Killing America's Kids and Driving Them Insane

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Liberated 12 year old

"Can you help get my arms back? Do you think the doctors can get me another pair of hands? If I don't get a pair of hands I will commit suicide," cried Ali Ismaeel Abbas, 12.

 Ali's story was carried by the UK Mirror, not CNN or the Fascist News Channel (otherwise known as Fox). On Fox and CNN, only bad men hooked up with Saddam get blasted, not innocent kids like this. "Before the war I did not regard America as my enemy," said Dr. Sadek al-Mukhtar. "Now I do. War should be against the military. America is killing civilians."

http://nimmo.blogspot.com

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Afghan resistance statement
Who Wants Continuation of War in Afghanistan?

uruknet.info

April 11, 2010

US Defense Secretary, Robert Gate told a US Senate committee that it was not the right time to start peace talks with Taliban. He said the right time would be when Taliban are weakened to the verge of accepting all US conditions. Similarly, US president Barack Obama has said that the US forces would remain in Afghanistan for a long time in order to ensure that no attack is launched against USA from that country. Seeing the tempo of the spreading of the influence of the Islamic Emirate, the enemy’s dream to defeat the Jihadic movement in the country will never come true, nor will they be weakened to the point to accept all American colonialist terms and conditions. However, by adopting this unrealistic approach, Washington will only prolong the war in the country, resulting into growing miseries for the people.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has explained time and again that as an official policy, it will never allow the soil of Afghanistan to be used against any other country and is ready to provide guarantee in this regard. However, the foreign invading forces should withdraw from Afghanistan completely and immediately. Being a home-grown nationalist Islamic movement, the Islamic Emirate agenda is focused on reconstruction and development of the country, prosperity of the people, mutual cooperation with friendly countries, establishment of justice and peace, eradication of graft and corruption and non- interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

In contrast, the US rulers have been following a narrow-minded colonialist agenda in collaboration with the Northern Alliance led by some notorious warlords whose manifesto is based on Pashtun racial cleansing. The warlords of the Northern Alliance also give distorted information to the White House rulers and to the Pentagon generals aimed at prolonging the war. Thus they want to keep the flames of war flaring up in the country and cash in on the American lack of knowledge of domestic rivalries and their arrogance.

By capitalizing on this weakness of the invaders, the warlords are holding top slots in the government and have amassed hundreds of millions of dollars through cash privileges and contracts bestowed on them by the Americans. However, if the US keeps continuing this one-sided policy, the day is near when they will end up approaching a precipice of collapse and total disintegration. Example of the former Soviet Union is before them. For one decade, rulers of the former Soviet Union were not able to wriggle themselves free from the Afghan tangle through a sagacious initiative of early withdrawal from the country. This cost them their survival as a political system.

The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has put forward its objective before the entire world in unambiguous words, i.e. that we want:

1. Complete withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan.
2. Liberation of the country.
3. Establishment of an Islamic system in the country based on the aspirations of the people.
4. Rehabilitation, development and prosperity of the people.
5. Participation of all pious and talented Mujahid Afghans in the government from all racial groups.

Members of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan have decided to achieve these goals- be them through peaceful means or through jihadic options.

So one can see clearly, that the American agenda in Afghanistan is not based on the so-called fighting terrorism rather it is based on occupation of the country to achieve its strategic goals in Asia. The problem is, Washington is not ready to give the right of liberation to the Afghans by pulling out of Afghanistan. They are bent on maintaining their domination in the country by raising fatuous slogans of democracy and human rights while they are the most flagrant violators of human rights and democratic values. Their aim to publicize the war on terrorism is to provide them justification for the presence of American troops in Afghanistan.

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'Scores dead' in Pakistan air raids

Aljazeera.net

April l1, 2010

The Pakistani military has killed nearly 100 people in air raids in tribal areas in the country's northwest, officials say.

The attacks were carried out on Saturday in the Orazkai and Khyber regions near the border with Afghanistan, they said.

In Orakzai, 54 people said to be "militants" by the Pakistani army were killed during clashes over a checkpoint near the town of Baizoti, Samiullah Khan, a local official, told the Associated Press news agency on Saturday.

His comments came after it emerged that another raid had killed more than 40 people in the Tirah area of the Khyber region.

"At least 42 militants of Lashkar-e-Islam were killed and two militant hideouts were also destroyed," Shafeerullah Wazir, the Khyber administration chief, said.

"The death toll may rise as dozens of others were also injured in the airstrike."

Death toll confirmed

A military official confirmed that the incident had taken place and the death toll was correct.

"The air strike was launched on a tip-off that a meeting of the Lashkar-e-Islam group was going on in Tirah," the official told the Agence France Presse news service.

The area where the attack took place adjoins the northwestern city of Peshawar, scene of a series of bomb attacks blamed on the Taliban in recent months and increasingly viewed as a seat of instability in Pakistan.

"There was an attack by a fixed-wing aircraft," Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Pakistan, said quoting witnesses.

"A jirga [tribal meeting] was hit. After that nearby residents came to pull people out of the rubble. Then a second and, maybe, even a third wave of attacks hit them."

The violence came as a Pakistani military offensive against Taliban-allied fighters in Orakzai entered its 18th day.

The UN announced on Friday that the deteriorating security situation in Orakzai and Kurram has forced 200,000 civilians to flee since November last year.

[ImmortalTRUTH]

Why do they attack the tribal meetings? ... Of course tribal leaders attack back ...
If they want to defeat the so called "Taliban" in Pakistan, they should cooperate with the Tribal leaders.

[Xill]

Why do they attack the tribal meetings? ... Of course tribal leaders attack back ...
If they want to defeat the so called "Taliban" in Pakistan, they should cooperate with the Tribal leaders.

The "tribal" leader is probably just a young adult trying to survive against a governement hunting him to death.

[LightCaster]

Posted by: ImmortalTRUTH
Why do they attack the tribal meetings? ... Of course tribal leaders attack back ...
If they want to defeat the so called "Taliban" in Pakistan, they should cooperate with the Tribal leaders.

They are attacking any kind of meetings. Weddings, funerals, tribal meetings, etc. They are trying to kill as many people as they can. Depopulation.

Posted by: Xill
The "tribal" leader is probably just a young adult trying to survive against a governement hunting him to death.

Exactly, young adults are tribal leaders cuz it is a rare case that you can live to become older adult in that area.

Abdul Ghafar mourns at the grave of a
family members killed in a NATO night raid on Feb. 12.

[ImmortalTRUTH]

Yes i know....    Almost everyday we hear about Drone\plane attacks against Weddings,funerals,innocent people..

Today they opened fire on a bus. And killed 3 women and a child ... 

[LightCaster]

Today they opened fire on a bus. And killed 3 women and a child ... 

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Who Cries for the Insiders? A rich, powerful, white man speaks out

Pugnacious O'Pseudonym


Sott.net
Sun, 11 Apr 2010 23:33 EDT

The recent release of 17 minutes of video footage shot from an American Apache helicopter on July 12, 2007 in Iraq, is reprehensible, seditious, and un-American. Video footage such as this, as well as hundreds of thousands of documents normally kept safely out of the prying hands of an ill-informed public under the aegis of National Security, are not released for a reason. Simply put, they spoil our fun.



After all, how are we to successfully wage a war of unprovoked aggression when such "leaks" reveal all our tricks and flimsy justifications for senseless and adrenalin-pumping murder to every 13-year-old who has access to YouTube? How can we stand by our plausible cover stories when videos like this impugn our self-created credibility? Yes, when our expendable, fleshy killing machines see an Iraqi man with a camera, what other choice do they have than to tell their superiors he has a weapon and request to "engage" him, and any other Iraqis who happen to be in the vicinity? How else are they supposed to raise their "kill count", I ask you??



It boggles the mind.

This scenario pushes incredulity to its utmost limits when you consider the very real dangers that journalists (and especially journalists with cameras who can actually document the events we usually, simply, and easily write off as "enemy propaganda") pose to our good fun. It is human nature after all (well, a certain type of human, whom I don't particularly understand or care for (not that I care about anyone really, but you catch my drift)) to require our help in these matters by making things palatable to that strange quality called conscience. When people realize that people like us have committed such acts, and then had the foresight and common sense to cover our asses, they tend to become all riled up. I guess you could even say we do them a favor. A psychiatrist may charge hundreds of dollars an hour for the service we provide in preventing fits of hysteria. And yet what do we receive in return for our consideration of their mental health? Who is crying for us?

But I digress. The way it is supposed to work, and the way it does work when groups of anti-American traitors keep their mouths shut, is that we come up with plausible stories to feed the media, let the bleeding hearts have their illusions about what it is we actually do in war, and allow ourselves free rein "engaging" the "enemy".

