Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Taliban desperate for troops, taking kids

AP:

Fierce fighting in recent months has devastated the ranks of the Taliban, prompting the rebels to recruit children and force some families to provide one son to fight with them, a U.S. commander said Saturday.

The fighting has fractured the Taliban's command structure, preventing the militants from regrouping, even though there has been an upsurge in violence, Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, the U.S. military operational commander in Afghanistan, told The Associated Press in an interview.

Despite the setback — more than 500 rebels have been killed since March — the militants are likely to step up attacks in the lead-up to crucial Sept. 18 legislative elections, he said.

"The Taliban and al-Qaida feel that this is their final chance to impede Afghanistan's progress to ... becoming a nation," Kamiya said. "They will challenge us all the way through Sept. 18."

He said the rebels were desperately trying to recruit new fighters to replace those killed recently, and has even forced families in some areas "to give up one son to fight."

"They have been hit so hard they now have to recruit more fighters. They are recruiting younger and younger fighters: 14, 15 and 16 years-old," Kamiya said. "The enemy is having a hard time keeping its recruit rates up."

...

He said part of the reason the rebels have suffered such unprecedented losses recently was that they have been caught gathering in large groups three times since April and pounded by airstrikes and ground forces. Some 170 suspected insurgents were killed in a weeklong battle in June in a mountainous militant hideout.

"There is no (rebel) organizational chain of command ... because we have succeeded thus far in disrupting their means to regroup and conduct a coordinated attack," Kamiya said. "They can no longer move around with impunity."

The enemy in Iraq has the same problem when it comes to their inability to mass forces, but the media in Iraq isn't sufficiantly militarily knowledgable to comprehend the enemy's problem. The Baghdad hotel war correspondents seem to sit around waiting for releases from the command, while they compete with each other in who can come up with the most depressing vision of the war. They keep reinforcing each others prejudices and ignorance of warfare. They should all be required to spend at least half their time embedded with the troops. They might learn something from the troops and perhaps the troops could boost the reporters poor morale.