Just when you thought your admiration for the superb conduct of the military operation in Afghanistan could not get any higher, we learn that the coalition boys and goils are now heavily engaged in a massive new operation – to hunt down nearly 500 Taliban prisoners who have escaped from the main jail in Kandahar.

If we are to believe what we are told – always a bit dodgy, that – the prisoners dug a 1,000ft tunnel, taking five months to do it, and no one actually noticed. Nor did anyone notice anything amiss while the entire political wing of the prison emptied of inmates in an operation lasting four and a half hours, the escapees being ferried off to "secure destinations" by a fleet of cars the Taliban had organised – which no one noticed either.

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And remind me again, what are we doing in Afghanistan?

Er .....

This is a really great commentary.
Every word is a dagger right into the heart of the establishment leaving it for the idiocracy it really is.
I love your blog.

With a strategic deficit like that, God help us when the the holy war breaks out here..

The US Ranger, Pat Tillman, observed that, in more cases than was coincidence, captured taliban were released back into the field. Tillman had intended to make this public before he was shot in the back at close range by one of his ‘own side’. I’m making this reference from the interview given by Aaron Russo, just before his death, with Alex Jones. Russo said that his former friend, Nick Rockefeller, had explained that the Establishment wanted an on-going war which could never be declared ‘won’ and which would allow imposition of severe constraints on personnel liberties in the US, all in the name of ‘security’. It’s also a nice earner for the military corporations – Lockheed Martin, Boeing etc, all owned by the same interests.

So, 541 prisoners stage a breakout and get clean away, all under the watchful eyes of US military surveillance. It’s just amazing how the US military just goes to sleep for a couple of hours at a most ‘inconvenient’ time. Perhaps these taliban are so advanced that they can arrange the shut-down of US military forces. After all, on 9-11, somebody shut down the USAF. How is it possible that the airspace between Boston and Washington DC, an area which contains the political and economic heart of the US, was left completely defenceless? The second plane to hit New York had flown off course without communication for 40 minutes. On its way to New York, it actually flew within eyesight of McGuire Air Force base in New Jersey AFTER the first tower had already been hit!

541 prisoners escaping through a small tunnel? let’s assume that the rate of escape is one per minute. That’s 541 minutes or nine (9) hours. Aren’t these taliban just incredible!?

AA,

It would be a mistake to expect the US military to be always competent everywhere. The US military and many other organistations would like people to think that that are supremely competent for in the highly polarised world we seem to inhabit, thinking anything else must call into question their abilities. You say the USAF was shut down. Isn't it more likely that the USAF operated bad procedures and when they needed to work they simply weren't good enough.(and perhaps rationally could never have been good enough given the undoubted confusion and panic on that day) I'm thinking of a similarity with banking regulations written in good times that couldn't cope with an economic hiccup. It looked good enough on paper. It worked without a hitch in wargames.

The catch and release programme while not exactly shouted about was not a secret - the likes of Michael Yon have reported on it I believe. People were being captured but the procedures and equipment were not there to get captured insurgents out of the area.(ie a lack of helicopters and/or the land routes being unsafe) Come the next morning relatives of the captured insurgents roll up demanding they be released and to keep the locals reasonably onside the only option is to let the insurgents go.

Politicians and military people have got themselves into a terrible bind. They have to claim operations in Afghanistan are going well because they think the only alternative is for them to be not going well. Taking the time to Explain where things are genuinely progressing and what things could be done better rarely gets a look in.

I don't think Afghanistan is going to any particular plan. Groups like the arms industry and statist politicians who seek to strip us of our liberties are making ground because they are the best placed and most opportunistic. We are unsure. Someone promises us certainty. Those that are well placed to resist (eg the media) and to encourage us to resist largely choose not to. It is the road to serfdom.

PLEASE don't tell me you're using Alex Jones as a reference. He was one of the cheerleaders for planes falling out of the sky on Y2K Day. Of course, he was conveniently selling "Y2K survival kits" at the time...



Uh... on 9/11, it was presumed that the first plane crash was an accident. No one knew we were under attack until after the second plane you are complaining about hit the second tower.

So you think the Air Force should go around blasting lost planes out of the sky because they didn't stick to their flight path? Great idea... Newsflash: Commercial planes FREQUENTLY drift away from their flight plan. It happens more often than commercial airlines like to admit.