"15 Armed Iraqis killed while aggressively approaching American troops"

"Group of insurgents righteously killed in armed confrontation"

"Enemy uses children as human shields"

Those are the kind of headlines that let the people let us do what we do best: murder. And that's all the public needs to know. They just don't understand how awesome it is to blow apart human beings from the sky with a high-powered assault rifle. Did we all not hear the fun our soldiers expressed when shooting these unarmed men? Do we really want to rob them of that joy? For what? A few measly Iraqis?

I mean, get over it, people! Give our boys a break!



This is a war after all, and all's fair in war. If you're carrying a camera (which is justification enough!) that could plausibly look like a gun to a Marine who has gone weeks without a fresh kill, that is a perfect justification to shoot to kill. What if it really was a weapon, after all? We can't expect our troops to know the difference, or even to care, mind you. That's just not the way it works. We kill, then we make up the story that plausibly justifies our killing. That's the way it has always worked, and if it wasn't for for those self-righteous gun-shunners, that's the way it would still be working. I will do you a favor by not describing the various activities I would have otherwise engaged in if I had not been called to several emergency meetings to discuss these very issues and the potential problems they pose for me and my small group of friends. But I can tell you the result of those meetings. After much deliberation, we've decided the best future course of action: murder.

It was a difficult choice, but we decided that it really was the most rewarding, and frankly, we couldn't really come up with any alternatives (however, Dick did suggest we first render all such "enemy combatants" to his private estate where we could set them loose and make a party of it, but the logistics involved were a real nightmare).

We also spent some time discussing that treacherous, treasonous traitor Lawrence Wilkerson for spilling the beans about Guantanamo recently. Yes, of course the hundreds of inmates were innocent. That was obvious. But to SAY IT? IN PUBLIC??? At least he waited until we were firmly entrenched in Iraq to open his mouth. That would have been a disaster. Anyway, we've had our fun with the inmates. If there's one thing more enjoyable than a fresh kill, it's having a... hmm? Oh, yes, that part hasn't been made public yet. Sometimes I do carry on! Well, Rummy tried his best to do damage control on the Wilkerson fiasco, but what is done is done, I suppose.

Well then, I am reaching my word limit, and I am several days behind viewing my Guantanamo dailies (I will miss them if the place is ever shut down), and am rightly famished, so until next time.

Yours truly,

Pugnacious

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China's Documentation of US Human Rights Abuses

Stephen Lendman
Peoples Voice
Sat, 03 Apr 2010 15:33 EDT

On March 11, the US State Department issued its "2009 Human Rights Report: China (includes Tibet, Hong Kong, and Macau)," calling the People's Republic of China (PRC) "an authoritarian state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) constitutionally is the paramount source of power," practicing:

    * "cultural and religious repression;"

    * harassment of human rights activists;

    * harassment and disbarment of lawyers who defend them;

    * control of free expression, the Internet, and access to it;

    * extrajudicial killings;

    * torture and coerced confessions of prisoners;

    * use of forced labor, including prison labor;

    * monitoring, harassing, detaining, arresting, and imprisoning "journalists, writers, dissidents, activists, petitioners, and defense lawyers and their families;"

    * denial of due process;

    * political control of courts and judges;

    * administrative detentions and prolonged illegal ones;

    * "tight restriction (on) freedom to assemble, practice religion, and travel;"

    * failure "to protect refugees and asylum-seekers adequately;"

    * forced repatriations of North Koreans;

    * pressure on other countries to repatriate Chinese citizens;

    * monitoring and restricting local and international NGOs;

    * "endemic corruption;

    * trafficking in persons;

    * discrimination against women, minorities, and persons with disabilities;

    * forced abortion(s and) sterilization(s);"

    * no choice of independent union representation or legal right to strike;

    * "arbitrary or unlawful deprivation of life;"

    * harsh and degrading treatment in prisons;

    * arbitrary arrests and detentions;

    * "arbitrary interference with privacy, family, home, or correspondence;" and more.

While China is no model human rights champion, America is guilty of far worse crimes as well as all of the above abuses, yet rarely do major media reports reveal them.

On March 13, two days after the State Department's report, China's Information Office of the State Council published its own comprehensive report, titled: "The Human Rights Record of the United States in 2009," correctly saying America:

    "released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2009....posing as 'the world judge of human rights' again. As in previous years, the reports are full of accusations of the human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions including China, but turn a blind eye to, or dodge and even cover up rampant human rights abuses on its own territory (and those of other nations. China's report) is prepared to help people around the world understand the real situation of human rights in the United States."

Countering official American mythology, its Information Office of the State Council presented an accurate account of what US propaganda suppresses, revealing some of what's known but publicly concealed about:

    * the world's most lawless state;

    * a society in social crisis;

    * a domestic armed camp under police state laws that suppress human rights and civil liberties, criminalize dissent, allow illegal spying, control information, persecute political prisoners for political advantage and deny them due process and judicial fairness;

    * torture as official US policy at home and abroad;

    * the operator of the world's largest global gulag;

    * systematic targeted killings;

    * permanent wars for unchallengeable dominance:

    * targeting peaceful nations;

    * committing ruthless state terror;

    * endangering world stability and peace;

    * illegally transferring public wealth to elitist private hands;

    * stealing elections;

    * governing as a one-party state with two wings, each as criminally ruthless and corrupted as the other, and;

    * as a result, is hated and feared globally and to a growing degree at home.

In its report, the State Department presented detailed charges (true or false), mostly without source substantiation.

China, however, covering six major topics, used data from the US Justice Department (DOJ), FBI, other US agencies, state ones, think tanks, and international and US media reports, revealing a far different America than portrayed in the mainstream and bogus official reports.


1. Life, Property and Personal Security

Criminality in America is rampant, high crime rates threatening "lives, properties and personal security," including annually:

    * 4.9 million violent crimes;

    * 16.3 million property ones;

    * an epidemic of gun violence;

    * 30,000 gun-related deaths;

    * 14 million arrests (except traffic violations);

    * 15,000 murders (mostly against the poor);

    * thousands of violent school incidents; and more.


2. Civil and Political Rights

"In the United States, civil and political rights of citizens are severely restricted and violated by the government."

Citing Amnesty International (AI), the Chicago Defender, a New York Police Department report, the Oregonian, the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and other sources, China reported nationwide instances of police violence, including lawless killings, beatings, Taser gun abuse, and more, including against children - concluding that "Abuse of power is common among US law enforcers."

In his 1990 book "Protectors of Privilege," Frank Donner called Chicago (this writer's home) "The National Capital of Police Repression," mostly against poor blacks and Latinos. He documented:

    "wide-open, no-holds-barred style surveillance. Chicago-style official vigilantism guerrilla warfare against substantial sectors of the city's population," calling it "flamboyantly illegal institutionalized aggression." Unfortunately, what Chicago experiences, happens nationwide, in large and small cities and rural communities, making America repressively harsh against its least advantaged, most vulnerable people.

It shows up in poor neighborhoods and a shameful gulag, China citing Department of Justice (DOJ) and other data revealing some of the following statistics and more of its own, including as many as 2.4 million imprisoned Americans at yearend 2008 (by far, the world's largest prison population plus thousands of others abroad). They include inmates in federal and state facilities, local jails, Indian, juvenile, and military ones, US territories, and numbers held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

In addition, another 7.3 million are under correctional supervision, and 13 million pass through US jails annually. Half of them are for non-violent offenses. Half of those are drug-related. In 1980, 40,000 drug offenders were in prison. Today, it's over 500,000, the result of the "war on drugs," that's part of the war on civil liberties and human rights.

China says "the basic rights of (US) prisoners" aren't protected, evidenced by rampant sexual abuse and thousands of rapes annually in federal confinement. "Chaotic management of (US) prisons also (causes) widespread diseases among inmates," including thousands of confirmed HIV/AIDs cases.

Other civil rights abuses include lawless surveillance, police state laws like the Patriot Act, subordinating free expression to the national interest, clashing with peaceful street demonstrators, and numerous other examples of growing despotism.


3. Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

America is plagued by growing poverty, unemployment, homelessness, and hunger. Its peoples' "economic, social and cultural rights cannot be guaranteed." Business and personal bankruptcies, bank failures, home foreclosures, and human depravation are the highest in decades.

In addition, worker rights "were seriously violated," according to a New York Times 2009 study showing 68% of those surveyed getting wage cuts, another 76% working overtime cheated out of pay, and 57% denied documents to assure legal, accurate compensation. Tens of millions lack medical insurance or are underinsured, legislation passed to correct this, in fact, a bogus deception that will make America's dysfunctional health care system worse for a greater number of people.


