Word: kabul
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There's a growing dread at the CIA these days that the vultures are circling, waiting to pick off the agency's best parts. The latest move causing concern is a play by Admiral Dennis Blair, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), to name the next intelligence chief in Kabul. CIA director Leon Panetta, who has already named his own chief from the CIA's ranks, is reportedly fighting back, much to his boss's consternation. The decision about who gets Kabul will reportedly be made in the White House, though Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein has said...
...would be justified in asking itself, What will stop Blair from taking another key station - Baghdad, for instance? Blair is a Navy officer, and the suspicion is that his grab for Kabul has something to do with a plan for the Pentagon to assume the CIA's authority. What's more, it's not as if Blair's argument is without merit. We are in the middle of two inconclusive wars, and the Pentagon needs good, detailed tactical intelligence on these two countries, so why shouldn't Blair cater to the Pentagon's needs, possibly even appoint a uniformed military...
...than 80% of the intelligence budget. It runs the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency and is in charge of satellites. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the Pentagon dwarfs the CIA in terms of people and money it has for spying. Which leaves the CIA with stations like Kabul serving as small but important citadels of independent civilian intelligence. (Read "The CIA's Silent War in Pakistan...
...highway that runs between Kabul and the southeastern city of Kandahar is the most brutal evidence of the Taliban's IED offensive. The road is a showcase U.S.-funded project, meant to connect two of the country's most vital commercial centers. But today it is an automotive graveyard, littered with burned-out carcasses of vehicles and disrupted by crumbled bridges. One infamous stretch is lined with the wreckage of 40 transport trucks, the remains of a 90-minute enemy ambush dubbed the "jingle-truck massacre." (Afghans hang chains and coins from their truck bumpers, which create a jingling sound...
...attacks are increasing all over the country. Last week a bomb-and-shoot ambush left three soldiers dead near the main U.S. base in Bagram, about an hour's drive north of Kabul, the third such strike in the area in less than a week. Two days earlier, a pair of bombings in eastern Paktika province killed 10 Afghan security guards traveling in a convoy, underscoring the dangers faced by Afghan forces who too often remain underequipped and overexposed. (Watch a video on the challenge for the U.S. military in Afghanistan...