Breaking news from the Kabul desk as more Americans, this time two officers of unknown rank, have been killed in the aftermath of the wayward disposal of some Korans.
A gunman killed two American advisers inside a heavily guarded government compound in Kabul Saturday, officials said, as protests against the burning of copies of the Muslim holy book roiled the country for a fifth day.
U.S. officials said the assailant remained at large as neither an apology from President Barack Obama nor gunfire from Afghan police could quench public outrage over what NATO insisted was an inadvertent desecration of the Quran.
Two Afghan officials said the ministry shooting did not involve any Afghans. They spoke anonymously to discuss a NATO incident. One of the officials noted that the shooting occurred inside a secure room at the ministry that Afghan staff do not have access to.
NATO confirmed that two service members were killed, but spokesman Lt. Col Jimmie Cummings said "initial reports say it was not a Western shooter." He declined to provide further information.
A U.S. official in Washington confirmed that the two killed were American. The official spoke anonymously to discuss information that had not been publicly released.
"The assailant is unknown, and an aggressive search is under way to determine who is responsible," Pentagon press secretary George Little said.
At this point, we've moved past the point of passionate displays and are now seeing the calculated use of "outrage" to attack American military personnel in the hopes there will be no retaliation from quailing Americans. Looks like it's working just great if you are into whipped up frenzies.
When the US originally invaded Afghanistan, most thinking people - obviously this excludes fifth-column leftists - knew that the country would never be pacified entirely so that walking in you could guess that there would be some low level of conflict no matter what we did. And that's what we ended up with. While Iraq burned, Afghanistan was about as quiet as you would expect. But that wasn't good enough for wise-guy Democrats who declared the Afghan war to be some sort of "dropped ball," based on what I have no earthly idea. It's not as if an anti-war party would have any idea how and when to fight a war.
While a surge in Iraq was necessary to pacify a war-torn country, the completely unnecessary surge in Afghanistan looks to have destabilized a pacified country. Heck of a job.
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