REUTERS
Jul 04, 2008 09:28 EST
ASADABAD, Afghanistan, July 4 (Reuters) - Twenty-two civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led forces on Friday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, an official said.
The attack happened on a road in Want district while the noncombatants were traveling in two vehicles, the district chief, Zia-Ul Rahman, told reporters.
"The civilians were evacuating the district as they were told by the U.S.-led troops to do so because they wanted to launch an operation against the Taliban," he said.
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The Imprecise Meaning of War
Unless Congress closes a gaping hole in the law against war profiteering, companies ripping off taxpayers in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars may never be fully prosecuted. This is because the latest conflicts are not declared wars.
The anti-fraud law dating to World War II allows prosecution of contractors up to three years after a war ends. But this statute of limitations was omitted from the resolutions authorizing military force in Iraq and Afghanistan, which carried no formal war declaration.
Investigators say that current war fraud runs into untold billions, including faulty ammunition and vehicles and not-so-bullet-proof vests. Investigative officials and the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction have testified that they’re hampered by the ongoing conflicts and need more time to catch contract thieves after they end.
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Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden's terrorist organisation, driven out of Afghanistan and defeated in Iraq, is re-emerging in strength in three alternative safe havens for training, operational planning and recruiting - Pakistan, Somalia and Algeria - according to Western intelligence and defence sources.
Posted Jul 1, 2008 05:12 PM PSTCategory: CURRENT EVENTS
You mean THESE "Al Qaeda" (nudge nudge wink wink)? (Ahem)
It is baldly obvious where the propaganda is going here.
Pakistan is being demonized for not hitting their radicals hard enough to keep them from cross border attacks in Afghanistan.
The US and NATO are hoping to step up pressure on the Pakistani government to have a very strong Western military presence on Pakistani soil, something that they have heretofore refused, and something that would compromise any sense of being a sovereign government to the Pakistani people
And what do Somalia and Algeria have in common that this articlerefuses to mention?Oil, and natural gas.
In 2006, oil and natural gas exports made up 98% of Algerian exports.
And the West wants those resources...badly.
In an article by Carl Bloise out of "thirdworldtraveler.com", from www.zmag.org, January 16, 2007, the following facts were stated:
"Currently, the US gets about 10 percent of its oil from Africa, but, the Monitor story said but 'some experts say it may need to rely on the continent for as much as 25 percent by 2010.' Reportedly, nearly two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields were allocated to the U.S. oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in January, 1991."
And the people in these three countries?
Generally living in grinding poverty, with only a few of the elite enjoying the good life at the top.
When people believe that they have a possibility of a better future, and more sharing in the wealth these countries are producing, they generally aren't going to be picking up rifles or setting off bombs.
But what countless administrations seem to be continuing to do in these countries - in a way that is almost terrifyingly pathological - is to support tinpot dictators for as long as they can, extract what they and the corporations who support them want, then are suddenly amazed when citizens of these countries want some of the rewards their natural resources are bringing to actually return to the citizens of those countries.
It is baldly obvious where the propaganda is going here.
Pakistan is being demonized for not hitting their radicals hard enough to keep them from cross border attacks in Afghanistan.
The US and NATO are hoping to step up pressure on the Pakistani government to have a very strong Western military presence on Pakistani soil, something that they have heretofore refused, and something that would compromise any sense of being a sovereign government to the Pakistani people
And what do Somalia and Algeria have in common that this articlerefuses to mention?Oil, and natural gas.
In 2006, oil and natural gas exports made up 98% of Algerian exports.
And the West wants those resources...badly.
In an article by Carl Bloise out of "thirdworldtraveler.com", from www.zmag.org, January 16, 2007, the following facts were stated:
"Currently, the US gets about 10 percent of its oil from Africa, but, the Monitor story said but 'some experts say it may need to rely on the continent for as much as 25 percent by 2010.' Reportedly, nearly two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields were allocated to the U.S. oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown in January, 1991."
And the people in these three countries?
Generally living in grinding poverty, with only a few of the elite enjoying the good life at the top.
When people believe that they have a possibility of a better future, and more sharing in the wealth these countries are producing, they generally aren't going to be picking up rifles or setting off bombs.
