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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 6 - 2007
A propaganda victory for the Taliban from CNS 
A propaganda victory for the Taliban COMBINED NEWS SERVICES Newsday, February 28, 2007 BAGRAM, Afghanistan - A suicide bomber blew himself up at a U.S. base within earshot of Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday, delivering a propaganda victory for the Taliban that undercut the U.S. military and the weak Afghan government it supports. A U.S. soldier and a South Korean soldier were among those killed. Reports of the overall death toll varied, with the U.S. military saying nine died while the Afghan government put the number killed at 23, with two dozen injured. The bomber struck about 10 a.m. and U.S. military officials declared a "red alert" at the sprawling Bagram Air Base while Cheney was rushed to a bomb shelter. Cheney later met President Hamid Karzai in the capital before heading back to the United States via the Gulf state of Oman. "I heard a loud boom," he told reporters aboard Air Force Two. "The Secret Service came in and told me there had been an attack on the main gate." Many of the victims were said to be Afghan truck drivers waiting to get inside the base. Although the bomber did not get within roughly a mile of the vice president, the attack highlighted the precarious security situation posed by the resurgent Taliban. Five years after U.S.-led forces toppled their regime, Taliban-led militants have increased attacks, with 139 suicide bombings last year, a fivefold increase over 2005, and a fresh wave of violence is expected this spring. The Taliban have attacked in the area north of the capital in the past, and the top spokesman for the NATO force said yesterday the Taliban had a cell in Kabul that could have traveled the 30 miles north to Bagram. A message posted on a Web site used by militants said "a mujahid [holy warrior] ... carried out a suicide attack. ... The target was Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney." But a U.S. spokesman said Cheney was in a "very safe and secure place" roughly a mile from the blast site. "To characterize this as a direct attempt on the life of the vice president is absurd," he said. During their private hour-long meeting, Cheney and Karzai spoke about the "problems coming from Pakistan," an Afghan government official said, a reference to cross-border infiltration by militants who launch attacks in Afghanistan. Karzai's office said Cheney told Afghan leaders the United States "will continue its assistance to Afghanistan." Copyright 2007 Newsday Inc. |