[Penn]

A recent thread mentioned that Afghanistan was of little importance; I am uncertain that this is correct, but it would appear that Afghanistan may be a counter weight to Iran. The attached article surprised me.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...LeftCarousel_1

IA comment by Eric Blehm

This entire relationship between the current CIA Chief and Karzai are detailed in my book: The Only Thing Worth Dying For, (HarperCollins, 2010) which was a WSJ bestseller a couple months back. I interviewed the Special Forces Team extensively that was there with Karzai and the station chief (known as "Casper" in my book) back in November and December of 2001. A couple of corrections to the article above. First, the station chief himself would not credit himself as "saving Karzai's life." He threw himself onto Karzai AFTER an errant 2000 pound JDAM bomb hit an observation post, and imploding the windows of the building Karzai was inside, nearby. Karzai was nicked on the face with a piece of glass. The station chief's reaction was spontaneous, and appropriate, but hardly saved Karzai's life. The other correction is your mention of the JDAM bomb hitting the American's and Karzai's afghan rebels position occurring as a result of the "chaos" of the battle. There was no chaos that December 5th morning. In fact, there had not been a bullet fired for almost fourteen hours when an overseeing, and recently arrived "staff" of Special Forces soldiers began directing bombs at a hillside cave that might, or might not have held enemy forces. It was a peaceful morning, and the men of Operational Detachment Alpha (the team that had been fighting with Karzai since November 14th, and were supposed to be executing any combat operations on the ground) were opening their first mail drop from home when their superiors came in and started dropping bombs, while Karzai was waiting for an expected surrender delegation from the Taliban. Three Americans and more than 50 Afghans were killed in a flash, and every member of ODA 574 was either killed or wounded... The truth behind this story, again, is explained fully from the perspective of the men who were there on the ground in The Only Thing Worth Dying For. No second hand reporting, just eye witness accounts. The station chief that day along with his CIA team, and various SF medics saved many American and Afghan lives. Incidentally, General Mattis, who is now the head of CENTCOM was the nearest American Officer in a position to respond to the urgent request for medevac, but he refused, stating that the situation was too precarious to commit his forces to. Meanwhile his Marines were livid and wanted to respond to the situation. Instead, an Air force quick reaction force flew almost two hours, from Pakistan to pull out the dead, dying, and wounded, and dropped them off at Camp Rhino where Mattis eventually agreed to send his men to help, about four hours too late. Mattis now holds one of the highest ranks in the Marine Corps, and the officers in charge of authorizing the bomb that day have all been promoted and decorated. The men of ODA 574, who did the fighting on the ground, and accomplished their mission all had their medal requests downgraded from Silver to Bronze Stars. See www.onlythingworthdyingfor.com for more info on the early days after 9/11 in Afghanistan, and the missions that set the stage for Afghanistan. Good or bad, this is how it went down.