Maples also said he considered the interrogation technique known as waterboarding to be inhumane. That would put it outside the bounds of U.S. law, which since late 2005 has barred cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.
The Bush administration has refused to rule on whether waterboarding - strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning - is torture.
Waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA, but its use must be approved case by case by the attorney general and the president.
The U.S. military specifically barred waterboarding in 2006. Maples said the 19 other interrogation techniques allowed under military rules were effective.
February 28, 2008 By Pamela Hess, Associated Press
WASHINGTON -- More than six years after the United States invaded to establish a stable central regime in Afghanistan, the Kabul government under President Hamid Karzai controls just 30 percent of the country, the top U.S. intelligence official said yesterday.
Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the resurgent Taliban controls 10 percent to 11 percent of Afghanistan and that Karzai's government controls 30 percent to 31 percent.
The majority of Afghanistan's population and territory remains under local tribal control, he said.
In 2007, insurgency-related violence killed more than 6,500 people, including 222 foreign troops. Last year was the deadliest since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.
Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the committee that the Pakistan government was trying to crack down on the lawless tribal area along the Afghan border area where Taliban and al-Qaeda members are believed to be training, and from which they launch attacks in Afghanistan. But neither the Pakistani military nor the tribal Frontier Corps is trained or equipped to fight, he said.
Maples said it would take three to five years to address those deficiencies.
"Pakistani military operations in the [region] have not fundamentally damaged al-Qaeda's position in the region," he said. "The tribal areas remain largely ungovernable and, as such, they will continue to provide vital sanctuary to al-Qaeda, the Taliban and regional extremism more broadly."
Questioned by the committee chairman, Carl Levin (D., Mich.), Maples also said he considered the interrogation technique known as waterboarding to be inhumane. That would put it outside the bounds of U.S. law, which since late 2005 has barred cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment of detainees.
The Bush administration has refused to rule on whether waterboarding - strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning - is torture.
Waterboarding remains among the interrogation methods potentially available to the CIA, but its use must be approved case by case by the attorney general and the president.
The U.S. military specifically barred waterboarding in 2006. Maples said the 19 other interrogation techniques allowed under military rules were effective.