http://www.france24.com/en/20121003-biden-gaffe-eve-us-presidential-debate
Biden gaffe on eve of US presidential debate
Republicans seized on an apparent gaffe by Joe Biden, pictured in September 2012, in which the US vice president remarked Tuesday that the country's middle class had "been buried in the last four years."
Students participate in a rehearsal for the first presidential debate to be held at Magness Arena at the University of Denver. With President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney laying low ahead of the showdown, their running mates battled for the spotlight, and Republicans suggested Biden's gaffe marked a stunning admission five weeks away from the November 6 election.
Workers make adjustments to the stage ahead of the first presidential debate at the University of Denver in Colorado. A prime-time debate watched by tens of millions which could help determine the political future of the two rivals.
US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney shakes hand with a woman after ordering his lunch at a Chipotle restaurant in Denver, Colorado. The Republican challenger spent the day with top aides and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who is playing Obama in mock debates. When the nominee ducked out for lunch at a Denver restaurant, reporters asked if he was ready.
US President Barack Obama, seen here, too took a break from debate camp to tour the Hoover Dam, the vast concrete bulk on the Colorado River that is a symbol of public works projects undertaken in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression.
AFP - Vice President Joe Biden inadvertently tossed raw meat to Republican rivals Tuesday barely 24 hours ahead of the first presidential debate, saying the middle class has been "buried" during the last four years.
With President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney laying low ahead of Wednesday's Denver showdown, their running mates battled for the spotlight, and Republicans suggested Biden's gaffe marked a stunning admission five weeks away from the November 6 election.
"How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that's been buried in the last four years," Biden, addressing supporters in North Carolina, said in reference to the period he and Obama have been leading the nation.
The White House quickly sought to douse the flames, saying Biden was talking about how president George W. Bush's policies continued to hurt the middle class deep into Obama's term.
And Biden himself offered up his own correction in a tweet from his official Twitter feed: "'The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported."
With President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney laying low ahead of Wednesday's Denver showdown, their running mates battled for the spotlight, and Republicans suggested Biden's gaffe marked a stunning admission five weeks away from the November 6 election.
"How they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that's been buried in the last four years," Biden, addressing supporters in North Carolina, said in reference to the period he and Obama have been leading the nation.
The White House quickly sought to douse the flames, saying Biden was talking about how president George W. Bush's policies continued to hurt the middle class deep into Obama's term.
And Biden himself offered up his own correction in a tweet from his official Twitter feed: "'The middle class was buried by the policies that Romney and Ryan have supported."
But the Republicans, who argue that the middle class has been hard hit by four years of an Obama economy, let fly in the blink of an eye.
"Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November," said a tweet from Mitt Romney's official Twitter account.
Romney's running mate Paul Ryan issued a scathing response.
"Unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 months. Our economy is limping along right now. Vice President Biden, just today, said that the middle class, over the last four years, has been 'buried.' We agree," he told a rally in Iowa.
"That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next president of the United States."
Republicans suggested it would be an easy punchline for Romney during Wednesday's prime-time debate.
"Thank you Vice President Biden," former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, an aggressive Romney surrogate, quipped to reporters.
Meanwhile the election protagonists were making final preparations for perhaps the high-profile moment of the 2012 campaign: a prime-time debate watched by tens of millions which could help determine the political future of the two rivals.
"Agree with @JoeBiden, the middle class has been buried the last 4 years, which is why we need a change in November," said a tweet from Mitt Romney's official Twitter account.
Romney's running mate Paul Ryan issued a scathing response.
"Unemployment has been above eight percent for 43 months. Our economy is limping along right now. Vice President Biden, just today, said that the middle class, over the last four years, has been 'buried.' We agree," he told a rally in Iowa.
"That means we need to stop digging by electing Mitt Romney the next president of the United States."
Republicans suggested it would be an easy punchline for Romney during Wednesday's prime-time debate.
"Thank you Vice President Biden," former New Hampshire governor John Sununu, an aggressive Romney surrogate, quipped to reporters.
Meanwhile the election protagonists were making final preparations for perhaps the high-profile moment of the 2012 campaign: a prime-time debate watched by tens of millions which could help determine the political future of the two rivals.
Obama will aim to maintain the aura of capable commander-in-chief who has steered America away from depression; Romney will strive to knock him off his pedestal on foreign policy and blame him for the stagnant economy.
