Freedomshift

Spiegel reports this week that drug dealers and low-level Taliban members were targeted for death by drone: NATO didn’t just target the Taliban leadership, but also eliminated mid- and lower-level members of the group on a large scale. Some Afghans were only on the list because, as drug dealers, they were allegedly supporting the insurgents. The operations were based on the lists maintained by the CIA and NATO — Obama’s lists. The White House dubbed the strategy “escalate and exit.” McChrystal’s successor, General David Petraeus, documented the strategy in “Field Manual 3-24″ on fighting insurgencies, which remains a standard work today. Petraeus outlined three stages in fighting guerilla organizations like the Taliban. The first was a cleansing phase …. Behind closed doors, Petraeus and his staff explained exactly what was meant by “cleansing.” German politicians recall something that Michael T. Flynn, the head of ISAF intelligence in Afghanistan, once said during a ...

David Francis The Fiscal Times Mon, 03 Jun 2013 00:00 CDT © AP Photo/Gervasio Sanchez    The number of contractors working in Afghanistan now vastly outnumbers American troops stationed there, according to a Congressional Research Service report . CRS, along with the Government Accountability Office , also determined that the Pentagon is unable to properly document the work these contractors are doing. And the information DOD is receiving is often unreliable and inaccurate. According to CRS, there are now 108,000 private workers in Afghanistan, a workforce that dwarfs the 65,700 American troops still stationed there. That means there are 1.6 contractors for every American soldier in Afghanistan. This is an increase from last month, when The Fiscal Times reported that there were 1.4 contractors per American soldier . Given the size of the private forces, it's not surprising that CRS found that in recent years, the Defense Department spent more than any other a...