Afghanistan: Number of US Airstrikes Has DOUBLED Over the Past Year

Is this a good sign or not? Wired reports:

“Dave Petraeus won’t let up his aerial assault on Afghanistan. After taking the air war to record highs in the fall, coalition aircraft are now flying about 10 bombing missions a day, nearly double the rate over the same period last year. It’s yet another sign of Petraeus’ gloves-off approach to prosecuting the Afghan campaign – one that the NATO commander swears is brutalizing Taliban networks, while barely scraping the civilians around them.

In the first 29 days of January 2011, NATO planes fired their guns, missiles, and bombs on 284 separate sorties. In January 2010, those aircraft only made 157 attack runs. This doubling of air attacks has been a consistent trend, ever since Petraeus took over the Afghan war effort. Under Petraeus, there have been 3,620 of these so-called “weapons sorties” over the last six months, U.S. military statistics show. Under his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, there were just 1,813 during a similar stretch.