A Taleban commander and two senior Afghan officials confirmed yesterday that Italian forces paid protection money to prevent attacks on their troops.

After furious denials in Rome of a Times report that the Italian authorities had paid the bribes, the Afghans gave further details of the practice. Mohammed Ishmayel, a Taleban commander, said that a deal was struck last year so that Italian forces in the Salobi area, east of Kabul, were not attacked by local insurgents.

The payment of protection money was revealed after the death of ten French soldiers in August 2008 at the hands of large Taleban force in Sarobi. French forces had taken over the district from Italian troops, but were unaware of secret Italian payments to local commanders to stop attacks on their forces and consequently misjudged local threat levels.

Now, if this is acknowledged by American media

It won't be.

That means that the Italians are indirectly responsible for the deaths of American soldiers in the same way that the Taliban was indirectly responsible for the deaths on 9/11 by turning a blind eye to Al Quaeda's behavior in their country.

The Pentagon did a count, and came up with over 80,000 guns gone "missing" in Afghanistan. (meaning in taliban hands)

I did say, "you can't trust your European allies".

And this news comes out. LOL

Pakistan and Canada send the most troops on UN peace-keeping missions around the world.

We have partnered many times with Italians.

They are great people to be around... but LOUSY when it comes to fighting.

And now it turns out they are, at the very least, collaborating with the other side, or at worst, selling them weapons and doing drug deals.

Either way, one would be stupid to trust NATO.

When we can't even trust our allies to have our back, its way past time to back out, and start talking to the Taliban.

Well yeah.

You can't keep ignoring the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan.

They might take it personally. LOL