But what countless administrations seem to be continuing to do in these countries - in a way that is almost terrifyingly pathological - is to support tinpot dictators for as long as they can, extract what they and the corporations who support them want, then are suddenly amazed when citizens of these countries want some of the rewards their natural resources are bringing to actually return to the citizens of those countries.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 29, 2008; A14
Jawed Ahmad, a driver and assistant for reporters of a Canadian television network in Afghanistan, knew the roads to avoid, how to get interviews and which stories to pitch. Reporters trusted him, his bosses say.
Then, one day about seven months ago, the 22-year-old CTV News contractor vanished. Weeks later, reporters would learn from Ahmad's family that he had been arrested by U.S. troops, locked up in the U.S. military prison at Bagram air base and accused of being an enemy combatant.
Lawyers representing Ahmad filed a federal lawsuit early this month challenging his detention on grounds similar to those cited in successful lawsuits on behalf of captives at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The lawyers are hoping to turn Ahmad's case and a handful of others into the next legal battleground over the rights of terrorism suspects apprehended on foreign soil. More lawsuits are expected on behalf of Bagram detainees in coming months, the lawyers said.
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By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press Writer 25 minutes ago
The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year, to almost 700 people, a senior U.N. official said Sunday.
The figures are a grim reminder of how the nearly seven-year war has failed to stabilize the country and suggest that ordinary civilians are bearing a heavy toll, particularly from stepped-up militant attacks.
John Holmes, the world body's humanitarian affairs chief, said the insecurity was making it increasingly difficult to deliver emergency aid to poor Afghans hit by the global food crisis.
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Reuters North American News Service
Jun 28, 2008 09:49 EST
KABUL, June 28 (Reuters) - Afghan authorities have discovered mass graves containing the bodies of ex-President Mohammad Daud Khan, family members and aides, who were killed in a Soviet-backed coup three decades ago, his grandson said.
"Two mass graves, one containing 16 bodies and the other 12, were found. We recognised by their shoes and clothes that the graves belonged to the deceased Daud Khan, his family and cabinet members," his grandson Mahmoud Ghazi Daud told reporters on Saturday.
He did not give further details on the identification process or provide more details on the discovery.
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CBC News
The Canadian military is being criticized by a UN investigator for a lack of accountability for civilian deaths in Afghanistan, where more than 200 civilians have been killed by international military forces this year, a recent report suggests.
The United Nation's special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, told CBC News that senior Canadian officers, among those from other NATO countries operating in Afghanistan, have refused to provide him with information about civilian casualties when asked.
"They said, 'We don't have the information; we can't give it to you. We promise you that we look at individual cases and we do it really very conscientiously.' Good, so give me the results. 'Well we don't have them,'" Alston said.
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Jun 25, 2008
By M K Bhadrakumar
Moscow is staging an extraordinary comeback on the Afghan chessboard after a gap of two decades following the Soviet Union's nine-year adventure that ended in the withdrawal of its last troops from Afghanistan 1989. In a curious reversal of history, this is possible only with the acquiescence of the United States. Moscow is taking advantage of the deterioration of the war in Afghanistan and the implications for regional security could be far-reaching.
A joint statement issued in Moscow over the weekend following the meeting of the United States-Russia Working Group on Counterterrorism (CTWG) revealed that the two sides had reached "agreement in principle over the supply of Russian weaponry to the Afghanistan National Army" in its fight against the Taliban insurgency. The 16th session of the CTWG held in Moscow on
June 19-20 was co-chaired by Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns. Talking to reporters alongside Burns, Kislayak said, "We [Russia] in the past have already provided military equipment to Afghanistan and we feel there is now a demand by the Afghan population for the ability of Afghanistan to take its security in its own hands." He added it was "possible" that Russia might increase the delivery of arms to Afghanistan, though "I wouldn't be eager to put a number on it".
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Guantánamo has exposed the Bush regime's disdain for human rights. But there's nothing uniquely American about this
- The Guardian,
- Monday June 23, 2008
Before his show trial in Hungary in 1948, Robert Vogeler spent three months in a cell sleeping on a board that hovered just above two inches of water. Day and night a bright light bathed his cell, and even then someone would bang on the wall next door just to make sure he couldn't get any sleep. "It is just a question of time before you confess," he said afterwards. "With some it takes a little longer than others, but nobody can resist that treatment indefinitely."