The Republican challenger spent the day with top aides and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who is playing Obama in mock debates. When the nominee ducked out for lunch at a Denver restaurant, reporters asked if he was ready.
"I'm getting there," Romney said.
Obama too took a break from debate camp to tour the Hoover Dam, the vast concrete bulk on the Colorado River that is a symbol of public works projects undertaken in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression.
"It's spectacular and I've never seen it before," Obama said, although he ignored questions shouted to him by reporters about how his debate practice was going.
Obama on Sunday downplayed his own debating skills, and said the clash should not be about who could fire off the best "zingers."
Romney, a multimillionaire investor and former governor of Massachusetts, offered a similar message, saying people should not focus on "who's going to score the punches," but on substance.
When he was not mocking Biden, Ryan was outlining the importance of the coming election.
"We are picking what kind of country we're going to be and what kind of people we're going to be for an entire generation. That's the stakes in this election," Ryan told supporters in the town of Clinton, Iowa.
The Republican challenger spent the day with top aides and Ohio Senator Rob Portman, who is playing Obama in mock debates. When the nominee ducked out for lunch at a Denver restaurant, reporters asked if he was ready.
"I'm getting there," Romney said.
Obama too took a break from debate camp to tour the Hoover Dam, the vast concrete bulk on the Colorado River that is a symbol of public works projects undertaken in the aftermath of the 1930s Great Depression.
"It's spectacular and I've never seen it before," Obama said, although he ignored questions shouted to him by reporters about how his debate practice was going.
Obama on Sunday downplayed his own debating skills, and said the clash should not be about who could fire off the best "zingers."
Romney, a multimillionaire investor and former governor of Massachusetts, offered a similar message, saying people should not focus on "who's going to score the punches," but on substance.
When he was not mocking Biden, Ryan was outlining the importance of the coming election.
"We are picking what kind of country we're going to be and what kind of people we're going to be for an entire generation. That's the stakes in this election," Ryan told supporters in the town of Clinton, Iowa.
"Do we want stagnation or growth? Do we want dependency or opportunity and upward mobility?"
Obama currently leads the national race by five points in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll and in most key battlegrounds.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll out Monday gave Obama a slimmer 49 to 47 percent lead, but, tellingly, likely voters in swing states sided with the president by 52 to 41 percent.
And a CNN poll out on Tuesday showed Romney in a deep hole with Hispanic voters, who make up the country's largest ethnic minority demographic but who support Obama 70-26 percent.
Perhaps as an effort to woo Latinos, Romney outlined a shift on immigration Tuesday, saying he would not deport young, law-abiding illegal immigrants permitted to stay in the country under an executive order issued by Obama.
"The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid," Romney told the Denver Post.
Obama currently leads the national race by five points in the latest Gallup daily tracking poll and in most key battlegrounds.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll out Monday gave Obama a slimmer 49 to 47 percent lead, but, tellingly, likely voters in swing states sided with the president by 52 to 41 percent.
And a CNN poll out on Tuesday showed Romney in a deep hole with Hispanic voters, who make up the country's largest ethnic minority demographic but who support Obama 70-26 percent.
Perhaps as an effort to woo Latinos, Romney outlined a shift on immigration Tuesday, saying he would not deport young, law-abiding illegal immigrants permitted to stay in the country under an executive order issued by Obama.
"The people who have received the special visa that the president has put in place, which is a two-year visa, should expect that the visa would continue to be valid," Romney told the Denver Post.
and regarding the Libya attack - Hillary and the State department have some explaining to do.......
Hillary to Issa: You should reserve judgment about Benghazi until … November; Update: Feds received “about a dozen” intel reports pointing to terrorism within hours of attack
POSTED AT 9:42 PM ON OCTOBER 2, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT
Via Powerline, I think this is her version of a compromise. Deep down, she’d prefer that he held off until November 2016.
Clinton said that the State Department’s Accountability Review Board will begin work this week and the letter revealed the names of all five board members. In addition to former Deputy Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, who will lead the board, the other members will be former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen (ret.), Catherine Bertini, Hugh Turner, and Richard Shinnick.Clinton asked Issa to withhold any final conclusions about the Benghazi attack until the review board finishes its work and reports to Congress, which could come as early as November or as late as early next year. She pledged to work with Issa’s committee and asked him to submit any requests for information or witnesses at hearings to the State Department’s Office of Legislative Affairs.
