By THE AFGHAN YOUTH PEACE VOLUNTEERS War is a crime / Truthout.org The Afghan Youth Peace Volunteers question the presumption that the U.S. military strategy in Afghanistan is necessary for American or Afghan peace. Tragedies like the Kandahar killing spree which massacred 16 Afghan civilians in their sleep ( including 6 children and 3 women…
Tags: Afghanistan
Should We Allow NATO Free Rein to Attack and Kill People?
The airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers is just the latest in a series of mistakes that raise doubts about NATO’s credibility By PRATAP CHATTERJEE Commondreams.org Why did NATO forces kill two dozen Pakistani soldiers at a border post in the Mohmand region, some 300 yards across the frontier from Afghanistan early on Saturday morning?…
Obama’s secret wars: How our shady counter-terrorism policies are more dangerous than terrorism
Obama should be held accountable for vastly expanding the military establishment’s worldwide license to kill. By FRED BRANFMAN Alternet Although President’s Obama’s partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29 “National Strategy for Counterterrorism” is of far greater long-term significance. This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends to “disrupt,…
Hunger and Anger in Afghanistan
By KATHY KELLY Commondreams.org International Posted by Bulatlat.com The Obama administration has announced the imminent release of a December Review which will evaluate the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan. The military has yet to disclose what the specific categories for evaluation will be. Yet many people in Afghanistan might wish that hunger along with their…
This is What Success Looks Like
By ALEXANDER COCKBURN http://www.counterpunch.org/ Posted by Bulatlat.com The last American combat brigade in Iraq has left the country, so the Pentagon announced this week. The 40,000 personnel from 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division began crossing into Kuwait August 19. The US combat mission in Iraq – Operation Iraqi Freedom – is scheduled to end…
Whose Hands? Whose Blood? Killing Civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq
By Tom Engelhardt Posted by Bulatlat.com Consider the following statement offered by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at a news conference last week. He was discussing Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks as well as the person who has taken responsibility for the vast, still ongoing Afghan War document dump…
Wikileaks: Massive Leak of Secret Files Exposes Truth of Occupation
By NICK DAVIES and DAVID LEIGH The Guardian UK/Commondreams.org Posted by Bulatlat A huge cache of secret US military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran…
Bitten by History: From the Gulf to Gaza and Afghanistan, the Familiar Way Proves the Wrong Way
By TOM ENGELHARDT Posted by Bulatlat.com History, or the future (however you want to look at it), has a funny way of rearing up and biting leaders who think they know what they’re doing. Take Barack Obama. Only weeks before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, he made a “pragmatic”…
Pentagon Time Tick… Tick… Tick…
By TOM ENGELHARDT Truthout International Posted by Bulatlat.com Back in 2007, when General David Petraeus was the surge commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, he had a penchant for clock imagery. In an interview in April of that year, he typically said: “I’m conscious of a couple of things. One is that the Washington clock…
Afghanistan: Women Dying and Torture Run Amuck
By JEFFREY KAYE Truthout International Posted by Bulatlat.com Two reports coming out of Afghanistan illustrate the depth of hypocrisy and subterfuge characterizing the US/NATO intervention in that country. One could cite a myriad of such examples, so immoral and wrong is the US war there. In the first report, a 2009 human rights assessment prepared…
The Shadow War: Making Sense of the New CIA Battlefield in Afghanistan
By TOM ENGELHARDT & NICK TURSE Common Dreams.org International Posted by Bulatlat It was a Christmas and New Year’s from hell for American intelligence, that $75 billion labyrinth of at least 16 major agencies and a handful of minor ones. As the old year was preparing to be rung out, so were our intelligence agencies,…