His victims were all asleep as the 38-year-old US staff sergeant began trying, door by door, to force himself into the mud-walled homes of Afghan farmers.

Eventually, a lock gave way, and the gunshots that killed the first of 16 civilians meant the others, mostly women and children, were awake when he arrived to murder them, said Agha Lalai Dastgiri, a senior official charged with investigating the shooting spree in the early hours of Sunday morning.

"The house where four people were killed was the first one he entered, and they were all sleeping," Dastagiri said. "When people in the other houses heard the sound of the shooting they also woke up and were making noises or sitting on their beds when the American entered."

The Taliban on Monday vowed to exact revenge on the "sick-minded American savages" for the shootings in their heartland, southern Kandahar province, as relatives and neighbours of the victims held memorial services, and details of the murderous rampage began to emerge.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/12/afghanistan-killings-us-gunman-rampage?newsfeed=true

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (AP) — An Afghan man recounted Monday the harrowing tale of how an American soldier on a killing spree burst into his home in the middle of the night, searched the rooms, then dropped to a knee and shot his father in the thigh as he emerged from a bedroom.

The staff sergeant is now in custody, accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians, most of them children, and then burning many of the bodies. The name of the 38-year-old soldier was not released because it would be "inappropriate" to do so before charges are filed, said Pentagon spokesman George Little.

Sunday's attack in southern Kandahar province comes as anti-Americanism already is boiling over in Afghanistan after U.S. troops burned Qurans last month and a video of Marines urinating on alleged Taliban corpses was posted on the Internet in January.

If the attack unleashes another wave of anti-foreigner hatred, it could threaten the future of the U.S.-led coalition's mission in Afghanistan. The events have also raised doubts among U.S. political figures that the long and costly war is worthy.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5i7ts3x3CgbJehvY7FwHoAY7ty9dQ?docId=c38c1e2b46b1472d8c6c8aa89cb1324b

But it would seem we are getting near the end. I seem to be seeing command and control issues popping up here and there, and that is a sign I remember well from 40 years ago.

I hope there's a helipad on the roof of our embassy in Kabul.

last one holding the bag is fucked.

Coming so close on the heels of the burnt Korans, this thing has wrought a sea-change. Not even a well-controlled puppet regime could continue in disregard of popular sentiment felt in the degree now roused.

more insanity, more waste...

The President is fighting terror and terrorist, and they are us.

These past couple of weeks, capped by this, seals our departure, and probably a bit before scheduled.

"How is the world ruled, and wars begun? Diplomats tell lies to journalists, then believe what they read in the newspapers."

Most of the time, they are little more than comforting noise.

I think we have lost the "stomach" for this, to use the war-criminal Cheney's words, and will be leaving, fast or not so fast, but leaving. And once you are definitely leaving, things tend to get untenable rapidly.

Tomorrow would suit me just fine.

“We’ve got to do it in a responsible way -- reducing our footprint progressively, giving Afghans more and more responsibility while we keep an eye on going after Al Qaeda and making sure that no attacks against our homeland can be launched from that region,” Obama said. “That’s going to be my continued focus for the next couple of years.”

It's an election year. The President must remain tough on terror. Admitting the US has done (all the damage) it can do in Afghanistan at this time would mean a Republican win.

sickening...war at any cost; a political win is more important than ending insanity.

I wonder how many tours our soldiers have there? If this is typical, I think this might be a flag that there is an upper time limit to sustaining a fighting force in a theater such as Afghanistan where they are so culturally isolated from the population.

they are. As to the questions you've posed, here's from one post:

http://gocomics.typepad.com/the_sandbox/

With many of my veteran friends and 99% of all citizens who bother to leave a comment on a news site raging about how these people are barbarians and not worth our time and effort -- and with months to go on my third tour -- how do I feel?

Isolated. Outcast. Alone. My will to fight the good fight has the gravitational pull of the black hole that is the loss of national will dragging it towards the event horizon. It feels different. It is a sea change that is occurring… or has occurred.

We have lost our national will to the point that the troops over here sense it. It’s an underlying feeling, a sensing more than a feeling, that whatever we do, it doesn’t matter. We are here, tasked with something that our own civilian masters, if not the majority of our own people, don’t support us in. Our poorly stated national objectives, the inexorable pulling away from a task that those of us who are close enough to see can tell is not ready -- we sense it. Enough progress was made to say that we put in a peak effort, but that peak effort was always on a timer. It was given just enough of a chance that had it brought massive success it would have been welcomed.

I'm not really surprised and I'm sorry we have troops in a hostile theater where there is no compelling mission and no clear definition of who the enemy is. Add that to soldiers who've been in combat mode for 10 years, it shouldn't be surprising to see a breakdown in morale and discipline.

smart thing.