Thursday, December 6, 2012

Phony Taliban peace envoy detonates explosives and wounds Afghan intelligence chief

Reuters reported on Thursday:
A Taliban suicide bomber posing as a peace messenger wounded Afghanistan's intelligence chief in Kabul on Thursday, another sign that the government is struggling to improve security ahead of a NATO pullout in 2014...

"The bomber was a peace messenger sent by the Taliban to the Afghan government, around 3 p.m. in a meeting with the head of NDS, detonated his explosives," said NDS spokesman Shafiqullah Tahiri.

"Right now the head of the NDS is in good condition. The surgery was a success."

The Afghan Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing, which highlighted Afghanistan's ongoing instability as U.S.-led NATO troops prepare to withdraw by the end of 2014.

After more than 10 years of war against Western forces as well as Afghan troops, militants are capable of striking in the heart of the capital.

The attack was almost a carbon copy of last year's assassination of Afghanistan's chief peace negotiator, Burhanuddin Rabbani.

He died at his Kabul home when an insurgent posing as a peace envoy detonated explosives concealed in a turban.
The Obama administration, in its desperate attempts to reach out, and to make nice, to the Taliban, has also been duped by phony peace envoys.

The New York Times reported in November of 2010 as follows:
For months, the secret talks unfolding between Taliban and Afghan leaders to end the war appeared to be showing promise, if only because of the appearance of a certain insurgent leader at one end of the table: Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, one of the most senior commanders in the Taliban movement.

But now, it turns out, Mr. Mansour was apparently not Mr. Mansour at all. In an episode that could have been lifted from a spy novel, United States and Afghan officials now say the Afghan man was an impostor, and high-level discussions conducted with the assistance of NATO appear to have achieved little.

“It’s not him,” said a Western diplomat in Kabul intimately involved in the discussions. “And we gave him a lot of money.”...

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man...

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hami Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end.

As recently as last month, American and Afghan officials held high hopes for the talks...

The American officials said they and officials of other NATO governments were helping to facilitate the discussions, by providing air transport and securing roadways for Taliban leaders coming from Pakistan...

Last month, White House officials asked The New York Times to withhold Mr. Mansour’s name from an article about the peace talks, expressing concern that the talks would be jeopardized — and Mr. Mansour’s life put at risk — if his involvement were publicized....

Some officials say the man may simply have been a freelance fraud, posing as a Taliban leader in order to enrich himself.

Others say the man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”
You've got to give credit where credit is due: Obama and the Taliban are equally proficient in the art of duping; in the art of pulling the wool over people's eyes.

Obama has managed to dupe more than half of the American people [registered voters] into believing his phony rhetoric, and the Taliban managed to dupe Obama; they gave the crafty and cunning Chicago pol a taste of his own medicine.

However, the question arises as follows:

Obama is an 'appeaser' - the ultimate appeaser - and like most appeasers, he allows himself to be duped by the worst elements of society, even cold-blooded terrorists.

But the American people? What's their excuse for letting themselves be duped by Obama?

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