4. Racial Discrimination Against Blacks, Latinos, Muslims, Immigrants of Color, and Native Americans

It rages out of control in areas of income, housing, employment, education, judicial fairness, incarceration, life imprisonment, the death penalty, drug-related arrests, and more. In addition, "Ethnic hatred crimes are frequent."


5. Rights of Women and Children

"The living conditions of women and children in the United States are deteriorating and their rights are not properly guaranteed. Women do not enjoy equal social and political status as men." It shows up in employment opportunities, income levels, politics, the military, academia, violence including sexual abuse, and perceptions of women as sex objects, homemakers, and child bearers.

"American children suffer from hunger and cold," a US Department of Agriculture 2008 report showing one-fourth of them nationally were poorly fed. Many face hunger and malnutrition, live in impoverished households, lack proper medical care, experience violence and/or sexual abuse, and many become homeless every year. Most are blacks and Indians.

Many others are unprotected farm workers, forced into near bondage, living in impoverished misery along with their parents in states like Florida, California, Texas, North Carolina and Washington.

America "is the only country in the world" without a parole system for minors, and one of only two nations imposing life without parole (LWOP) sentences. The other is Israel. Many charged with minor crimes get no legal assistance. In prisons, officials turn a blind eye to their abusive treatment.


6. Human Rights Violations Against Other Nations

"The United States with its strong military power has pursued hegemony in the world, trampling upon the sovereignty of other countries and trespassing their human rights."

As the world's largest arms dealer, it fuels global instability. Its military spending tops all other nations combined. Its Iraq and Afghan wars have greatly burdened the American people "and brought tremendous casualties and property losses to" conflict states.

"Prisoner abuse is one of (America's) biggest human rights scandals," well documented in 2009, including by the UN's Human Rights Council Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms. Clear evidence was presented regarding illegal long-term secret detentions, special deportations, torture, other forms of abuse and degrading treatment, and overall lawlessness suppressed in mainstream US media reports.

China's is accurate and revealing. It could have included more, but presents a disturbing account of the real America, not the fictional one portrayed daily on TV screens, films, major publication accounts, what's taught in schools or preached in houses of worship - a sanitized version of what growing millions experience daily and what Blacks, the poor, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and Native Americans have known all their lives as well as America's global victims.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

[LightCaster]

The Serving Armies of The Standing Bankers

One would be a fool to think that because they could see the delusions and denial of those around them that they were free of some degree of the same. You can’t occupy a human body with its sensory apparatus and be free of it. Even if you were free of delusions about the nature and operations of the manifest world you would not be free of delusions about yourself. Even an awareness of the world is a delusion because it indicates a state of dreaming that doesn’t exist, except as a projection upon a blank screen. The screen is real, the projection is not.



However, even if the pool a man is drowning in is not real, this does not mean you should not try to pull him out of it. His suffering is real to him, even if he is in denial about it.



I know that agents of the American and Israeli government were the authors of 9/11. I know this. Many others know this. Then there are those who buy the official line which is impossible. The very fact that no jets were scrambled during the event points to government complicity. The free fall of three buildings into their own footprints and the evidence of nano-thermite prove controlled demolition. Consider these things in a court of law.



Why then do seemingly intelligent people resist the obvious truth? Let’s give an example of a personality type. Let’s take a man who went to war in Vietnam or Iraq under the illusion that he was fulfilling some patriotic duty to a democratic country. We’ve since learned that the Vietnam War and the Iraq War, like nearly all wars, were the brain child of bankers who initiated them for profit. Let’s consider that the so-called democratic country is not, in fact, a democratic country but a serf nation in fealty to a collection of bankers called The Federal Reserve. All of the representatives of this serf nation are employed by the bank and serve at the pleasure of the bank. John Steinbeck illustrated the nature of the bank in his wonderful novel, “The Grapes of Wrath”. Today you see the reality of ‘the bank’ at work in wars for profit, in foreclosures and corporate thefts as well as the tightening of counterfeit, fiat currency flow into the economy.



This man who went to Vietnam has bought into his own sense of sacrifice and whatever idea of manhood he thought he got out of it. He even wallows in the injustice of his state, given how the war ended and the public’s view of it. It defines him to himself. He’s listening to Bruce sing, “Glory Days” on the bar stool of his dotage. He went from soldier to college graduate and into a field that relied on the serf nation for his employment. He bought into the system and served the system, continuing to believe that there are good wars and that his nation is a democratic one. He seeks justice in the system believing that the public interest is served. In reality, the poor usually go to jail and the rich stay out or spend their time in a country club. If he looks clearly at it he cannot justify his position with his conscience so he becomes philosophical and interprets everything that happens within a fantasy construct the same way he did with Vietnam.



Deep inside this man strives to believe that he is a hero. He rocks along with John Fogerty and never hears a word. All across this democratic land, there are men and women like him. They are lawyers and businessmen; politicos, doctors, engineers, teachers and whathaveyou and they all work for the system. The system allows only so much in the way of personal or reactive thought and action. When you’re heavily involved in it and in debt to it, it owns you… no matter what you tell yourself. It owns you. You can’t act outside of it and you can’t speak against it or yonder looms the highway and the sleeping bag under the overpass. This living state of compromise and hypocrisy in the service of a confined, personal survival is untenable to a real person. A real person doesn’t ask themselves the cost of truth. They pay the toll.



No one wants to have to accept that they went to war or that their children died in wars that existed only for the profit of bankers or the pressures of a foreign nation who control the banks that start the wars. No one wants to be put into the position where they jeopardize their position by speaking out against lies and hypocrisies, so they pretend they don’t exist while the very thing stares them in the face. This is how you die inside. This is how you lose your youthfulness and all of the finer qualities that made you who you think you are but no longer are because these finer qualities will not stay in the heart of a man who is false to himself.



How is it that a man can think himself brave by going to war for bankers and not find himself capable of going to war for the very essence of what these false wars were presented as being about? All the phony medals and awards of this phony world are useless except in the company of other men and women who lie to themselves. They think they are honest yet they embrace dishonesty at every turn. They think they are brave yet they kneel in a moment before the oppressors of humanity. They think they are useful but they are all bad examples and willing servants of the engines of enslavement. They watch movies about people in dire peril who win the day because that’s how movies go. They think they are one of those people but they are given the same choices as the people in the movie and they turn away. They turn away.



No man can see the world as it is who does not look closely at himself. No one can know the meaning of anything if they do not know the meaning of themselves.



It is something to see; people who imagine they are standing forth and speaking the truth while hearing the roar of the crowd. One does not hear the roar of the crowd when one speaks the truth. One hears the rustling of chairs and the sound of people leaving the hall. Why is this? The people who are leaving are not leaving because of the speaker. They are leaving because what is inside them cannot accept the responsibility that comes with hearing the truth and failing to act.



Such an immensity of lies surround us that it threatens to block out the sun. It has certainly blocked out the light of introspection and objectivity within so many of us. Enshrined lies now have their own laws to protect them. The only time a purported truth needs protection is when it is concealing the lies contained within it. If something is true then further inquiry only proves it so.



The men from Vietnam and Iraq believe they have sacrificed so much for their country but they fought and died and… in some part survived …conflicts generated by bankers. They are fools to believe otherwise but they do. Having embraced this lie it is not so hard to embrace each succeeding lie. They want to be a part of all they imagined to be true. They go on to fill the positions freely given to those who can accept and perpetuate the lies. They corrupt their own children with these lies after first having corrupted themselves. They corrupt their friends and their neighborhoods. Their churches speak of the deep things in unknown places which honor those who gave their service to God and Country. It was always the bank. It was always about the money; money for the men who did not go to war, money for the men who created the wars for money.



The greatest of honors are reserved for those who have the courage to see the lies and to admit that they were in service to lies and who then denounced the lies and their own complicity in them. These are the few and the brave who are no longer proud. How often have we seen any man accomplish this before the world and then go on to live the truth he has discovered at the cost of all he once believed to be true?



It has been truly asked what it profits a man to gain everything and lose himself. There are real heroes among us but their ranks are not composed of the men and women who have served the interests of those who sacrificed them for a lie.


http://zippittydodah.blogspot.com/2009/07/serving-armies-of-standing-bankers.html

[LightCaster]

Special Ops Killing of Civilians in Afghanistan: A Pattern of Brutality, Denials and Outrage

Derrick Crowe

Video link

U.S. and allied forces storm an Afghan family’s home. They kill civilians. They lie about it. The public affairs officer denies it. Outraged community members are outraged. Violence spikes. More people die.

This is an all-too-familiar pattern in Afghanistan, and it’s got to stop.

U.S. and allied special forces are under fire in Afghanistan for killing civilians in Gardez, a town in Paktiya Province, and for attempting to hide their crime and smear journalists who caught them. This incident is striking for the brutality of the cover-up (troops reportedly dug the bullets from the bodies to try to hide their crime) and because pregnant women died. But a simple look at the most recent record shows that it’s hardly unique:

    ALI DAYA, Afghanistan (AFP) — An Afghan army colonel whose wife and children died in a US-led raid demanded action against the troops responsible Friday as President Hamid Karzai condemned the killings.