How’s the Accountability Review Board going to get to the bottom of what happened when the FBI still can’t get access to the crime scene? The news tonight from Reuters is that the State Department’s still negotiating with the Libyan government to get people in there, nearly three weeks after the attack. Even the locals can’t quite believe the foot-dragging:
Three weeks after the attack that killed four Americans in this city, the investigation of its causes remains in its initial stages, with just a handful of suspects detained, the crime scenes minimally secured and Walid Faraj waiting for a phone call from someone, anyone, asking him what he saw on the night he was injured while protecting the U.S. mission…“Since that day, nobody has called, nobody cared,” said Faraj, 28, who lost a tooth in the attack and whose legs are peppered with small wounds from the firefight. “How is it the Americans didn’t anticipate anything?”Witnesses are scattered across Benghazi, a port town where the uprising that toppled Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi began. But many witnesses say they haven’t heard from investigators.The Washington Post is on the scene but Hillary Clinton’s crack investigative team is nowhere to be found. Between this and her letter to Issa, I’m wondering if the White House has finally transitioned from trying to cover up what happened with “spontaneous protest” nonsense to simply stonewalling the investigation until the election is safely past.ABC has something new out tonight about Stevens warning a retired military officer in late August, just a few weeks before his death, not to travel to Libya because it was too dangerous with so many militias still running around. That’s the backdrop for the light security footprint that State imposed on him.Update: Take three minutes to watch this important Fox News vid revealing how State did nothing — actually, less than nothing — when the Libyan contractors hired to protect the consulate complained to their British parent company that security at the building was substandard. State refused to intervene, and then, when an American firm was hired to provide additional security, State … shut it down. T-minus eight days and counting until those House hearings.
Update: Cover up.
Within hours of last month’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama’s administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said…The stream of intelligence flowing into Washington within hours of the Benghazi attacks contained data from communications intercepts and U.S. informants, which were then fashioned into polished initial assessments for policymakers.Officials familiar with them said they contained evidence that members of a militant faction, Ansar al-Sharia, as well as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, were involved in the assaults…One official said initial reporting suggested militants had begun planning attacks on U.S. targets in Benghazi before Sept. 11, but may well have decided to use the protests as a pretext for moving forward that day.
Note well: Even the “initial reporting” pointed to a pre-planned attack with the protest just window dressing exploited by the jihadis. And yet they pushed the “spontaneous” line afterward for days. Question: If U.S. intel had a dozen or so bits of info pointing to terrorism within a few hours of the attack, why did the CIA circulate talking points for legislators pushing the “spontaneous” nonsense? That’s the next blank to be filled in. Exit quotation from Saxby Chambliss: “It seems increasingly clear that the briefings provided to Congress and the public about the Benghazi attack were at best incomplete and at worst misleading.”
and more regarding Libya debacle...
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/259677-report-libya-consulate-subject-to-previous-threats-attacks
GOP: US Consulate received repeated threats, had requested more security
- 10/02/12 03:28 PM ET
Two House Republicans say they have been informed by whistleblowers that the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was attacked and threatened 13 times before the incident last month that killed four Americans.
Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a letter on Tuesday that detailed the whistleblowers’ allegations.
The congressmen said the consulate asked for more security to deal with the growing threat but was turned down by the administration.
“In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi. The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”
The two lawmakers told Clinton they intend to convene a hearing of Issa’s House Oversight panel on Oct. 10 to review possible security failures in Libya, including “State Department security assessments and security related decision making.”
Clinton will “cooperate fully” with the Republican probe, the State Department said.
“The secretary intends to respond to the congressmen today,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at her daily briefing Tuesday.
“And her letter will make absolutely clear the desire of this department, her personal desire to cooperate closely with the committee and with all members of Congress, both in their document requests, in their requests for witnesses for their hearing, because we share the same goal: We want to get to the bottom of precisely what happened and learn any lessons that we need to learn from it. We're taking this very, very seriously.”
The letter from the GOP congressmen for the first time reveals an April 6 attack against the consulate in which two former security guards threw homemade improvised explosives over the fence of the compound.
The letter also says militants made no secret of their intention to target Americans in Libya.
On May 22, a warning message was posted on Facebook that a rocket-propelled grenade attack against the Red Cross offices in Benghazi would be followed by a “message for the Americans disturbing the skies over Derna.” A separate threat was made the following month against Ambassador Christopher Stevens that mentioned his morning run with a security detail, complete with a photo of the late ambassador.
Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a Sept. 11 attack on the consulate. The Obama administration initially blamed the attack on militants who acted spontaneously and used protests against an anti-Islam video posted online as cover.
