TALIBAN ATTACK RESULTS IN WORST AMERICAN AIRPOWER LOSS SINCE VIETNAM

To be clear, this attack and this massive loss of airpower happened last week. The reason this information might be news to you over a week later is due to our media's depraved indifference to reporting any truth that might hurt Barack Obama's reelection chances. John Hudson at "The Atlantic" has the story but his angle is entirely wrong. He blames the lack of coverage of this disaster -- or at least coverage with the proper perspective -- on the fact that after ten years of war, Americans have become desensitized to these kinds of reports. But we all know that's utter hokum. The Taliban attack on an air base in southern Afghanistan on Friday drew coverage for the way the insurgents cloaked themselves in U.S. army uniforms to gain a tactical advantage, but few have taken note of the historical proportions of the damage inflicted. John Gresham, at the Defense Media Network, has published a detailed account of the attack on Camp Bastion, in which two Marines were killed, six U.S. Marine Corps jet fighters were destroyed, and two more "significantly" damaged. Those facts were all carried in most reports, but if that just sounds like a typical damage report from a decade-long war, you're wrong. Gresham explains the devastating damage done to VMA-211, the name of the Marine Corps attack squadron that was most affected last week, noting that it is "arguably the worst day in [U.S. Marine Corps] aviation history since the Tet Offensive of 1968."

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