Los Angeles Times.
In a disastrous day for the NATO
force in Afghanistan, four American troops were gunned down Sunday by
Afghan police, a U.S. airstrike killed eight Afghan women foraging for
fuel on a rural hillside, and military officials disclosed that a
Taliban strike on a southern base had destroyed more than $150 million
worth of planes and equipment — in money terms, by far the costliest
single insurgent attack in 11 years of warfare.
The confluence of
events underscored some of the conflict's most damaging trends: an
unrelenting tide of "insider" attacks, in which Afghan forces turn their
weapons on coalition allies; the daily loss of civilian lives to war's
ravages; and the continuing ability of insurgent forces to inflict
disproportionate havoc on the far more powerful Western military.
