Posted on 10/09/2010 9:42:50 AM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
The Taliban have attacked another NATO fuel convoy inside Pakistan; meanwhile, the northern border crossing in Khyber remains closed in protest of a US military cross-border strike from Afghanistan.
Taliban fighters opened fire on a group of fuel tankers yesterday in the town of Mithri in Baluchistan province. Police said 27 fuel tankers were set ablaze. The Taliban attack was unopposed by Pakistani security forces.
The Taliban maintain a strong presence along the border regions in Baluchistan. The Movement of the Taliban in Baluchistan is a shadowy organization of which little is publicly known. The group supports operations against Afghan and Coalition forces, and operates without any restraint from the Pakistani military or government.
The Movement of the Taliban in Baluchistan and allied groups have stepped up attacks against NATO convoys near the Baluchistan cities of Kuzdar, Kalat, Mastung, and Mach, all along the road to Quetta before passing through the Chaman border crossing. Attacks are reported on a near-daily basis.
The torching of the trucks in Mithri is the fifth major attack on NATO's supply convoys since Pakistan shut down NATO's supply line through the Khyber Pass on Sept. 30. More than 150 NATO fuel and container trucks have been destroyed in the five attacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at longwarjournal.org ...
Yet another reason to bring the troops home. How much more money are we going to pour down this rathole?
The Fifth attack.....
The Taliban attack was unopposed by Pakistani security forces.
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Time to glaze the mountain valleys of Pakistan and the ISI headqtrs and Pakistan’s capital too.. just a thought.
I don’t know why they just don’t fly the fuel in...A KC-130T with a fuse tank can bring in 5000 gal a pop....
No problem. We can take the hit. Just ask Hussein.
I was under the impression this would be the seventh attack. I may have been wrong. My apology.
We’ve got a really bad supply tail in Afghanistan and they had better beef up the security of that equipment.if there is a successful attack once you can blame that on the fog of war too a degree.Anything after that is negligence.
Make it like the Berlin Airlift. Something is afoul inside this tomato and has been for a long time. We own the skies over there.
Also saw the Paks moving some of their AA bateries to the border in response to the attack on some of their “reportedly” frontier guards. So we have the Sec. forces unwilling to protect our convoys and they now want to take out our aircraft chasing the Taliban across the border.
Something is very wrong with this picture and Petraus is now publicly warning the Paks to get with the game. Do we expect a wag-the-dog scenario the week before the elections? If so, it won’t help Barkey and his Socialist Progressive pals because the curtain has been pulled aside for too long now. The public reaction will be one of “OK, so what took you so long”.
That would make the Pakis Talibunnies and vice versa.
Why don’t they have airborne protection?
All I know is we flew a whole lot of fuel up highway 1 in the advance to Bagdad...no reason it couldn’t be done again. Hell you could use KC-10s and KC-135s and off load at the airfield....
the whole point of a “convoy” in naval parlance is to gather ships together so that they can be more readily protected by a much smaller number of warhips
if there is no protection at all being offered with these “fuel truck convoys” then it seems insane to gather all the targets so nicely for the TaliNazis to keep blowing them up
the more important point, of course, is that Obozo & co. better figure out quick how they are going to secure US/NATO supply lines — what’s the toll of torched fuel trucks this week, well over 100 now????
I can do that one better. The US military has several heavy lift airship programs going on right now. They probably have at least one right now that can carry 200 tons of fuel. Over 70,000 gallons.
In the future they want a super heavy airship that can carry from 500 to 1,000 tons of cargo. But right now they should be hauling fuel.
I read somewhere that the Paki government closed down all private security companies and confiscated all theier weapons and ammo..
On another note, the Pakis announced that a “Radioactive Gamma Projectile” has gone missing ( for three months now ).
From the article
“After the disappearance of the device, it has been widely speculated that terror improvisations mainly al-Qaeda has gotten hold of it. This adds to the speculations that terror organizations now possess a nuclear bomb.”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2593924/posts
Alternative supply options have been happening for some time. Those will now increase. Though it becomes a simple cost / benefit as for the "why", to keep using the Pak SR.
The GWB adults understood, Musharraff was the best option for Pak for a decade or so. Pushing him out prior was not in our best interests. He was not perfect, but he was the best option for us with regard to Astan/ Pak for the short/mid time range ..... Though in retrospect we should have applied even more pressure on him, earlier. He had the best leverage within the ISI early on. But retrospect decision making is BS, in and of itself.
Looks like the Taliban and associated terrorist groups are having a field day. They should be thinking about the days to come when the Swat valley is no longer undulated by flood waters. The Paki Army will not always be dropping care packages into those many remote villages.
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