And so Vogeler, who was arrested for spying, buckled under the pressure and played his role in the gruesome farce of Stalin's postwar purges in eastern Europe. "To judge from the way our scripts were written," wrote Vogeler shortly after his forced confession, "it was more important to establish our allegorical identities than to establish our 'guilt'. Each of us in his testimony was obliged to 'unmask' himself for the benefit of the [Soviet-led] press and radio."
A similar script, it has long been clear, has been written at Guantánamo Bay, although this time the lines were for the prosecution rather than the defence. The point of these detentions has never been to see justice done, but rather to provide a teachable moment about the lengths and depths the American state would go to pursue its perceived interests in the war on terror. It was to find a place in which America could operate above and beyond not only international law but its own - a display of unfettered power not merely indifferent to, but openly contemptuous of, global and local norms.
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Army ‘vacuum’ missile hits Taliban
Michael Smith
British forces in Afghanistan have used one of the world’s most deadly and controversial missiles to fight the Taliban.
Apache attack helicopters have fired the thermobaric weapons against fighters in buildings and caves, to create a pressure wave which sucks the air out of victims, shreds their internal organs and crushes their bodies.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has admitted to the use of the weapons, condemned by human rights groups as “brutal”, on several occasions, including against a cave complex.
The use of the Hellfire AGM-114N weapons has been deemed so successful they will now be fired from RAF Reaper unmanned drones controlled by “pilots” at Creech air force base in Nevada, an MoD spokesman added.
Thermobaric weapons, or vacuum bombs, were first combat-tested by the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980s and their use by Russia against civilians in Chechnya in the 1990s was condemned worldwide.
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Operation Enduring Freedom is the official label for the US military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. After almost seven years of fighting, what has been gained? What might be gained?
Militarily, US frustration with heavy casualties and lack of progress came to a head recently when Defense Secretary Robert Gates blamed NATO allies for US casualties. “I know I’ve been a big nag, and I know I’ve been a pain, … but for NATO to continue to be tied up in politics [because of a lack of public support] and issues between governments that are irrelevant to whether we are making progress in Afghanistan, I just don’t have patience any more . . .We’ve got kids dying because of the gaps.”
Freedom? There's no progress there, either, for women, journalists and Afghanis in general.
Freedom for women? Ann Jones, a writer who has lived in Afghanistan, writes that promises to the Afghans are repeatedly broken. The national government, with the consent of the occupation, installed many of the very warlords who had shelled Kabul for years. Afghan women, by far, have had it the worst, suffering for centuries in a moribund patriarchal culture, from relentless discrimination that regarded them as the lowest form of slaves. A recent example: On May 21, 2007, the lower house of the Afghan parliament, the Wolesi Jirga, voted to suspend Malalai Joya, a female MP elected from Farah province. Malalai was accused of insulting the parliament and suspended until the end of her term in 2009. Malalai’s suspension occurred after she appeared in a television interview comparing the parliament to an animal stable.
- -MORE--
Ahmad: Permanent bases and strategy towards China long-term US objectives in Afghanistan (1/4)
As the Taliban offensive expands in southern Afghanistan, retaliatory actions by NATO and Afghani forces become increasingly likely. On Sunday, Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai threatened to send troops across Pakistan’s border in quote “hot pursuit.” Amid a general uproar in Pakistan over Karzai’s comments, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani retorted that Pakistan will defend itself at any cost. The Real News Network's Senior Editor Paul Jay discusses the geopolitics of the region with Senior News Analyst Aijaz Ahmad.
Bio
Based in New Delhi, Aijaz Ahmad is The Real News Network's Senior News Analyst; Senior Editorial Consultant, and political commentator for the Indian newsmagazine, Frontline. He has taught Political Science, and has written widely on South Asia and the Middle East.
Transcript
"The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing over and over, and then expecting different results." Attributed to Albert Einstein.
By this definition, the foreign policy of the United States in 2008 is clinically insane. The plan that has lately come into play, to persuade our allies into asking for US forces to come in and wage total war on their borders, would require that our allies also act in an insane manner, inviting massive destruction upon themselves, in order to further American goals.