But the administration has shifted its account, with Director of National Intelligence James Clapper calling it a “deliberate and organized terrorist attack” on Friday.
Republicans say the administration’s account has been misleading. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and other GOP lawmakers believe the attack was premeditated and argue the administration has played down that possibility because it could hurt President Obama’s reelection effort.
and a border agent killed today - will a link to Fast and Furious come out of this shooting.....
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/10/02/2-us-border-agents-shot-1-killed-near-major-drug-cooridor-in-arizona/#ixzz28918ysu6
Two U.S. Border Patrol agents were shot, one fatally, Tuesday morning in an area in south Arizona known as a major drug-smuggling corridor, authorities said.
Border Patrol identified the slain agent as 30-year-old Nicolas Ivie.
The shooting occurred at the Brian Terry Station near Naco, Ariz., which is just south of Tucson. The station was named after an agent who was killed in the line of duty in December 2010. The area is considered a remote part of the state and sources tell Fox News that the shooting occurred at 1:50 a.m. local time and about 8 miles from the border.
* * *
and....
http://www.businessinsider.com/stratfor-the-us-works-with-cartels-2012-9
Leaked emails from the private U.S. security firm Stratfor cite a Mexican diplomat who says the U.S. government works with Mexican cartels to traffic drugs into the United States and has sided with the Sinaloa cartel in an attempt to limit the violence in Mexico.
Many people have doubted the quality of Stratfor's intelligence, but the information from MX1—a Mexican foreign service officer who doubled as a confidential source for Stratfor—seems to corroborate recent claims about U.S. involvement in the drug war in Mexico.
Most notably, the reports from MX1 line up with assertions by a Sinaloa cartel insider that cartel boss Joaquin Guzman is a U.S. informant, the Sinaloa cartel was "given carte blanche to continue to smuggle tons of illicit drugs into Chicago," and Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the Sinaloa cartel in exchange for information used to take down rival cartels.
An email with the subject "Re: From MX1 -- 2" sent Monday, April 19, 2010, to Stratfor vice president of intelligence Fred Burton says:
I think the US sent a signal that could be construed as follows:
"To the [Juárez] and Sinaloa cartels: Thank you for providing our market with drugs over the years. We are now concerned about your perpetration of violence, and would like to see you stop that. In this regard, please know that Sinaloa is bigger and better than [the Juárez cartel]. Also note that [Ciudad Juárez] is very important to us, as is the whole border. In this light, please talk amongst yourselves and lets all get back to business. Again, we recognize that Sinaloa is bigger and better, so either [the Juárez cartel] gets in line or we will mess you up."
In sum, I have a gut feeling that the US agencies tried to send a signal telling the cartels to negotiate themselves. They unilaterally declared a winner, and this is unprecedented, and deserves analysis.
Bill Conroy of Narco News reports that MX1's description matches the publicly available information on Fernando de la Mora Salcedo — a Mexican foreign service officer who studied law at the University of New Mexico and served at the Mexican Consulates in El Paso, Texas, and Phoenix.
In a June 13, 2010, email with the subject "Re: Get follow up from mx1? Thx," MX1 states that U.S. and Mexican law enforcement sent their "signal" by discretely brokering a deal with cartels in Tijuana, just south of San Diego, Calif., which reduced the violence in the area considerably.
It is not so much a message for the Mexican government as it is for the Sinaloa cartel and [the Juárez cartel] themselves. Basically, the message they want to send out is that Sinaloa is winning and that the violence is unacceptable. They want the CARTELS to negotiate with EACH OTHER. The idea is that if they can do this, violence will drop and the governments will allow controlled drug trades.
The email went on to say that "the major routes and methods for bulk shipping into the US" from Ciudad Juárez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas, "have already been negotiated with US authorities" and that large shipments of drugs from the Sinaloa cartel "are OK with the Americans."
In July a Mexican state government spokesman told Al Jazeera that the CIA and other international security forces "don't fight drug traffickers" as much as "try to manage the drug trade." A mid-level Mexican official told Al Jazeera that based on discussions he's had with U.S. officials working in Ciudad Juárez, the allegations were true.
WikiLeaks has published 2,878 out of what it says is a cache of 5 million internal Stratfor emails (dated between July 2004 and December 2011) obtained by the hacker collective Anonymous around Christmas.
and this appears to be blatantly illegal but when did breaking the law matter when votes are at stake in Virginia .....
