Witness:100 Students wounded in Pakistan,first 3 American Deaths

(10PM EST – promoted by Nightprowlkitty)

(AP/Huffington Post) — SHAHI KOTO, Pakistan – A roadside bomb killed three U.S. soldiers and partly destroyed a girls’ school in northwest Pakistan on Wednesday in an attack that drew attention to a little-publicized American military training mission in the al-Qaida and Taliban heartland.

They were the first known U.S. military fatalities in Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions near the Afghan border and a major victory for militants who have been hit hard by a surge of U.S. missile strikes and a major Pakistani army offensive.

The blast also killed three schoolgirls and a Pakistani soldier who was traveling with the Americans. Two more U.S. soldiers were wounded, along with more than 100 other people, mostly students at the school, officials said.

Feb 2 2010 HuffPo

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/…

In Pakistan and in Yemen, and perhaps even more quietly elsewhere – in the failed state of Somalia, for example – small cadres of special operations soldiers and near-silent unmanned aircraft capable of assassinations in the middle of the night have taken the fight against Islamic extremists to new levels and new places.

Air strikes in Pakistan are on pace to reach 150 this year, triple last year’s total, while at the same time top U.S. generals have all but banned warplanes from bombing targets in Afghanistan because of the risk of civilian casualties and resulting fury among ordinary Afghans.

U.S. diplomats said the dead soldiers were “trainers.” Whatever the truth, their deaths will cast a swirl of publicity – at least briefly – on the escalation of American intervention in Pakistan.

/snip

For the Obama administration, the toughest precision strike – in Pakistan, as in Yemen, and elsewhere – is to kill militants faster than their “martyrdom” recruits jihadists, while shoring up governments without seeming to turn them into puppets.

Feb 3 2010 Globe and Mail

http://www.theglobeandmail.com…

And the usual CYA from the NYTimes

The blast also killed three girls at a nearby school and a Pakistani paramilitary soldier traveling with the Americans. Two more U.S. soldiers were wounded, along with about 100 other people, mostly students at the school. Several were left trapped, bloodied and screaming in the rubble.

U.S. officials said Wednesday it did not appear the soldiers were specifically targeted in the attack, and initial reports indicated the blast was caused by a roadside bomb.  The latest information raises the specter of a militant informant close to the training mission.

The soldiers killed Wednesday were part of a small group of American soldiers training members of the paramilitary Frontier Corps, Pakistan’s army and the U.S. Embassy said. The mission is trying to strengthen the ill-equipped and poorly trained outfit’s ability to fight militants.

Feb 4 2010

http://www.nytimes.com/aponlin…

Proof of how much the Democratic Party has become, in just a year, so much like the Republican-  when I checked the other major liberal blogs, there wasn’t any mention of this.    The definition of insanity- doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result.