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A tense visit to Afghanistan by Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta got off to an alarming start on Wednesday when a stolen pick-up truck sped onto a ramp alongside a runway at a British military airfield and crashed into a ditch as Mr. Panetta’s plane was landing. Pentagon officials said the Afghan driver emerged from the vehicle in flames. The runway incident unfolded Wednesday morning as Mr. Panetta landed at Camp Bastion, a British air field that adjoins Camp Leatherneck, a vast United States Marine base in Helmand Province, next to Kandahar. Pentagon spokesman, said the truck had been stolen...

KABUL -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was feared to have been the target of a suicide attack at Camp Bastion on Wednesday as he arrived in Afghanistan. A vehicle got on to the runway and burst into flames as Panetta's plane landed at the sprawling British base. Panetta was flying into Afghanistan just days after a US soldier went on the rampage in the country, killing 16 Afghan civilians. But as his plane was landing a vehicle appeared on the runway and subsequently caught fire. Sources at the scene claim it was a suicide attack -- but those allegations have...

In a sign of possible frayed nerves in the military, U.S. Marines were asked to lay down their weapons today before entering a tent where Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was scheduled to speak. It happened in Helmand province, after Panetta had met with tribal elders in nearby villages, assuring them that the U.S. mission was on track. The unusual order comes within days of an attack by a U.S. staff sergeant on unarmed Afghan civilians that left 16 dead and enraged Afghans. The 200 Marines were inside a tent at Camp Leatherneck along with Afghan guards and troops from other...

I will give you a summery of what is being reported by ELISABETH BUMILLER in the NYT this morning. Panetta made a surprise visit to Afghanistan yesterday. Before he would meet with the soldiers they were ordered to place their weapons outside tent and return unarmed.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A U.S. military spokesman says that no decision has been made yet about whether to hold the trial of the man accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in Afghanistan. Col. Gary Kolb said Wednesday that "no final decision has been made yet" about where the staff sergeant will be tried.

The alleged attack on Afghans by an American soldier in Kandahar, where 91 soldiers have been murdered last year alone, is already receiving the full outrage treatment. Any outrage over the deaths of those 91 soldiers in the province will be completely absent. There will be no mention of how many of them died because the Obama Administration decided that the lives of Afghan civilians counted for more than the lives of soldiers. No talk of what it is like to walk past houses with gunmen dressed in civilian clothing inside and if you are fired at from those houses,...

The Afghan parliament demanded on Monday that a US soldier accused of killing 16 civilians, including nine children, be put on trial in Afghanistan as a growing tide of local anger added to the pressure on the US-led war against the Taliban. The murders have triggered a new spike in anti-western sentiment just weeks after furious protests erupted after the discovery of burnt copies of the Koran at a US base. US officials have rushed to condemn the killings and pledged that the accused soldier will face justice. The sergeant detained on Sunday is accused of going house to house...

One of Kyrgyzstan’s top defense officials told Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta on Tuesday that a crucial United States air base here should have “no military mission” when its lease expires a little more than two years from now. The request creates a potential hurdle to American plans to withdraw from Afghanistan in 2014. Notes from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other areas of conflict in the post-9/11 era. The base, officially called a transit center, is at the Manas airport close to the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, and has been a vital hub for troops and matériel moving in and out...

For many years, the military was the last bastion of resistance against the bankruptcy of progressive thinking. No longer. Three vivid illustrations of what those who volunteer to defend this nation must now endure, stand as a beacon to the corruption that political correctness brings wherever it is unleashed. ...First, the Fort Hood massacre. Army brass knew that Major Nidal Hasan was a an Islamic radical, long before he killed 13 and wounded another 32 of his fellow soldiers. A report released soon after the atrocity provided a devastating indictment of political correctness. "Although neither Department of Defense nor the...

(CBS News) President Obama on Tuesday vowed to hold whoever was responsible for the killing spree in Afghanistan that left 16 civilians dead over the weekend "fully accountable," directing the Pentagon to "spare no effort" in conducting a full investigation to find out what happened. "The United States takes this as seriously as if it were our own citizens and our own children who were murdered," Mr. Obama said from the White House Rose Garden. "We're heartbroken over the loss of innocent life."