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/02/lockheed-sure-well-keep-our-workers-in-the-dark-about-layoffs/
Lockheed: Sure, we’ll keep our workers in the dark about layoffs
POSTED AT 8:41 AM ON OCTOBER 2, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY
To quote Glenn Reynolds, they told me if I voted for John McCain that the corporations would conspire with the government to keep the working class in the dark — and they were right! Normally, Democrats would demand that companies considering layoffs tell their employees about it. In fact, Democrats passed a law requiring corporations to do so, the WARN Act of 1988, which they passed with veto-proof majorities and which became law without then-President Ronald Reagan’s signature.
These days, they’re pressuring companies to keep quiet about layoffs that will occur when sequestration kicks in, and Lockheed has buckled:
Defense contractor Lockheed Martin heeded a request from the White House today – one with political overtones – and announced it will not issue layoff notices to thousands of employees just days before the November presidential election.Lockheed, one of the biggest employers in the key battleground state of Virginia, previously warned it would have to issue notices to employees, required by law, due to looming defense cuts set to begin to take effect after Jan. 2 because of the failure of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction – the so-called Super-committee, which was created to find a way to cut $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade.
The law requires any company with 100 or more employees to provide a 60-day warning ahead of planned layoffs. However, both the Department of Labor and OMB insisted that it didn’t apply to the sequestration issue, because no one really believes that Congress will allow the automatic cuts to go through. That can be said about other kinds of layoffs as well, including those that don’t hinge on the whim of elections and politicians.
The kicker for Lockheed came when the Obama administration indemnified corporations for keeping workers in the dark:
So the Office of Management and Budget went a step further in guidance issued late Friday afternoon. If an agency terminates or modifies a contract, and the contractor must close a plant or lay off workers en masse, the company could treat employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability, attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs as allowable costs to be covered by the contracting agency—so long as the contractor has followed a course of action consistent with the Labor Department’s guidance. The legal fees would be covered regardless of the outcome of the litigation, according to the OMB guidance issued by Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management, and Joseph Jordan, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.
Democrats have now gone from demanding the WARN Act to paying companies to violate it. I guess the working class is only valuable when they serve as a talking point, eh? They told me that if I voted for John McCain, the working man would get screwed by Washington and the board room, and … well, you know.
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/29/obama-administration-tries-to-block-sequester-layoff-notices/
Obama administration tries to block sequester layoff notices
POSTED AT 10:01 AM ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2012 BY ED MORRISSEY
The latest durable-goods orders report must have the Obama administration — and the Obama campaign — more worried than they publicly let on. According to the National Journal, the White House will press government contractors to hold off on issuing layoff notices in October in anticipation of the sequestration cuts, afraid of the political backlash that will ensue. In fact, the Obama administration is offering to indemnify government contractors for losses and fines for delaying those notices:
The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.Some defense companies—including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America—have said they expect to send notices to their employees 60 days before sequestration takes effect to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advance warning to workers deemed reasonably likely to lose their jobs. Companies appeared undeterred by a July 30 guidance from the Labor Department, which said issuing such notices would be inappropriate, due to the possibility that sequestration may be averted. The Labor Department also said companies do not have enough information about how the cuts might be implemented to determine which workers or specific programs could be affected should Congress fail to reach a compromise to reduce the deficit, triggering $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, half from defense, half non-defense. For 2013, that would amount to $109 billion in spending cuts.
Yesterday, the OMB went a little farther in wheedling contractors into playing ball:
So the Office of Management and Budget went a step further in guidance issued late Friday afternoon. If an agency terminates or modifies a contract, and the contractor must close a plant or lay off workers en masse, the company could treat employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability, attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs as allowable costs to be covered by the contracting agency—so long as the contractor has followed a course of action consistent with the Labor Department’s guidance. The legal fees would be covered regardless of the outcome of the litigation, according to the OMB guidance issued by Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management, and Joseph Jordan, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.
In other words, taxpayers will cover the costs of these layoffs through more spending, even though the point of sequestration was to force cuts in government spending. Instead of paying contractors — mainly defense workers — to work, we’ll start paying them not to work. And why? Because the White House doesn’t want massive numbers of layoff notices coming in the last few days ahead of the election. And make no mistake — with overall durable goods orders dropping 13.2% in a month and defense orders dropping 40%, those layoff notices would otherwise be coming, and sooner rather than later.
