Globe And Mail: Taliban Gearing Up For Spring Offensive (ed. Are You Kidding Me?)

The Globe And Mail has come up with this catchy title for an article here today:

Taliban gearing up for spring offensive
KATHERINE O'NEILL
From Monday's Globe and Mail
May 18, 2008 at 9:31 PM EDT

ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Sapper Marc Carignan had just walked inside the compound, when a large explosion erupted near the main door, spraying jagged metal shrapnel several hundred metres and leaving a crater the size of a small car.

Now, all I can say is...are you serious? It's the 3rd week of May and this publication is talking about the Taliban gearing up for a spring offensive? It will officially be summer in four weeks !! Hahahaha.

And what's worse is this article goes on and on about one incident that happened in Afghanistan and says NOTHING about a spring offensive. There is no evidence put forth that the Taliban have organized in any way whatsoever. Apparently, the writer of this article sees a booby trapped mud hut as evidence that the Taliban are ready to overrun all Coalition and NATO outposts in southern Afghanistan!

You know, it has gotten almost comical how the MSM will bow to the whims and propaganda of the terrorists worldwide. If they aren't continuing to try and sell the marketing effort of the palestinians' right to a state of their own, they are trying to legitimize the operations of the Taliban.

Apparently this is evidence of the so-called spring offensive by the Taliban:

It was the second close call for the Canadian military in recent days, and another sign that Taliban insurgents are readying for an expected spring offensive using every weapon they can get their hands on.

Shame on me for not getting the connection that since the Taliban in one village actually used a new explosive tactic it was surely a sign that the spring offensive will begin this week and that a horde of Taliban fighters will sweep across the plains of Helmand province any minute now.

Good grief...where do they find these fools?

Taliban gearing up for spring offensive

ZHARI DISTRICT, AFGHANISTAN — Sapper Marc Carignan had just walked inside the compound, when a large explosion erupted near the main door, spraying jagged metal shrapnel several hundred metres and leaving a crater the size of a small car.
Several Canadian and Afghan soldiers were already inside the large mud building, which locals had told them was a possible Taliban hideout. Less than 10 minutes later, another explosion occurred, this time inside the compound, and filled the blue sky again with billowing black smoke.
“That place was a mousetrap,” Sapper Carignan, a 23-year-old Edmonton-based combat engineer, said shortly after all the soldiers climbed a wall to escape the attack on Saturday morning. His face and uniform were covered in mud and dust.
Sapper Carignan was the only person injured; he temporarily lost hearing in his right ear.

“I haven't seen anything like that before,” the warrant officer in charge of Saturday's operation said.
The veteran Shiloh, Man.-based soldier, who was also inside the compound when the blasts occurred, didn't want his name used for fear news of the incident would upset his family.
After the attack, soldiers searched the abandoned compound on the north bank of the Arghandab River southwest of Kandahar and found dozens of improvised explosive devices, including mortars, which failed to detonate. Those explosives, which were wired together by a single strand of copper wire and activated by command denotation, were sequenced to blow up so the soldiers would be trapped inside and killed. They didn't detonate because of faulty wiring.
“That place was rigged to kill everybody,” said Warrant Officer Chuck Côté, who was also inside the compound when blasts occurred.
A wire was found leading 600 metres away from the compound, which was surrounded by poppy and grape fields, to a wall, where the person who detonated the explosives initiated the attack.
Four locals, including a teenage boy, were briefly held and questioned by Afghan soldiers, but were released on Saturday due to lack of evidence, even though one had traces of explosive residue on his hands.