In a signal strategic achievement, the Afghan Taliban shot down a US helicopter killing 31 US troops and 7 Afghan commandos in the rugged Wardak province east of Kabul early Saturday, Aug. 5 – the single largest US loss of life in the Afghan War. Among the dead were 22 members of the elite Navy SEAL Six, the same unit which killed Osama bin Laden in May. debkafile:The Taliban has developed methods for attacking US choppers with the non-sophisticated RPG.

Afghanistan commander Gen. David Petraeus, CIA chief Leon Panetta and counterterrorism adviser John Brennan designed the offensive in North Afghanistan to be accompanied by a terror scare in Europe. It misfired because the three members of this band did not play the same tune.

Who profited from dropping 91,000 confidential documents in the lap of Wikileaks.org website this week?
Why only classified US military documents? And how does the leak tie in with the undercover Washington-London feud in Barak Obama's term in office?
DEBKA-Net-Weekly digs deep for sources and motivations in its coming issue out Friday, July 30
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Despite Tehran's denial, president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad delayed his trip to Kabul by 48 hours when US defense secretary Robert Gates arrived suddenly in the Afghan capital Monday, March 8.
The Iranian president had set the scene for his visit by accusing the US of "fabricating" 9/11 as a pretext for invading Afghanistan and unveiling new missile production lines.

The US-British-Afghan force out to capture the Helmand provincial town of Marjah is still wide of its mark.

Its control does not go much beyond the municipal center and main police stations. But the Taliban has shown only minor resistance, saving its strength for the major showdowns ahead, most likely in Kandahar.