In other words, the White House wants taxpayers to pay to cover up the inevitable outcome of sequestration to keep Barack Obama from suffering the political consequences of his own deal. Unless those funds are coming from Team Obama, this looks pretty corrupt — which is undoubtedly why Obama chose to have this OMB edict issued late on Friday afternoon, when few would be paying attention.
US AND AFGHAN FORCES CLASH, LEAVING 5 DEAD
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KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) -- A firefight broke out between U.S. forces and their Afghan army allies in eastern Afghanistan Sunday, killing two Americans and three Afghan soldiers and pushing the number of U.S. troops killed in the long-running war 2,000.
The fighting started Saturday when what is believed to have been a mortar fired by insurgents struck a checkpoint set up by U.S. forces in Wardak province, said Shahidullah Shahid, a provincial government spokesman. He said the Americans thought they were under attack from a nearby Afghan army checkpoint and fired on it, prompting the Afghan soldiers to return fire.
The Afghan Defense Ministry said the gunbattle was the result of a "misunderstanding" between international forces and Afghan soldiers manning a checkpoint in the Sayd Abad district.
NATO's International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF, provided a different account.
"After a short conversation took place between (Afghan army) and ISAF personnel firing occurred which resulted in the fatal wounding of an ISAF soldier and the death of his civilian colleague," the coalition said in a statement. It said the three Afghan soldiers died "in an ensuing exchange of fire."
NATO did not say whether it considered this an "insider" attack on foreign forces by Afghan allies.
There has been rising tide of such attacks in which Afghan soldiers or police assault their international allies. The killings pose one of the greatest threats to NATO's mission in the country, endangering a partnership key to training up Afghan security forces and withdrawing international troops.
While it may be days before it becomes clear who fired on whom first, the incident illustrates how tense relations have become between international troops and their Afghan allies.
Officials on both sides went into damage control mode, arguing that Saturday's violence did not mark a new low in Afghan-U.S. relations and urging patience while investigators tried to figure out exactly what had happened.
The deputy commander of NATO's military force in Afghanistan, British Lt. Gen. Adrian Bradshaw, called a last-minute news conference in Kabul to address the incident, even though he had few details to give.
He said the initial report of an insider attack should be amended to note that the incident "is now understood possibly to have involved insurgent fire," and tried to stress that relations between international troops and their Afghan allies "are very strong and very effective."
A spokesman for the Afghan Defense Ministry, Gen. Zahir Azimi, also sought to downplay the incident.
"In a misunderstanding shooting broke out between Afghan army and ISAF forces. As a result of the shooting, three army soldiers were killed, three other soldiers were wounded and number of ISAF forces were killed and wounded," Azimi said in a statement.
One U.S. official confirmed that the service member killed was American, while another confirmed that the civilian was also American. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of the dead had not yet been formally announced.
The number of American military dead reflects an Associated Press count of those members of the armed services killed inside Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion on Oct. 7, 2001.
In the south meanwhile, three Afghan police officers were killed when insurgents attacked a checkpoint in Helmand province Sunday morning, provincial police spokesman Fareed Ahmad said.
and more wasted taxpayer money.....
http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/29/good-news-fed-govt-making-yet-another-solar-investment-on-our-behalf/
Good news: Fed govt making yet another solar “investment” on our behalfPOSTED AT 4:01 PM ON SEPTEMBER 29, 2012 BY ERIKA JOHNSEN
Because the Obama Department of Energy’s loan-guarantee program for renewable energy startups and technologies has been such an unmitigated and resounding success, most particularly their well-trumpeted “investments” in solar-panel manufacturers, the federal government’s good common sense and dispassionate judgment have proved it to be a leading force in encouraging the research and development that has made these environmentalist-preferred technologies such viable and competitive substitutes for traditional energies. What’s more, these promising new industries have created untoldproductive, private-sector jobs, and the taxpayer has seen a healthy and enriching return on their initial “investments.”
…Just kidding — that didn’t happen. Multiple of the DOE’s chosen loan recipients are ailing, failing or bankrupt; the taxpayer has incurred substantial socialized losses; and still the federal government insists on fancying itself a venture-capital firm hell-bent on amassing an undiversified, highly risky portfolio based on politics rather than free-market potential. But, hey, what’s a few billion dollars here and there when the faceless taxpayer is the one on the hook? Via Fox News:
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http://www.businessinsider.com/krasting-social-security-and-the-beach-2012-9
( And China , Russia , Afghanistan , Pakistan , India all waiting to see what additional flexibility Obama displays when the election passes... )
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 29, 2012
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