A good breakdown of the Kabul attack

The great guys over at Free Range International have done a great job laying out exactly what happened in the Kabul attack on Jan 18th. My blog was down at that time so I really could not write up anything. However after talking to my contacts in country, the general feeling was that it was little more than a PR event for the Taliban. They sacrificed seven of their own fighters, and murdered some innocent civilians all to try and put on a show for the world. Their intent was to appear that they could mount a successful attack anytime they wanted to, right in the heart of the capital.

However, Babatim over at FRI spells it out pretty clear that was a poorly planned and executed attack, in the posting Amateur Hour. He also reveals some other parts of the attack most people don’t know about, like the attempted rocket attack that failed when the gunner was too stupid to check what we call “mask and overhead clearance”, which means he didn’t look up to see he would be firing into a tree.