    The operation in the eastern province of Khost around midnight Wednesday killed the wife of Afghan National Army artillery commander Awal Khan, two of his children and a brother.

    The troops, who had been hunting a militant linked to radical Islamist groups, also shot a pregnant woman and killed her unborn baby, which had almost come to term, Khan and a provincial health official said. The woman survived the shooting.

Coalition troops killed almost 100 civilians killed last year in the Afghanistan during night raids. Open Society Institute’s Erica Gaston (featured in the Rethink Afghanistan documentary) wrote in a Foreign Policy piece in January that describes the danger this sort of behavior poses not just to Afghans, but also to Americans:

    Reports of abuse — punching, slapping, or other mistreatment — during these raids are frequent. According to the UN, at least 98 civilians were killed in these incidents in 2009.

    …I was recently speaking to a group of Afghan National Army commanders who had just been trained in new counterinsurgency strategy about the importance of protecting and respecting civilians. He told me I should save my lessons for international forces. "Just last week they raided my house and three members of my family were taken away," he shouted, obviously enraged. "If they continue like this, soon I will become an insurgent rather than a counterinsurgent!"

Indeed, some of the family members who survived the Gardez attack threatened suicide attacks unless their loved ones’ killers were brought to justice. The larger statistical picture in Afghanistan urges us to take this reaction seriously. McClatchy Newspapers:

    Night raids have been criticized because of a recent admission by the coalition that its forces had killed five civilians, including three women, in a botched night raid two months ago. Afghan investigators have alleged that U.S. forces tried to cover up the killings, and NATO was forced to backtrack on initial reports that implied that insurgents had killed the women.

    …

    "You may have killed five insurgents, but created 10 more," Gross said. "Or 20. You have an entire village that has moved over to the side of the insurgency."

    The U.S. military is pointing to a new academic study that bolsters that argument.

    In briefings based on military data, academic researchers who were advising McChrystal recently presented officials in Kabul with groundbreaking analysis documenting a dramatic spike in violence after Afghan civilians were killed in coalition attacks.

    In a PowerPoint presentation that McClatchy Newspapers obtained, the researchers concluded that violence jumped by 25 to 65 percent for five months after Afghan civilians died in such attacks.

Counterinsurgency that relies on night raids is a recipe for more outrage and violence in Afghanistan. This pattern of brutality, denial, outrage and revenge has to stop.

If you want to help us stop it, join us on Rethink Afghanistan’s Facebook page.

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200,000 civilians flee Pakistan military offensive

By SEBASTIAN ABBOT (AP)

April 12, 2010

ISLAMABAD — More than 200,000 people have fled Pakistan's latest offensive against Taliban militants in the northwest, the United Nations said Monday, as fresh clashes in the remote region killed 41 insurgents and six soldiers.

Elsewhere in the northwest, a suspected U.S. missile killed five alleged militants in a house in North Waziristan, the latest in a series of strikes in the region, Pakistani officials said. North Waziristan is home to al-Qaida and Taliban commanders, many of whom play a role in the insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.

The military has pounded the Orakzai tribal region with airstrikes and artillery in an attempt to rout insurgents from the rugged, mountainous area near the Afghan border. Many Taliban fighters fled to Orakzai last year to escape a separate army offensive in their tribal stronghold of South Waziristan.

The exodus of civilians from Orakzai adds to the more than 1.3 million people driven from their homes by fighting in the northwest and unable to return.

The U.N. warned Monday it faces a severe shortfall in funding needed to aid those displaced, saying it has only received about $106 million, or 20 percent, of the $538 million appeal it launched in February for the next six months. Last year, the U.N. had received 40 percent of its appeal by this time, it said.

Martin Mogwanja, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Pakistan, said some aid groups providing water, food, health care and sanitation for the displaced were having to scale down their activities.

Funding levels have been lower this year because of the recent financial crisis and the large amounts of aid directed to help Haiti recover from a recent, devastating earthquake, said Mogwanja.

Pakistan received significant international attention last spring when more than 1 million people fled a military offensive in the Swat valley. Most of those people have returned home, but the number of displaced in the country has remained high as the military has targeted other areas.

Almost 210,000 people have fled Orakzai since the fighting first started at the end of last year, including nearly 50,000 people who left in the last month as the military has intensified its offensive in the area, said the U.N.

The latest violence in Orakzai occurred Monday when dozens of militants armed with rockets and automatic weapons attacked two security checkpoints in the villages of Shireen Dara and Sangrana, local administrator Saaid. Security forces successfully repelled the attack, but six soldiers were killed and three others wounded, he said.

"More than 100 militants attacked the security checkpoint in Shireen Dara," Khan said. "They fought a gunbattle for two hours and fired several rockets."

After the battles subsided, authorities found the bodies of 15 militants around the two checkpoints, said two intelligence officials. Insurgents removed the bodies of at least 26 others who were killed, they said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

More than 300 suspected militants have been killed in Orakzai since mid-March, including 10 on Sunday when fighter jets destroyed three militant hide-outs in Sangram village, Khan said.

Government reports are almost impossible to independently verify because journalists are prohibited from traveling to the country's semiautonomous tribal areas.

Monday's missile hit a house close to Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, said two intelligence officials on customary condition of anonymity. Five suspected militants were killed, they said.

The United States has carried out scores of missile attacks in the northwest over the last 18 months, killing many alleged insurgents. Some independent experts and rights groups have alleged many civilians have also died. Independent reporting of the attacks is impossible.

Pakistan's northwest has also been in the headlines lately because of a proposal before Parliament to change the name of the North West Frontier Province to Khyber-Pakhtoonkhwa. The name change was pushed by the Awami National Party, a Pashtun nationalist group that leads the provincial government in the northwest.

Many non-Pashtun groups in the northwest have opposed the idea, and hundreds of protesters took to the streets in Abbottabad on Monday, some of whom were armed, according to the police.

Police fired tear gas and bullets into the crowd after they attacked two police stations and torched several vehicles, killing seven people and wounding more than 100 others, said local police official Asif Gohar Khan.

Associated Press writer Hussain Afzal contributed to this report from Parachinar.

[LightCaster]

WikiLeaks plans to post video showing US massacre of Afghani civilians

John Byrne

RAW STORY, April 12, 2010

The whisteblower website WikiLeaks -- which exploded onto the national stage earlier this month after it released a video recording showing US servicemembers shooting two reporters and six others to death -- says they plan to release another, even more harrowing clip.

The clip will show previously classified footage from US warplanes that had been tapped to bomb Taliban positions in Farah province, Afghanistan last year.

Adds the UK Telegraph: "The Afghan government said at the time that the strikes by F-18 and B1 planes near Granai killed 147 civilians. An independent Afghan inquiry later put the toll at 86."

"Video footage of the strike could prove highly damaging to the Nato-led coalition if it showed pilots failing to safeguard civilian lives," the paper continues.

The earlier video showing two Reuters cameramen being shot appears at the bottom of this report. Viewer discretion is advised, as the clip is graphic.

As recently as today, Afghanis protested the deaths of four other civilians who were killed when US forces fired on a bus on Monday.

About 200 men took to the streets of Kandahar to demonstrate over the killings on a highway outside the southern Afghan city, burning tires and shouting "death to America, death to Karzai, death to this government".

Hours later, three Taliban militants wearing suicide vests and carrying guns tried to storm the office of Afghanistan's premier spy agency in Kandahar, sparking a shoot-out with security forces.

The incidents reflected chronic insecurity in the province of Kandahar, where US-led military forces are preparing a major push to dislodge the Taliban from their spiritual capital.

The Afghan government said a woman and a child were among the dead and 18 others were wounded in the shooting, which occurred when the bus neared a NATO convoy on the highway linking Kandahar and the western province of Herat.

[LightCaster]

Families of Victims of 2007 US Helicopter Killing React to Leaked Video

Democracy Now!