President Obama's comments to a Denver TV station that he is "proud generally" of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is angering his conservative critics who were already riled by his apology over the accidental burning of Quorans by troops. "Generally proud of our troops? What a loser," said nationally syndicated radio host Michael Brown, the former Bush-era FEMA boss. "I am generally disgusted by this man." Katie Pavlich, the news editor of the conservative website Townhall, added, "The calculated shooting of innocent civilians is nothing to be proud of, however, President Obama's generalization of the U.S. military as a whole because...

Knock-knock... Is anybody home... anybody at all....??? There are men out there, whose work requires from them to wear a uniform and who are risking their lives so that you, dear Reader, can lead a comfortable life here on mainland. However, those men and women, are not like isolated mushrooms... they are human beings just like you and I -but they go beyond the call of duty in order to protect us. They decide to leave families, parents, siblings, and what’s worse, their wives or husbands and their little children, all in the name of duty. Therefore, all of us,...

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the death penalty could be possible as the military investigates a U.S. soldier suspected of shooting and killing at least 16 Afghans on Sunday, according to the Associated Press. Speaking to reporters traveling with him to Kyrgyzstan on Monday, Panetta said the killings must not derail the U.S.-led military mission in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, Reuters cites a U.S. official as saying the Army staff sergeant was treated for a traumatic brain injury sustained in 2010 in Iraq. The official, however, did not say there was necessarily a link between that injury and the killing spree in...

There apparently is no crisis too great to deter Barack “Hoops” Obama from his appointed rounds. What would it take to keep him from basketball? A terror attack on U.S. soil? I’m thinking even that might not do it. Following the rampage by an American soldier Sunday, Obama showed far more outrage than he did after the Fort Hood massacre. Still, even as events unfold today in Afghanistan, all systems are go for some March Madness. Taliban militants opened fire today on an Afghan government delegation visiting one of the two villages in southern Afghanistan where a US soldier is...

Right now, our troops are being used as props in a campaign year, as pawns by dull-witted generals who just don’t know what else to do, and as cash cows by corrupt Afghan politicians, generals and warlords (all of whom agree that it’s virtuous to rob the Americans blind). What are our goals? What is our strategy? We’re told, endlessly, that things are improving in Afghanistan, yet, ten years ago, a U.S. Army general, unarmed, could walk the streets of Kabul without risk. Today, there is no city in Afghanistan where a U.S. general could stroll the streets. We may...

Check out the semantics in this update - no worries though, shooter was Taliban (not infidel)& besides, only one Afghan soldier dead anyway: More: 3 injured including Afghan soldier when delegation visiting site of US soldier killings attacked by militants Taliban fire on Afghan officials at attack site Taliban militants opened fire Tuesday on an Afghan government delegation visiting villages in southern Afghanistan where a U.S. soldier is suspected of killing 16 civilians. The gunfire killed an Afghan soldier who was providing security for the delegation in Balandi village, said Gen. Abdul Razaq, the police chief for Kandahar province ....

Long before the US soldier suspected of slaying 16 Afghan villagers was identified as an Army sergeant from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the installation had earned a reputation as the most troubled outpost in the American military. The Army station near Tacoma, Washington, has come under scrutiny as the home of several soldiers involved in wartime atrocities in 2010 and a base scarred by a record number of suicides last year. It has deployed troops repeatedly to Iraq, and late last year, sent soldiers to Afghanistan. The independent military newspaper Stars and Stripes in December 2010 called Lewis-McChord "the most troubled...

Efforts to end the international mission in Afghanistan, curtail Iran's nuclear ambitions and halt the bloody repression of Syria's opposition will dominate talks opening Tuesday between U.S. President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron is heading to the United States for a three-day visit focused on current and looming foreign policy challenges, seeking to sketch out in more detail the planned withdrawal of international forces from Afghanistan by the end of 2014. The two leaders, who last held talks in person at the United Nations in September, are meeting ahead of a key NATO summit on the...

With Sunday's news that a US soldier massacred 16 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children, in their sleep and then burned the bodies, the little that the US can claim to have achieved in Afghanistan, at great cost over a decade, is now likely to be lost. No American, and probably no westerner, will be safe in Afghanistan for a decade after the soldier's murderous rampage. Really, if they're willing to murder people over burned books, imagine the intensity of Afghan hatred for a truly heinous crime against sleeping civilians, with one man losing all 11 members of his family....