Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, October 31, 2010

USS Make Shit Up goes to Afghanistan

By Steve Hynd











Bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish
Thats the way we do things lad, we're making shit up as we wish
The Klingons and the Romulans pose no threat to us
'Cause if we find we're in a bind we're totally screwed but nevermind
We'll pull something out of our behinds, we just make some shit up


Back in March, Petraeus aide Maj. Gen. Richard Barrons gave an official appraisal of the size of the Taliban.



 "There are probably 900 in the leadership, counting very junior to very senior, and there are between 25,000 and 36,000 people who would call themselves fighters."



By September, Gen. Petraeus was saying that ISAF had made serious inroads on those numbers.



More than previous commanders, Gen. David Petraeus has released the results of special operations missions � 235 militant leaders were killed or captured in the last 90 days, another 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents killed and 1,673 detained � to demonstrate the Taliban and their allies are also suffering losses as NATO casualties rise.



I was skeptical at the time, noting that if that level of attrition happened to the US military it would likely be disrupted, unable to continue fighting. Yet even Petraeus admitted at the time that spec-ops forces had not yet reversed the Taliban's momentum. Saint Pet has since changed his tune to a happy one, although others beg to differ.


And now, in November, we hear via the Guardian:



An ISAF intelligence officer said that in the past 90 days, 300 "top guys" who control networks of fighters and IED manufacturers have been killed or captured. Another group of 800 "mid-level" commanders have met a similar fate.



Hang on, that's 1100 leaders - 200 more than they had in March. And all in the last 90 days so presumably they don't include at least part of the total from the previous 90 days announced at the beginning of September. Yet still the Taliban, supposedly bereft of experienced leadership on a scale that would reduce any Western military to crying for its momma, hasn't fled the battle field and can still mount multiple operations apparently involving dozens of insurgents in organised units each day.


Now I'm not just skeptical about ISAF's figures, I'm calling them outright bullshit.



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1 comment:

  1. emptyOctober 31, 2010 at 10:19 AM

    ISAF must be really happy that this information is not available to the Times or the Post. Otherwise they, being serious journalists, might point out the discrepancies in the General's pronouncements.

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