• • 5 Are Dead After Clash Between U.S. and Afghan Troops
• • 'Friendly' attacks put Afghan mission in turmoil
• • Tough words from general on Afghan insider attacks
• • Afghan Suicide Bomber Kills 14, Including 3 NATO Troops
• • Obama to Jihadists: Be Nicer?

Afghan officials said that the clash on Saturday was a misunderstanding and that the Americans apparently attacked an Afghan National Army unit in error. A top coalition officer said the Americans were attacked first in what might possibly have been an insurgent attack. Nonetheless, he expressed regret for what ensued.

An initial statement from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, commonly referred to as ISAF, on Sunday described the episode as “a suspected insider attack,” which killed a foreign soldier and a civilian contractor. If so, that would bring to 53 the number of coalition forces killed in the so-called insider attacks this year.

Whatever happened, the episode clearly was another in a series of setbacks this year, and particularly in the last month, in relations between the American and Afghan militaries. It comes at a delicate moment, when all of the American surge reinforcements have only recently left the country, and NATO has been trying to transfer ever greater responsibility to a growing Afghan military.

Shahidullah Shahid, the spokesman for the governor in Wardak Province, where the fighting occurred, said the deaths came “after a clash ensued between two sides following a misunderstanding.” An Afghan official, speaking anonymously because he was not authorized to release details, said that a mortar shell had landed amid the American unit, killing a soldier and a civilian contractor and wounding several others. The Americans thought it came from a nearby Afghan National Army checkpoint on a hill overhead and attacked it with small arms and rockets, killing three and wounding three of the seven soldiers there, the official said.  Read more here.

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In an effort to identify potential Taliban infiltrators who join the Afghan army and police, the U.S. military has begun to send in lie detector devices. However, the military doesn’t have anywhere near the trained polygraph operators needed to run the equipment.

“It’s a big deal in theater,” an intelligence source said. “The theater general is demanding we send a bunch of agents in and fix it.”

At the moment, the source added, there are only 400 out of 1,600 polygraph operators needed to screen candidates for Afghan security positions.

“We’ve got 400 plus (counter-intelligence) agents in theater now, but none of them were trained really,” the source said. “So, they’re sending another 60 guys in October that have been trained on portable lie detectors.”

The crash effort is to sift through the thousands of recruits intended to be trained to ensure that there aren’t sleeper insurgents joining the Afghan army and police. It’s an effort to prevent what has become a serious uptick in “green-on-blue” attacks of trainees killing their U.S. trainers.  Read more here.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The persistent problem of rogue Afghan soldiers and police turning their guns on U.S. and allied troops is a "very serious threat" to the war effort, which is predicated on placing security responsibility in Afghan hands, the U.S. military's top officer said Sunday.

In unusually blunt remarks to the Pentagon's own news service, the American Forces Press Service, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said the Afghan government needs to take the problem as seriously as do U.S. commanders and officials.

"We're all seized with (the) problem," Dempsey was quoted as saying. "You can't whitewash it. We can't convince ourselves that we just have to work harder to get through it. Something has to change."

Dempsey and other U.S. officials have remarked extensively in recent weeks on the need to improve the screening of Afghan recruits and to take other precautionary measures in the face of a series of attacks that so far this year have killed at least 51 allied troops, mostly of them Americans.

"But we've got to make sure our Afghan counterparts are as seized about it as we are," Dempsey said. "We have to get on top of this. It is a very serious threat to the campaign."

Dempsey commented after attending a meeting in Romania of NATO military representatives. He said they discussed the situation in Afghanistan, including plans for the remaining two years of the campaign and the insider attack problem.

In the latest instances of such attacks, two British soldiers were killed by an Afghan policeman in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday and four American troops were killed in a similar attack Sunday in Zabul province.  Read more here.

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The Taliban claimed responsibility for the blast, which came a day after the U.S. death toll in the war in Afghanistan reached 2,000 troops and as relations between international forces and their Afghan partners have been pushed to the breaking point by a surge in insider attacks by Afghan allies.

The bomber struck a group of Afghan police and international troops shortly after they got out of their vehicles to walk through a market area in Khost city, the capital of Khost province, said provincial government spokesman Baryalai Wakman.

Six civilians and four police officers were killed in the blast, Wakman said. He said the police officers were part of a specialized quick-reaction force.

Blood could be seen on the market road as Afghan police and soldiers tried to clean up the area after the blast. Slippers and bicycle parts were strewn about.

"I heard the explosion and came right to this area. I saw the dead bodies of policemen and of civilians right here," said policeman Hashmat Khan, who ran to the site of the blast from his job as security for a nearby bank.

Coalition spokesman Maj. Adam Wojack would only confirm that three NATO service members and their translator died in a bombing in the east on Monday, without giving an exact location or the nationalities of the dead.

The international military alliance usually waits for individual nations to announce details on deaths. Most of the troops in the east and in Khost province are American. It was not immediately clear if the translator was an Afghan citizen or a foreigner, Wojack said.

Dozens of Afghan civilians were also wounded in the bombing. The city's hospital alone was treating about 30 people injured in the explosion, said Dr. Amir Pacha, a physician working there. He added there could be other victims being treated at nearby private clinics.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in text messages to media that the insurgent group was behind the attack.  Read more here.

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In the first few decades of the country's history, presidential candidates didn't even campaign, seeing the act of shilling for votes as inherently undignified. Surrogates would campaign on their behalf. Now presidential candidates not only campaign but seek out the stupidest shows to retail their demagoguery. "It is dying but it laughs," the Romans said of their disintegrating empire. Obama's America is dying too as it laughs with Whoopi, Joy, and Dave.

Low comics have become presidential vetters and late-night talk shows have become places of refuge after a terrorist attack. Between the back-slapping and guffaws, Letterman asked Obama if "an act of war" had occurred. Obama deflected the question, launching into a sermonette on how the Islamic world needs a slight attitude adjustment. Try to be nicer in the future, was the sermonette's essential message.

This week he kept up the patter on The View and at the UN. It is a toss-up as to which forum was more fatuous. His UN speech was hailed as a robust defense of free speech. Never mind that his administration tried to suppress the "Innocence of Muslims" video and sent police to the filmmaker's home on "unrelated" charges, hauling him off so that it could blast pictures of his arrest to North Africa and the Middle East.

"The strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect," said Obama, who is on record supporting "hate-crime" legislation that would ban politically incorrect speech in the public square.  Read more here.

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Tennessee Senators Lamar Alexander [202-224-4944] and Bob Corker [202-224-3344] were among those who signed on!! PLEASE THANK THEM!

Senator Lamar Alexander Email
Senator Bob Corker Email

Although you won’t hear much about it in the mainstream media, we are thrilled to report that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and 41 other Senators filed an amicus brief 
Wednesday in a case pending in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit challenging  President Obama’s non-recess recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) in January. 

In a press release announcing the brief, Leader McConnell called the President’s appointments an “unprecedented power grab” and declared, “We will demonstrate to the Court how the President's unconstitutional actions fundamentally endanger the Congress’ role in providing a check on the excesses of the executive branch.”

The suit is being brought by Noel Canning, a family-owned soft drink bottler and distributer in Washington State. The company is challenging the NLRB's determination that it must enter into a collective bargaining agreement with a labor union.