I have no explanation for the prisoner escape, but I'm pretty sure there's no big, hairy conspiracy going on. This one probably IS a foul up of epic proportions. PS: Foul ups can happen without a conspiracy behind them.

Do you know how old Alex Jones was in 1999? 26. Nobody's perfect, especially not when they are young.

Y2k was not a total non-event but so what he got that one wrong. Don't we all get things wrong? Why if Alex Jones gets 1 thing wrong does that discredit everything else. It's not as though our Norfie has never got anything wrong, and is not selling a product. Alex Jones is vastly superior to the mass media.

Watch Terrorstorm. Keep an open mind. All those who weren't immediately skeptical after 9/11 know how to argue the official view. That includes me. Probably Alan Aberdeen. Probably Tap. Been there; now understand it should be rejected.

@gareth - have a quick re-read of the bit that says -
The second plane to hit New York had flown off course without communication for 40 minutes. On its way to New York, it actually flew within eyesight of McGuire Air Force base in New Jersey AFTER the first tower had already been hit!

- and ask yourself if it really is credible that the USAF could have stood down for over an hour when everybody knew that the first of the twin towers had been hit.

On October 26, 1999, the famous golfer Payne Stewart boarded a private Learjet in Florida and left for Texas. Shortly after takeoff, Stewart's jet veered sharply off course and began heading northwest. All contact with air controllers was lost. Within 15 minutes of having gone off course, US fighter jets had already intercepted the jet. Everyone on board was dead due to depressurization. These fighter jets were dispatched by NORAD, the branch of the US air force whose job it is to monitor and defend US airspace 24 hours a day: there is no stand-down.

@mamapajamas, I'm not using Alex Jones as a reference: I'm using Aaron Russo as the reference or, at least, that what I wrote and that's how it reads to my eyes. Btw, on Y2K, the government in the UK spent over £2 billion on measures to 'prevent' any Y2K meltdown - yet you cite Alex Jones as the nutter?

The Afghanistan 'great escape' fiasco has no credibility, certainly not against the back-drop of lie after lie issued by all the agencies of the governments of the US and UK. They do these operations because they are so arrogant to believe that they will get away with it every time - and so far, they're right. Seriously - nine hours of escapes That's why a Qana-type inquiry to the events in Bristol is needed. If the 'authorities' and the lamestream media won't investigate their excesses, then certain bloggers will do so instead.

@twl - you're right. I was a full supporter of the official version of EVERYTHING until very recently. Now, thanks in no small measure to the dissenting views on this site, I check EVERYTHING before I go along with it. The less inquiring minds usually try to link any contrarian views with something absurd such as: oh - you question 7/7 because the bombers 7.40 train from Luton was cancelled and they and couldn't possibly have on the exploded tubes - I suppose men didn't land on the moon either? Fyi and to prevent any stupidities, man did land on the moon because there was the technology and the determination to do so.

The Stokes Croft event shows my default mode is still 100% gullibility as I immediately put my spin on the official narrative. I went straight into the Who's Right? question and didn't examine whether what was reported - protesters against Tesco running riot - was actually true. That was the propaganda. The Who's Right? question has to be secondary to establishing whether something actually happened. The mass media cannot be trusted on that basic element of reporting.

Perhaps they watched the great escape over christmas.

Simply put: yes. Yes it is credible. These are the same people who have managed to lose, over the last 40 years, several very large nuclear bombs. They are a huge organisation that responds to unexpected events with the same pace as any other huge bureaucracy, one to which snails and certain species of amoeba are compared quite favourably. Once they get their thumbs out they're fast, but the initial response would make a tortoise waking up from hibernation look fast.

So yes, it is credible that they were caught with their pants down. I'd be sceptical if they claimed otherwise.

It's more complicated than that. The reason why the planes were stood down to start with was because they were running a terrorist attack exercise on the same day.

They had time to respond to the incoming attack on the Pentagon. An aide entered the room in the bunker where Cheney was sitting at 5 minute intervals to update him on how close the plane was getting. But Cheney refused to send anything up to intercept the incoming plane, not even to have a look, and got angry when the aide asked him whether the stand down order had changed. This is the testimony of Norman Mineta before the 9/11 Commission, who witnessed this exchange.

Don't rely on the official narrative. Terrorstorm is an informative film.