"Partners for Peace"

So apparently the Pentagon's new concept for the Taliban is still pretty new...

Two days before a devastating U.S. strike on a hospital in Afghanistan, a top aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked Doctors Without Borders if Taliban militants were “holed up” there or at the charity’s other facilities.

Carter Malkasian, a special advisor to Gen. Joseph Dunford, the highest ranking U.S. military officer, sent the query in an email that also inquired about the safety of the group’s personnel, according to Capt. Greg Hicks, a spokesman for Dunford.

Doctors Without Borders replied that the hospital staffers were “working at full capacity” and that the facility was “full of patients, including wounded Taliban combatants,” the medical aid group said in a report Thursday.