After his pal Iraqi President Maliki refused Bush’s request to invite the US to fight a war with Iran upon his border (based on false evidence) his best buddy Ehud Olmert then refused to pick another fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon (even though the war would be fought for Israel, the cost extracted by 600 missiles/per day raining down upon Israelis would have been too high). It is complete idiocy on Bush’s part to think that either Karzai or Musharref will act any differently as he pushes them to respond forcefully to the recent provocative “false flag” attacks in their respective countries.
After the recent prison break at Sarposa prison in Kandahar, President Karzai, acting as America’s spokesman, forcefully threatened to send US forces into Pakistan. He blamed the attack upon the Pakistani Taliban, naming Baitullah Mehsud, leader of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as one of the key cross-border raiders, even though his base in Waziristan is hundreds of miles from Kandahar. This is keeping with America’s disinformation M.O. of taking two divergent themes and merging them into one PSYOP. Mehsud is being set-up as Bush’s “patsy,” the alleged figurehead (bin Laden-type) to be targeted for total war by American/NATO force.
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- Related
- Story | 'If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong'
- PDF | Origins of aggressive interrogation techniques
- Easing of laws that led to detainee abuse hatched in secret
- CIA taught Pentagon to torture saying "is basically subject to perception", and Sen. Levin goes WTF? This is the "most irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever"
McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Wed, Jun. 18, 2008
Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 17, 2008 08:49:47 PM
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.
A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.
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Baghdad bus stop bomb 'kills 51'
Added: June 13, 2008
Afshin Rattansi interviews Noam Chomsky June 2008
Will there be a U.S. military attack on Iran? How do you characterize the Iraq Security Pact? Why is Afghanistan considered a "good war"?
Don't look, don't tell, troops told
Canadians have an interest in what is going on in Afghanistan, says assistant federal information commissioner Suzanne
Civilian sex assaults by Afghan soldiers ignored
June 16, 2008
Rick Westhead
Staff Reporter
Canadian soldiers serving in Afghanistan have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault among the civilian population, says a military chaplain who counsels troops returning home with post-traumatic stress disorder.
The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain.
In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.
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Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:39:43
 |
Experts in regional affairs believe that Taliban militants attacked the Kandahar prison with the green light from US forces.
They say it is questionable - how could the militants dare attack the prison with US-led troops stationed just northeast of the jail?
The sources also noted that although clashes between Afghan security forces and the militants lasted for several hours, US-led troops did not intervene.
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The policies of the NATO force in Afghanistan continue to exacerbate the problems in that broken country, notes Patrick Seale.
Last Friday’s massive jail break at Kandahar, which freed 1,200 prisoners including hundreds of Taliban fighters, is only the latest demonstration of the acute difficulties the Western powers are facing in Afghanistan.
Using truck bombs, Taliban guerrillas blow open the gates and mud walls of the Sarpoza Provincial Prison, raced in on motorbikes, killed fifteen of the prison guards, released the prisoners from their cells, and then faded away into the night.
Canadian and Afghan troops arrived on the scene some hours later “to restore order.”
It has long been clear that the 60,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan -- which include 34,000 American and 7,800 British soldiers -- are neither winning the war against the insurgents nor laying the basis for democracy. These are unrealistic objectives, which should, very probably, be abandoned, before more lives are uselessly thrown away
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McClatchy Washington Bureau
Posted on Mon, Jun. 16, 2008
Documents undercut Pentagon's denial of routine abuse
Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 15, 2008 08:55:29 PM
WASHINGTON — Although Defense Department officials deny that detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan or in other American camps were routinely mistreated, official statements and court testimony undercut the claim.
FBI agents witnessed mistreatment at Guantanamo, according to accounts gathered for a Justice Department report released May 20, 2008. One agent reported seeing detainees in interrogation rooms "chained hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. ... Most times they had urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more."
Another agent wrote that in October of 2002, a U.S. Marine Corps captain squatted over a Quran during an interrogation to get a rise out of the detainee being questioned.
Canadian troops sickened by Afghan rapes
Several military chaplains told the newspaper they had counseled veterans returning from combat in Afghanistan for severe post traumatic stress disorder and their reports weren't being dealt with by the Canadian military.
On Saturday, the Star reported a Canadian corporal gave closed-door parliamentary testimony about a boy's rape he witnessed in 2006 and the visible signs of rape trauma.
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mparent7777_1- CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
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