While General Rodriguez was regurgitating Army intelligence talking points about there being no Taliban spring offensive in Afghanistan in 2008, The Captain’s Journal unequivocally said that there would be not one, but two fronts to the campaign, one in Pakistan and the other in Afghanistan.  In Taliban and al Qaeda Strategy in Pakistan and Afghanistan we pointed out the nature of that campaign.  Now we find out that “violent attacks are multiplying in the south and east as the winter snows melt, says the BBC’s Alastair Leithead.”  Of course, this report is from the BBC, no longer a bastion of honesty.  So in order to qualify and validate the data, we can turn to none other than a Taliban spokesman (be patient, the three-way translation becomes somewhat wooden).

Taliban insurgents fighting Afghanistan government have vowed to launch spring offensive against Afghan and international troops stationed in the country, a top commander of the outfit said Tuesday.

Mullah Brother who claims to be deputy to the outfit’s supreme but elusive leader Mullah Mohammad Omar read out a statement to media outlets in south Afghanistan stressed that the Taliban would launch spring operation dubbed “Abrat” or lesson to teach a lesson to foreign forces and force them to pull out from Afghanistan.

“We would launch Abrat operation in this spring and force the foreign troops leave Afghanistan,” the statement said.

It also called on Afghans to join the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (former name of Taliban hierarchy) in Jihad or holy war against the government of President Hamid Karzai and foreign troops serving in the country.

One of the duties of Army intelligence is to produce good, compelling and salient analysis of the data.  In this case, they missed it in favor of talking points.