Journalists from the investigative team in Iceland that released the now-infamous US military video on WikiLeaks traveled to Baghdad recently to meet with the family members of some of the twelve people killed in the 2007 attack. Ahlam Abdelhussain, the widow of Saleh Mutashar who was killed when the gunship opened fire on a van, asks, "Why was he shot with his children in the car? They did nothing wrong. He was helping a journalist. What was his crime? What was the crime of our children who are left with no father and no support?" We play excerpts. [includes rush transcript]

Family members of Iraq victims,

Related stories

    * "This Is How These Soldiers Were Trained to Act"–Veteran of Military Unit Involved in 2007 Baghdad Helicopter Shooting Says Incident Is Part of Much Larger Problem
    * EXCLUSIVE: One Day After 2007 Attack, Witnesses Describe US Killings of Iraqi Civilians
    * Massacre Caught on Tape: US Military Confirms Authenticity of Their Own Chilling Video Showing Killing of Journalists
    * Triple Suicide Bombing Targets Foreign Embassies in Iraq
    * Cindy Sheehan Sets Up "Camp OUT NOW" in Antiwar Protest


Rush Transcript

Related Links

"Collateral Murder" (Wikileaks)


JUAN GONZALEZ: We begin today with an update on the video released last week by WikiLeaks that depicts US troops killing twelve people, including two Reuters employees, and injuring at least two children in a suburb of Baghdad nearly three years ago. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told ABC’s This Week that the video, quote, "doesn’t show the broader picture of the firing that was going on at American troops." He acknowledged that the video was "unfortunate" and "painful" but added that the incident had already been thoroughly investigated and the video, quote, "should not have any lasting consequences."

Here’s an excerpt from that US military video released by WikiLeaks. This is the moment that US forces first open fire from a helicopter.

      US SOLDIER 5: …there, one o’clock. Haven’t seen anything since then.

      US SOLDIER 2: Just [expletive]. Once you get on, just open up.

      US SOLDIER 1: I am.

      US SOLDIER 4: I see your element, got about four Humvees, out along this—

      US SOLDIER 2: You’re clear.

      US SOLDIER 1: Alright, firing.

      US SOLDIER 4: Let me know when you’ve got them.

      US SOLDIER 2: Let’s shoot. Light 'em all up.

      US SOLDIER 1: Come on, fire!

      US SOLDIER 2: Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’. Keep shootin’.

      US SOLDIER 6: Hotel, Bushmaster two-six, Bushmaster two-six, we need to move, time now!

      US SOLDIER 2: Alright, we just engaged all eight individuals.


JUAN GONZALEZ: The video shows US forces watching as a van pulls up to evacuate the wounded. They again open fire from the helicopter, killing several more people and wounding two children inside the van.

      US SOLDIER 1: Where’s that van at?

      US SOLDIER 2: Right down there by the bodies.

      US SOLDIER 1: OK, yeah.

      US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons.

      US SOLDIER 1: Let me engage. Can I shoot?

      US SOLDIER 2: Roger. Break. Crazy Horse one-eight, request permission to engage.

      US SOLDIER 3: Picking up the wounded?

      US SOLDIER 1: Yeah, we’re trying to get permission to engage. Come on, let us shoot!

      US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

      US SOLDIER 1: They’re taking him.

      US SOLDIER 2: Bushmaster, Crazy Horse one-eight.

      US SOLDIER 4: This is Bushmaster seven, go ahead.

      US SOLDIER 2: Roger. We have a black SUV—or Bongo truck picking up the bodies. Request permission to engage.

      US SOLDIER 4: Bushmaster seven, roger. This is Bushmaster seven, roger. Engage.

      US SOLDIER 2: One-eight, engage. Clear.

      US SOLDIER 1: Come on!

      US SOLDIER 2: Clear. Clear.

      US SOLDIER 1: We’re engaging.

      US SOLDIER 2: Coming around. Clear.

      US SOLDIER 1: Roger. Trying to—

      US SOLDIER 2: Clear.

      US SOLDIER 1: I hear 'em—I lost ’em in the dust.

      US SOLDIER 3: I got ’em.

      US SOLDIER 2: Should have a van in the middle of the road with about twelve to fifteen bodies.

      US SOLDIER 1: Oh yeah, look at that. Right through the windshield! Ha ha!


JUAN GONZALEZ: Saleh Mutashar is the man who was driving that van. He was taking his two children, age nine and six at the time, to school.

Well, earlier this month, journalists from the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, who were part of the investigative team that released the US military video on WikiLeaks, visited the family of Saleh Mutashar, the driver of the van and the father of the two children. They showed his family the recently released video footage of the attack on the van that led to his death, and then spoke to his son Sajad, his nephew Anwar, and his widow Ahlam Abdelhussain.

      AHLAM ABDELHUSSAIN: [translated] My husband did nothing wrong. He saved a wounded person and had his children with him in the car. How do I feel? What can I say? Why was he shot with his children in the car? They did nothing wrong. He was helping a journalist. What was his crime? What was the crime of our children who are left with no father and no support?

      ANWAR: [translated] He was carrying wounded people during the American attacks. He was trying to help. They believe that someone who was carrying a gun will take his children along with him? Unbelievable. What can we do? God take revenge from the Americans. They destroyed us and destroyed our nations. What is the future of those children? They are orphans.

      SAJAD MUTASHAR: [translated] I want to get our rights from the Americans who harmed us.


AMY GOODMAN: That was twelve-year-old Sajad Mutashar, injured in the July 2007 Apache helicopter attack on the Iraqi civilians, reacting to the video of the attack released by WikiLeaks. The boy’s mother says she has yet to receive compensation from the US military for the death of her husband or the injuries to her two children. She described the hardship she’s had to suffer since her husband was killed in July 2007.

      AHLAM ABDELHUSSAIN: [translated] We used to live in a rented house. He worked as a construction worker. We didn’t have any other income. After his death, I was left with nothing. My children were wounded. We were devastated. My father-in-law took us to live with him. Life became very difficult. My children are still suffering from their wounds. My daughter still suffers from pain in her head and her stomach. My son is still in pain after his surgery. We don’t have a pension or any other income to rely on, so my father-in-law took us to live with him.


AMY GOODMAN: The attack also killed two Reuters employees: the photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, a father of four, Saeed Chmagh.

[LightCaster]

Engineers of Human Souls: The Pentagon's Cult of Killing Strikes Again

Chris Floyd

In the light of this:

Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us" (Dahr Jamail, Truthout.org)

and this:

    Support the Troops? (John Caruso, A Tiny Revolution)

and this:

    Dead Souls: The Pentagon Plan to Create Remorseless Warfighters (Empire Burlesque)

is there anything really suprising about this? (From Monday's New York Times):

    U.S. Troops Fire on Afghan Bus, Killing at Least 5 Civilians

    American troops raked a large passenger bus with gunfire near the southern city of Kandahar on Monday morning, killing as many as five civilians and wounding 18, Afghan authorities and survivors said....

    One of the bus passengers and a man who identified himself as the driver said that an American convoy about 70 yards ahead of the bus opened fire as the bus began to pull to the side of the road to allow another military convoy traveling behind to pass. The two convoys and the bus were on the main highway in Sanzari, about 15 miles west of Kandahar city. All of the windows on one side of the bus were shot out ...

    If the Afghan government’s casualty toll is correct, it would suggest that troops fired scores or even hundreds of rounds. It was not clear why such a large fusillade would have been directed at a passenger bus....


Actually, it is very clear why these troops would have decided to "light up" a bus crammed with civilians that was pulling subserviently off the road to let even more of the occupier's military muscle barrel through their invaded homeland. It's because for generations, the Pentagon has been employing every mind-bending technique it can find to turn human beings into killing machines.

And oddly enough, the impetus for this massive, long-term "engineering of human souls" was ... the greatest feat of arms in American history: victory in World War II. As I noted in the Moscow Times, way back in 2004:


    America calls its soldiers who fought in World War II "the greatest generation." They are hymned by Hollywood, celebrated by publishers and politicians, hailed at every turn....Yet despite the vast tonnage of celluloid and printer's ink devoted to their praise, what is perhaps the truest, highest measure of their worth has been almost universally neglected. And what is this hidden glory, which does more honor to the people of the United States than every single military action ordered by their corruption-riddled leaders during the past fifty years? It's the fact that in the midst of history's most vicious, all-devouring, inhuman war, only about 15 percent of American soldiers on the battlefield actually tried to kill anyone.

    In-depth studies by the U.S. Army after WWII showed that between 80 to 85 percent of the greatest generation never fired their weapons at an exposed enemy in combat, as military psychologist Lt. Colonel Dave Grossman reports. Many times they had the chance, but could not bring themselves to do it. They either withheld their fire altogether or else shot into the air, to the side, anywhere but at the fellow human beings – their blood kin in biology, mind and mortality – facing them across the line. This reticence is even more remarkable given the incessant demonization of the enemy by the top brass, especially in the Pacific, where the Japanese – soldiers and civilians – were routinely portrayed by military propaganda as simian, sub-human creatures fit only for extermination.

    Yet even with official license given to the most virulent prejudice .. even with all the moral chaos endemic to warfare, American soldiers, as a whole, killed only with the greatest reluctance, in the direst extremity. These were not "warriors," bloodthirsty automatons with stripped-down brains and cauterized souls, slavering in Pavlovian fury at the bell-clap of command. No, they were real men, willing, as Grossman notes, to stand up for a cause, even die for it, but not willing, in the end, to transgress the natural law (implanted by God or evolution, take your pick) that says: Do not kill your own kind – and every person of every race and nation is your own kind ...

