Karzai Threatens to Join the Taliban, as U.S. Involvement in Afghanistan Hits a New Low

"If you and the international community pressure me more, I swear that I am going to join the Taliban."

So Afghan President Hamid Karzai reportedly told a member of the Afghan parliament on Saturday, signaling a new low in his relationship with the U.S. and NATO. Karzai's weekend remarks are only the latest example of "anti-Western" sentiment reported in recent weeks; "The remarks are genuinely troubling," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Monday.

Karzai's "going rogue" is but one example of the latest bad news out of Afghanistan at the start of a week that has already seen heinous revelations of civilian deaths, military cover-ups, and ongoing PR spin by the Pentagon and the Obama administration, even as its relationship with the Afghan government deteriorates.

Karzai's comment came a week after he publicly accused the U.S. and its allies of election fraud last summer (part of a broader attempt to cripple him and the Afghan government), not to mention a brief, unannounced trip by President Obama to Kabul last weekend, during which he urged Karzai to stamp out the corruption that undermines the legitimacy of the Afghan government." There is no doubt that the fraud was very widespread, but this fraud was not committed by Afghans, it was committed by foreigners," Karzai said last Thursday in a televised speech.

"They want parliament to be weakened and battered and for me to be an ineffective president, and for parliament to be ineffective."

Karzai's latest remarks appear to also be an attempt to cast himself as a leader willing to stand up to Western occupiers, rather than a U.S.-backed figurehead brought into power at the hands of said occupiers.

"In this situation there is a thin curtain between invasion and co-operation assistance," Karzai said, adding that the Taliban "could become a national resistance."

Karzai's political rival, Abdullah Abdullah, who he defeated in last year's elections, called his comments "extraordinary" -- "this is treason to the national interest" -- going so far as to suggest that Karzai is mentally unstable. "As a former colleague and doctor, I think this is beyond a normal attitude," Abdullah said.

According to the Washington Post, "despite a conciliatory call to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Friday, Karzai again distanced himself from his Western backers" on Sunday, "by telling tribal elders Afghans need to see their leaders are not 'puppets' and that government officials should not let 'foreigners' meddle in their work."

Ramped up tensions between Karzai and the Obama administration come at the same time as the U.S. military has finally admitted what reports in the UK press -- and precious few U.S. outlets -- revealed weeks ago: a botched raid involving U.S. Special Forces in February left three Afghan women dead, two of whom were pregnant.

"After initially denying involvement or any cover-up in the deaths of three Afghan women during a badly bungled American Special Operations assault in February, the American-led military command in Kabul admitted late on Sunday that its forces had, in fact, killed the women during the nighttime raid," the New York Times reported Monday.

According to officials, Afghan-led investigators discovered grisly signs of an attempted cover up, including seven out of some 11 bullets fired in the raid, reportedly retrieved from the bodies of the victims. According to the Times of London, which was the first to report the women's deaths, "U.S. special forces soldiers dug bullets out of their victims' bodies in the bloody aftermath … then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened."