OUT WITH A BANG:

U.S. Airstrikes Rise In Afghanistan as Fighting Intensifies: In Response to More Aggressive Taliban, Attacks Are Double Those in Iraq War (Thomas E. Ricks, June 18, 2006, Washington Post)

As fighting in Afghanistan has intensified over the past three months, the U.S. military has conducted 340 airstrikes there, more than twice the 160 carried out in the much higher-profile war in Iraq, according to data from the Central Command, the U.S. military headquarters for the Middle East.

The airstrikes appear to have increased in recent days as the United States and its allies have launched counteroffensives against the Taliban in the south and southeast, strafing and bombing a stronghold in Uruzgan province and pounding an area near Khost with 500-pound bombs.

U.S. officials say the activity is a response to an increasingly aggressive Taliban, whose leaders realize that long-term trends are against them as the power of the Afghan central government grows.

"I think the Taliban realize they have a window to act," Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Freakley, commander of the 22,000 U.S. troops in the country, said in a recent interview. "The enemy is working against a window that he knows is closing."

When your reality is that when you cluster you get bombed and when you attack you get shot you're looking through a darn small window to begin with.

Posted by Orrin Judd at June 18, 2006 9:39 AM