    But far from celebrating this example of genuine glory, the military brass were horrified at the low "firing rates" and anemic "kill ratios" of American soldiery. They immediately set about trying to break the next generation of recruits of their natural resistance to slaughtering their own kind. Incorporating the latest techniques for psychological manipulation, new training programs were designed to brutalize the mind and habituate soldiers to the idea of killing automatically, by reflex, "at the bell-clap of command," without the intervention of any of those inefficient scruples displayed by their illustrious predecessors.

    And it worked. The dehumanization process led to a steady rise in firing rates for U.S. soldiers during subsequent conflicts. In the Korean War, 55 percent were ready to pump hot lead into enemy flesh. And by the time the greatest generation's own children took the field, in Vietnam, the willingness to slaughter was almost total: 95 percent of combat troops there fired with the intent to kill.

    And today in occupied Iraq, the brutalizing beat goes on. "Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, it's like it pounds in my brain," a U.S. soldier told the Los Angeles Times last week. Another shrugged at the sight of freshly slaughtered bodies. "It doesn't bother me at all," he said. "I'm a warrior. My soldiers, they are all warriors. They have no problems. There's no place in this Army for men who aren't warriors." Said a third: "We talk about killing all the time. I never used to be this way…but it's like I can't stop. I'm worried what I'll be like when I get home."

    Yet strangely enough, this new model army, imbued with eager "warrior spirit," has not produced the kind of lasting victories won by the reluctant fifteen-percenters of yore. It was stalemated in Korea, defeated in Vietnam, chased out of Lebanon and Somalia, balked in Afghanistan (where 40,000 Taliban troops slipped away to fight again and drug-dealing warlords rule the countryside), while its two excursions into Iraq have ended first in irresolution (with "worse-than-Hitler" Saddam still on his throne) and now in bloody quagmire.

    Could it be that the systematic degradation of natural morality and common human feeling – especially in the service of dubious ends – is not actually the best way to achieve national greatness?

[LightCaster]

More Than 53 Percent of Your Tax Bill Goes to the Military

by: Dave Lindorff
t r u t h o u t

Your tax dollars at war.

If you're like me, now that we're in the week that federal income taxes are due, you are finally starting to collect your records and prepare for the ordeal. Either way, whether you are a procrastinator like me, or have already finished and know how much you have paid to the government, it is a good time to stop and consider how much of your money goes to pay for our bloated and largely useless and pointless military.

The budget for the 2011 fiscal year, which has to be voted by Congress by this October 1, looks to be about $3 trillion, not counting funds collected for Social Security (since the Vietnam War, the government has included the Social Security Trust Fund in the budget as a way to make the cost of America's imperial military adventures seem smaller in comparison to the total cost of government). Meanwhile, the military share of the budget works out to about $1.6 trillion.

That figure includes the Pentagon budget request of $708 billion, plus an estimated $200 billion in supplemental funding, called "overseas contingency funding" in euphemistic White House-speak), to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, some $40 billion or more in "black box" intelligence agency funding, $94 billion in non-DoD military spending, $100 billion in veterans benefits and health care spending, and $400 billion in interest on debt raised to pay for prior wars and the standing military.

The 2011 military budget, by the way, is the largest in history, not just in actual dollars, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, exceeding even the spending in World War II, when the nation was on an all-out military footing.

Military spending in all its myriad forms works out to represent 53.3 percent of total US federal spending.

It's also a budget that is rising at a faster pace than any other part of the budget (with the possible exception of bailing out crooked Wall Street financial firms and their managers). For the past decade, and continuing under the present administration, military budgets have been rising at a nine percent annual clip, making health care inflation look tiny by comparison.

US military spending isn't just half of the US budget. It is also half of the entire global spending on war and weaponry. In 2009, according to the venerable War Resisters League, US military spending accounted for 47 percent of all money spent globally on war, weapons and military preparedness. What makes that staggering figure particularly ridiculous is that America's allies - countries like France, Britain, Germany, Italy and Japan - account for another 21 percent of the world's military spending. Fully 12 of the top spenders among big military-spending nations are either allies of the US or are friendly countries like Brazil and India. That is to say, America and its friends and allies account for more than two-thirds of all military spending worldwide.

China, in contrast, probably the closest thing to a real "threat" to American interests because of America's treaty commitments to the island nation of Taiwan, and China's claim that it is a part of the PRC, spends only some $130 billion on its military, much of which is actually devoted to maintaining military control of the country's own 1.3 billion people, some of whom might prefer to be independent, or to be freer.

The next biggest military spender, Russia, spends less than $80 billion a year on its decrepit military, and isn't even technically an enemy of the US anymore. Its military is largely busy keeping restive regions from spinning off from the mother country, anyhow.

Meanwhile, Iran, which the White House and Congress are portraying as America's arch enemy despite its not having invaded another country in hundreds of years, isn't even on the list of the top 17 military big spenders. Iran's current military budget is a teensy $4.8 billion, about the same as the estimated $5 billion spent on the military by North Korea - America's other "major enemy." Each of those country's military budgets is about one-quarter of the military budget of Australia, or a third of the military budget of the Netherlands.

Just to give one an idea of how small $4.8 billion is in comparison to the $1.6 trillion that the US is spending each year on war and planning for war, that number is roughly what the Pentagon plans to spend over the next year on child care and youth programs, morale and recreation programs and commissaries on its bases! It's about what the Pentagon will spend acquiring replacement Seahawk, Chinook and Blackhawk helicopters this year.

For the average American, what all this means is that of every dollar you send to the IRS, 53 cents will be going to pay for blowing stuff up, fattening the wallets of colonels, admirals and generals, bloating the portfolios of investors in military industries, and of course funding bonuses paid to executives of those companies, and the campaign chests and expense accounts of members of Congress who vote for these outlandish budgets. Your money will also be going to pay for the salaries and the bullets of those brave heroes over in Afghanistan who are executing kids, killing pregnant women (and then digging out the bullets and claiming they were stabbed by their families), and for the anti-personnel weapons that are creating legions of legless Afghani kids.

Next time you hear that the government needs to cut funds for providing medical care to the children of laid-off workers, or that supplemental unemployment funds are running out, next time you hear that federal funds that are needed to fund extra teachers at your school are being cut, or that Social Security benefits need to be cut back, or the retirement age needs to be increased to 70, next time you hear that your local post office has to be shut down for lack of funds, next time you hear that Medicare benefits need to be reduced, think about that 53 percent of your tax payment that's going to finance the most enormous war machine the world has ever known.

And ask yourself: Is this really necessary? Is this really where I want my money going?

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-area journalist. His latest book is "The Case for Impeachment" (St. Martin's Press, 2010). His work is available at:
www.thiscantbehappening.net

[LightCaster]

Iraq Vets: Coverage of Atrocities Is Too Little, Too Late

Tuesday 13 April 2010
by: Dahr Jamail
t r u t h o u t

The WikiLeaks video footage from Iraq taken from an Apache helicopter in July 2007 showing soldiers killing 12 people and wounding two children has caused an explosion of media coverage. But many Iraq vets feel it is too little and too late.

In contrast to most of the coverage that favors the military's stated position of forgiving the soldiers responsible and citing that they followed the Rules of Engagement (ROE), Iraq war veterans who have spoken to the media previously about atrocities carried out against innocent Iraqis have largely been ignored by the mainstream media in the United States.

Also See: Iraq War Vet: "We Were Told to Just Shoot People, and the Officers Would Take Care of Us"

This includes Josh Steiber, a former US Army specialist who was a member of the Bravo Company 2-16 whose acts of brutality made headlines with the WikiLeaks release of the video "Collateral Murder."

Steiber told Truthout during a telephone interview on Sunday that such acts were "not isolated incidents" and were "common" during his tour of duty. "After watching the video, I would definitely say that that is, nine times out of ten, the way things ended up," Steiber was quoted as saying in an earlier press release on the video, "Killing was following military protocol. It was going along with the rules as they are."

Steiber was not with his unit, who were the soldiers on the ground in the video. He was back at his base with the incident occurred. While not absolving of responsibility those who carried out the killing, Steiber blames the "larger system" of the US military, specifically how soldiers are trained to dehumanize Iraqis and the ROE.

"We have to address the larger system that trains people to respond in this way, or the same thing will probably happen again," Steiber told Truthout.

However, Steiber explained that during his basic training for the military, "We watched videos celebrating death," and said that his leaders would "pull aside soldiers who'd not deployed, and ask us if somebody open fired on us in a market full of unarmed civilians, would we return fire. And if you didn't say 'yes' instantly, you got yelled at for not being a good soldier. The mindset of military training was one based on fear, and the ability to eliminate any threat."

