There is much for the French and NATO to digest and learn, I will have to bide my time to learn of the fates of these french troops. And that is okay so long as the French troops and NATO are allowed to learn the lessons of this encounter. If It means more stuff, more funding, for the purpose of governing, the french will have to decide how much is necessary for the press to know.

I do not want to give the Taliban and Al Q any easy PR victory’s.

“It had therefore to be a name born of all the elements of our life spiritual and fraternal, moral and ethnical, historical and geographical, supra-regional and supra-national.
In other words, it had to be charged with an irresistible, eternal appeal to the heart and head of all our people, and possessed of elemental power to seize on our being and make us all go out crusading for the Millat’s Mission.

For nothing short of that could generate those mighty forces which alone could ensure the liberation of us all, the transformation of some of the most important parts of India and Asia, and the fulfillment of our Millat’s Mission in India and its Islands.”

- Ch.Rehmat Ali

—-

“Pakistan” is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands – “Indian” and “Asian”.
That is, Punjab, Afghania (North West Frontier Province), Kashmir, Iran, Sindh (including Karachi and Kathiawar), Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan.
It means the land of the Paks-the spiritually pure and clean.

It symbolizes the religions, beliefs and the ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original Fatherland.

It has no other origin and no other meaning; and does not admit of any other interpretation. Those writers who have tried to interpret it in more than one way have done so either through love of casuistry, or through ignorance of its inspiration, origin and composition.”

British misrule may be criticized, but the tensions and seething hostilities that resulted in the butchery between Hindu and Moslems antedates British clumsiness by many centuries, and would have occurred with or without British involvement.

Just as surely as the continuing savagery that has gone on for fourteen centuries between Islam and all the rest of its neighbors.

But Pakistan in the current mess is conspicuously an artificiality – a sovereign nation ex nihilo – cobbled together as Iraq was as a quick solution that saved appearances for “major powers” who wished to extricate themselves from complicated situations and decamp before things exploded.

“The French military would be well advised to use circumspection before making such comments. And NATO’s statement that there is no formal ISAF or NATO report of which they are aware, sounds like a classic non-denial denial, leaving them plenty of room to re-explain themselves when presented with additional evidence. If NATO and the French persist in making these claims, the secret report, written by American Special Forces who were present, could find itself on the internet. Certain embargoed details in the report are even more troubling than the facts that were published in the Globe and Mail article.

The loss of ten French soldiers is bad enough. Let’s not make it worse with cover-up. Truth leaks faster than helium. It happened with the mythologized death of Pat Tillman. And it will happen in this case.”

Here is the link to Yon’s site which includes photo’s of the aftermath of the fight under discussion: http://www.michaelyon-online.com . . .

Of course, if Yon has seen the report and “carefully” read it, tht might mean that he has a copy of it. But it would be wrong, very wrong indeed, to conclude that what he says about it ending up published in its entirety on the internet is a veiled threat towards certain people of the French persuasion who are trying to cover their butts by making these denials.

On reflection, this says a lot about their determination. I also remember that by the 1980’s the Indian government had begun installing solar-powered satellite telephones in isolated villages dotting the subcontinent, leap-frogging past the wasteful technology of copper-wire land lines.

By the mid 1950’s, Canada had already given a small working nuclear power plant to India to help its entry into the family of nuclear-capable nations. That was when India was the leader of the so-called “non-aligned” nations.

India has its problems, not the least of which is the caste system. They also have so many distinct languages that newspapers and magazines are published in over a hundred languages, and movies in almost thirty (or so I heard from a member of the Indian embassy at a film conference some years ago.)

Imagine how the U.S. would be if we had such things to deal with.

India must be some sort of dynamic culture.

Now the French military and NATO claim that the Globe and Mail article is wrong. The headline over The Associated Press story reprinted in the International Herald Tribune reads:
“France denies troops ill-equipped in Afghanistan.”
—
“The French military would be well advised to use circumspection before making such comments. And NATO’s statement that there is no formal ISAF or NATO report of which they are aware, sounds like a classic non-denial denial, leaving them plenty of room to re-explain themselves when presented with additional evidence. If NATO and the French persist in making these claims, the secret report, written by American Special Forces who were present, could find itself on the internet. Certain embargoed details in the report are even more troubling than the facts that were published in the Globe and Mail article.

The loss of ten French soldiers is bad enough. Let’s not make it worse with cover-up. Truth leaks faster than helium. It happened with the mythologized death of Pat Tillman. And it will happen in this case.”

“The first: ambushes usually do not take place ad hoc. The islamists knew the French were coming. Security breach? Poor planning of the expedition and telegraphing to the enemy that you were coming into a place perfect for an ambush?”

I read the Globe and the Mail stories. I noticed a picture of a Taliban fighter with a captured French weapon taken by a “stringer.”

My gut tells me that that certain “stringers” are embedded with the Taliban and may have provided the critical information need to execute the ambush.

If you review the war in Lebanon where some Israeli units were effectively ambushed many pointed to a hacking of the Israeli communication system (there was some fairly high tech radio interception devices found in a house).

It was found that the terrorists did not actual hack the Israeli telecommunication system but probably just monitored an unencrypted cell phone – and possible a cell phone from and embedded “stringer.”

Sure, it is likely that Iran and its new comrade Russia may have supplied high quality equipment to the Taliban but I sense that the French were sold out by a stringer or other person close to both sides.

Btw, I believe that the Taliban took more losses than the French – which is of some consolation.