by Dave McGill

Two American sailors have turned up missing after leaving their post near Kabul yesterday. There is speculation that their departure was unauthorized and the Washington Post has just reported that one was killed and one was captured.

Apparently, the Taliban now has two Americans in custody. Thirteen months ago, Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl was seized outside a base in eastern Afghanistan. It was reported at that time the he was thought to have been taken to Pakistan, probably to the province of North Waziristan, where the Haqqani Network operates.

The capture of any of our military personnel is particularly demoralizing. It sets off a long ordeal for the loved ones and is a propaganda coup as well as a bargaining chip for the insurgency.

Last week, the Department of Defense released the obituaries of 15 military personnel killed in Afghanistan, ranging in age from 20 to 37. Eight of the fallen heroes were killed by improvised explosive devices. The relatives of five additional fallen heroes are being notified today of the roadside-bomb deaths of their loved ones just yesterday. Total U.S. deaths in Afghanistan now stand at 1,207, according to the website icasualties.org.

U.S. deaths from improvised explosive devices have been occurring at an increasing rate and account for nearly 60% of this year’s fatalities. The principle facilitator in the production of these explosive devices is, again, reported to be the Haqqani Network, which enjoys close ties to the Pakistani intelligence service, the SSI, as well as to the military. As if in confirmation of this, Pakistan’s excursions against the militancy have studiously avoided the Haqqani Network’s home base in North Waziristan. The U.S., however, has launched a number of drones into that area, particularly since an attack on a CIA outpost earlier this year was attributed to the Haqqanis.

Congress is currently considering a war-funding bill with a price tag of $33 billion. David Swanson, writing in The Sentinel, points out that these particular funds are only for the purpose of escalating the war, not for maintaining it. He also presents a number of other interesting facts, including that the U.S. taxpayer is the second largest – and probably the largest – supplier of funds to the Taliban, that our top consumer of oil is the U.S. military, that over half of every tax dollar is spent for military-related purposes and that a leading cause of death in the military is suicide. For anyone that might be interested, his article can be found here.

As we draw within five weeks of the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the Department of Defense released the obituary of one 24-year-old Army officer who was killed there by a roadside bomb this week. U.S. deaths in that theater now total 4,413, according to icasualties.org.