Steiber was released from the military as a conscientious objector, and is now a member of the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW).

"I saw many instances, frequently, of the military killing civilians," Steiber added, "One thing we were told was that if a roadside bomb went off, anybody in the area was considered an enemy. Obviously those are innocent civilians since most of them, if not all of them, are not involved with the bombing. So I would consider those innocent civilians as lives lost. That policy came down from high up [the chain of command]."

When Truthout asked Steiber how many times this happened with his unit, he said, "Between five and ten times, and each time we'd end up killing people."

The group to which Steiber belongs, IVAW, sponsored the Winter Soldier hearings that took place March 13-16, 2008, in Silver Spring, Maryland. The hearings provided a platform for veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan to share the reality of their occupation experiences with the media.

While the hearings garnered major coverage from foreign media outlets, they were ignored by mainstream US media outlets. The censorship of that event is reflective of an overarching censorship by the mainstream media in the US of veterans from both occupations who have tried to tell their stories to the public.

Garret Reppenhagen, who testified at the Winter Soldier hearings, served in Iraq from February 2004-2005 in the city of Baquba, 40 kilometers (about 25 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

"There are so many incidents like this that happen in Iraq it's bound that eventually one of them hits the vein of public attention, like this one," Reppenhagen told Truthout of his opinion of the WikiLeaks footage, "Film helps - like this, and Abu Ghraib - the video and film documentation helps spurn public attention. So, it's sad that these instances happen, and they are occurring and it has to do with how we conduct ourselves in this conflict - clearly there are things that need to be done for soldiers to adhere to the Geneva Conventions."

Reppenhagen doubted the media uproar caused by the leaked video would change how soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan conduct themselves. "I still doubt enough support will be garnered to change how we operate in theater. Eventually I hope there'll be a critical mass of people coming out and telling their stories about these things."

Bryan Casler, a corporal in the Marines, who served both in Iraq and Afghanistan, has also spoken out publicly about atrocities committed by US soldiers he'd witnessed in Iraq.

"First, my response to the video is utter disgust," Casler told Truthout, "You watch it and the first thing you see is them blow away a group of men who are obviously not hostile - obviously breaking any ROE they had. Then you watch them blow away a van coming to rescue the wounded people ... a van that happens to have kids in it."

Casler admitted that he has experienced some frustration in not having had mainstream media coverage when he has spoken out about what he witnessed in Iraq. "You have to share this, because as an Iraq veteran, and talking with other vets, we know this is happening all the time. This is damning video for a propaganda machine trying to say we're over there trying to save the Iraqi people. But this isn't happening just in Iraq, but anywhere the military is engaged in fighting with the local population."

The US military's response to the WikiLeaks video has been to claim that it was an isolated incident, and the soldiers were properly following their ROE.

In an interview on the ABC News "This Week" program on Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said the soldiers were operating in "split second situations," and that, "It's unfortunate. It's clearly not helpful. But by the same token, I think - think it should not have any lasting consequences."

Casler begs to differ with Gates' response.

"The argument about this being just a few bad apples - pilots are known for keeping their cool in tough environments, but the whole time you have to remind yourself, it's not these pilots committing the atrocities - these guys had years of training and practice to do this, and loads of money making it happen," Casler told Truthout, "This is what they are trained to do. American taxpayer money was paid to make them into this. This is not a few bad apples."

In a response similar to Steiber's, Casler added, "I don't think anybody is murderous by nature - this is why the military trains you every day, both when you're deployed or not, because people are not naturally killers - so the training is to have no barrier to killing. And that's what you see in the video."

When asked how he felt about the incident getting the coverage it has, Casler said he was pleased.

"I'm happy the average person might see this," he told Truthout, "So I'm happy this is finally getting the coverage it deserves, and every vets story coming back needs this type of coverage. The military is censoring what is happening over there - but this video blows this apart. I hope more videos like this get leaked to the media, because people need to know about this."

Casler may not have to wait long.

WikiLeaks.org is now poised to post another damning video of US forces slaughtering civilians - this time in Afghanistan.

On May 5, 2009, US aircraft bombed a number of homes in the Afghan village of Abdul Basir Khan in Farah Province. According to Afghan officials, the death toll was upwards of 140 civilians. The Pentagon initially claimed the entire incident was fabricated, but then later conceded that people were killed by the airstrike, but that "no one will ever" know the exact number. They also claimed that the pilots had no idea civilians were in the area.

More recently, on April 12, four Afghan civilians were killed in Kandahar when US troops fired on a bus in Afghanistan. The slaughter sparked furious protests and an expression of "regret" from the military. The Afghan government said a woman and child were among the dead, and that at least 18 others were wounded in the shooting.

After serving a tour in Iraq, Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia became the first conscientious objector to the Iraq war.

Mejia claimed that he left his post in order to avoid duties that he considered to be war crimes, particularly citing the torture and abuse of Iraqi prisoners by US soldiers. He was court-martialed and listed as a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International while serving his prison sentence.

"It was sad," Mejia said of his reaction to the WikiLeaks video from Iraq, "You talk to other people, and they are shocked and can't believe it. The fact that people are surprised and it's getting so much coverage like it's isolated and new - this is stuff we've been talking about for a long time, we know this is happening."

Mejia, in addition to talking with people about atrocities he committed and witnessed in Iraq, told Truthout he was surprised at the reaction to the video, given that he and others had shared similar information at the Winter Soldier hearings two years ago.

"We're talking a couple of years from when we talked about this stuff and exposed it - and here it is getting coverage ... it's like we live in a twilight zone where people don't pay attention to when things actually happen, but then longer after the fact, when somebody else says the same thing, it's huge news," Mejia added.

Two of the Iraqis shown being murdered in the WikiLeaks video were employees of the Reuters news agency: photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen and driver Saeed Chmagh.

While most mainstream media in the US has reported on the Pentagon's statements saying that two internal investigations have cleared the soldiers of any wrongdoing, and that they were following the ROE, international media like Al-Jazeera English have reported on reactions from the families of the victims of the attack.

In particular, the families of the slain Iraqi civilians are seeking justice for the deaths, and want the military personnel responsible for the deaths to be taken to court.

Two young children, whose father was killed in the attack, could not understand why they were targeted. "We were coming back and we saw an injured man," said Sajad Mutashar, whose father was killed in the attack while he and his sister were wounded, "My father said, let's take him to hospital. Then I heard only the bullets ... Why did they shoot us? Didn't they see we were children?"

His uncle, Satar, is demanding that the pilot be taken to court. "Nobody gave the children anything, their rights are gone and the Americans didn't even compensate for the destroyed car. I sold it for $500 to spend the money treating them," Satar told Al Jazeera.

The family of Saeed Chamgh, one of the Reuters employee killed in the attack, is also demanding justice for his death. "The pilot is not human, he's a monster," Safa Chmagh, Saeed's brother, said, "What did my brother do? What did his children do? Does the pilot accept his kids to be orphans?"

Salwan Saeed, Saeed's son, said, "The American has broken my back by killing my father. I will not let the Americans get away with it. I will follow the path of my father and will hold another camera."

Mark Taylor, an international law expert and a director at the Fafo Institute for International Studies in Norway, told reporters the evidence so far "indicated that there's a case to be made that a war crime may have been committed."

Taylor said US authorities, and especially the US military, have to take a closer look at this investigation. "There are questions about the way the investigation was conducted and whether or not it was done in a proper manner," he said, adding, "There are precedents of US soldiers being prosecuted for crimes in Iraq, for crimes of murder, rape and manslaughter. So it's not unprecedented that this could go forward both in military courts as well as in civilian criminal courts in the US."

Taylor believes the case raises larger questions about the laws of war, and added, "I think what this video shows is really a case that challenges whether the laws of war are strict enough."

Marjorie Cohn is a former president of the National Lawyer's Guild, a professor of law at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and co-author of the book "Rules of Disengagement: The Politics of Honor and Military Dissent." She spoke with Truthout about possible war crimes committed by the soldiers in the WikiLeaks video.

"I think there's clearly enough there to warrant an investigation," Cohn said, referring to the need for an investigation of war crimes committed by US soldiers in the video, "I'm distraught and disappointed the US government refuses to launch an investigation about whether or not there've been violations of the law."

Cohn cited the three possible violations to Truthout. "What I thought after watching the video, is that it looks like there were three possible violations of the Geneva Conventions. There were civilians standing around, there was no one firing at the US soldiers, and at least two people with cameras ... there may have been people armed, like there are many people armed in the US, but this does not create the license to fire on people. That's one violation of the Geneva Conventions - targeting people who are not a military necessity who do not pose a threat."

Cohn said that the second and third possible violation of the laws of war are evident in the scene on the tape when the van attempts to rescue the wounded and a later scene of a US tank rolling over a body on the ground. "The soldiers shot him and those in the van, another possible violation of the Geneva Conventions - preventing the rescuers," she added, "Third, when the wounded or dead man was lying on the ground, and a US tank rolled over him, effectively splitting him in two - and if he was dead, that was disrespecting a body - another violation of the Geneva Conventions."

In that scene that occurs at 18:50 into in the full version of the WikiLeaks video, a soldier is heard saying, "I think they just drove over a body." To this another soldier is heard laughing before he respond, "Really?"

Shortly thereafter, a soldier is heard saying, "Well, they're dead, so."

Cohn concluded, "So I see several possible violations, certainly enough to warrant an investigation by the US military."

[LightCaster]

Winter Soldier:


Camilo Mejia speaks on a panel at Winter Soldier titled "Racism and War: the Dehumanization of the enemy."

Garret Reppenhagen discusses the evaporation of the Rules of Engagement upon his arrival to Iraq.

Bryan Casler on his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[LightCaster]

Gods and Monsters:
Fighting American Wars From on High

Tuesday 13 April 2010
by: Tom Engelhardt

The Greeks had it right. When you live on Mount Olympus, your view of humanity is qualitatively different. The Greek gods, after all, lied to, stole from, lusted for, and punished humanity without mercy, while taking the planet for a spin in a manner that we mortals would consider amoral, if not immoral. And it didn't bother them a bit. They felt -- so Greek mythology tells us -- remarkably free to intervene from the heights in the affairs of whichever mortals caught their attention and, in the process, to do whatever took their fancy without thinking much about the nature of human lives. If they sometimes felt sympathy for the mortals whose lives they repeatedly threw into havoc, they were incapable of real empathy. Such is the nature of the world when your view is the Olympian one and what you see from the heights are so many barely distinguishable mammals scurrying below. The details of their petty lives naturally blur and seem less than important.

In the last week, we've seen -- literally viewed -- a modern example of what it means in our day to act from the heights, and we've read about another striking example of the same. The website WikiLeaks released a decrypted July 2007 video of two U.S. Apache helicopters attacking Iraqis on a street in Baghdad. At least 12 Iraqis, including two employees of the news agency Reuters, a photographer and his driver, were killed in the incident, and two children in the vehicle of a good Samaritan who stopped to pick up casualties and died in the process, were also wounded.

Without a doubt, that video is a remarkable 17-minute demo of how to efficiently slaughter tiny beings milling about below. There is no way American helicopter crews could know just who was walking down there -- Sunni or Shiite, insurgent or shopper, Baghdadis with intent to harm Americans or Baghdadis paying little attention to two of the helicopters then so regularly buzzing the city. Were they killers, guards, bank clerks, unemployed idlers, Baathist Party members, religious fanatics, café owners? Who could tell from such a height? But the details mattered little.

The Reuters cameraman crouches behind a building looking, camera first, around a corner, and you hear an American in an Apache yell, "He's got an RPG!" -- mistaking his camera with its long-range lens for a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. The pilot, of course, doesn't know that it's a Reuters photographer down there. Only we do. (And when his death did become known, the military carefully buried the video.)

Along with that video comes a soundtrack in which you hear the Americans check out the rules of engagement (ROE), request permission to fire, and banter about the results. ("Hahaha. I hit 'em"; "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards..."; and of the two wounded children, "Well, it's their fault bringing their kids into a battle.") Such callous chit-chat is explained away in media articles here by the need for "psychological distance" of those whose job it is to kill, but in truth that's undoubtedly the way you talk when you, and only you, have god-like access to the skies and can hover over the rest of humanity, making preparations to wipe out lesser beings.

Similarly, in pre-dawn darkness on February 12th in Paktia Province, eastern Afghanistan, a U.S. Special Operations team dropped from the skies into a village near Gardez. There, in a world that couldn't be more distant from their lives, possibly using an informant's bad tip, American snipers on rooftops killed an Afghan police officer ("head of intelligence in one of Paktia's most volatile districts"), his brother, and three women -- a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager. They then evidently dug the bullets out of the women's bodies, bound and gagged their bodies, and filed a report claiming that the dead men were Taliban militants who had murdered the women -- "honor killings" -- before they arrived. (This was how the American press, generally reliant on military handouts, initially reported the story.)

Recently, in the face of some good on-the-spot journalism by an unembedded British reporter, this cover-up story ingloriously disintegrated, while U.S. military spokespeople retreated step by step in a series of partial admissions of error, leading to an in-person apology, including the sacrifice of a sheep and $30,000 in compensation payments.


Ceremonial Evisceration

Both incidents elicited shock and anger from critics of American war policies. And both incidents are shocking. Probably the most shocking aspect of them, however, is just how humdrum they actually are, even if the public release of video of such events isn't. Start with one detail in those Afghan murders, reported in most accounts but little emphasized: what the Americans descended on was a traditional family ceremony. More than 25 guests had gathered for the naming of a newborn child.

In fact, over these last nine-plus years, Afghan (and Iraqi) ceremonies of all sorts have regularly been blasted away. Keeping a partial tally of wedding parties eradicated by American air power at TomDispatch.com, I had counted five such "incidents" between December 2001 and July 2008. (A sixth in July 2002 in which possibly 40 Afghan wedding celebrants died and many more were wounded has since come to my attention, as has a seventh in August 2008.) Nor have other kinds of rites where significant numbers of Afghans gather been immune from attack, including funerals, and now, naming ceremonies. And keep in mind that these are only the reported incidents in a rural land where much undoubtedly goes unreported.

Similarly, General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, recently expressed surprise at a tally since last summer of at least 30 Afghans killed and 80 wounded at checkpoints when U.S. soldiers opened fire on cars. He said: "We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." Or consider 36-year-old Mohammed Yonus, a popular imam of a mosque on the outskirts of Kabul, who was killed in his car this January by fire from a passing NATO convoy, which considered his vehicle "threatening." His seven-year-old son was in the back seat.

Or while on the subject of Reuters employees, recall reporter Mazen Tomeizi, a Palestinian producer for the al-Arabiya satellite network of Dubai, who was killed on Haifa Street in central Baghdad in September 2004 by a U.S. helicopter attack. He was on camera at the time and his blood spattered the lens. Seif Fouad, a Reuters cameraman, was wounded in the same incident, while a number of bystanders, including a girl, were killed. Or remember the 17 Iraqi civilians infamously murdered when Blackwater employees in a convoy began firing in Nissour Square in Baghdad on September 16, 2007. Or the missiles regularly shot from U.S. helicopters and unmanned aerial drones into the heavily populated Shiite slum of Sadr City back in 2007-08. Or the Iraqis regularly killed at checkpoints in the years since the invasion of 2003. Or, for that matter, the first moments of that invasion on March 20, 2003, when, according to Human Rights Watch, "dozens" of ordinary Iraqi civilians were killed by the 50 aerial "decapitation strikes" the Bush administration launched against Saddam Hussein and the rest of the Iraqi leadership, missing every one of them.

This is the indiscriminate nature of killing, no matter how "precise" and "surgical" the weaponry, when war is made by those who command the heavens and descend, as if from Mars, into alien worlds, convinced that they have the power to sort out the good from the bad, even if they can't tell villagers from insurgents. Under these circumstances, death comes in a multitude of disguises -- from a great distance via cruise missiles or Predator drones and close in at checkpoints where up-armored American troops, fingers on triggers, have no way of telling a suicide car bomber from a confused or panicked local with a couple of kids in the backseat. It comes repetitively when U.S. Special Operations forces helicopter into villages after dark looking for terror suspects based on tips from unreliable informants who may be settling local scores of which the Americans are dismally ignorant. It comes repeatedly to Afghan police or Army troops mistaken for the enemy.

It came not just to a police officer and his brother and family in Paktia Province, but to a "wealthy businessman with construction and security contracts with the nearby American base at Shindand airport" who, along with up to 76 members of his extended family, was slaughtered in such a raid on the village of Azizabad in Herat Province in August 2008. It came to the family of Awal Khan, an Afghan army artillery commander (away in another province) whose "schoolteacher wife, a 17-year-old daughter named Nadia, a 15-year-old son, Aimal, and his brother, employed by a government department" were killed in April 2009 in a U.S.-led raid in Khost Province in Eastern Afghanistan. (Another daughter was wounded and the pregnant wife of Khan's cousin was shot five times in the abdomen.) It came to 12 Afghans by a roadside near the city of Jalalabad in April 2007 when Marine Special Operations forces, attacked by a suicide bomber, let loose along a ten-mile stretch of road. Victims included a four-year-old girl, a one-year-old boy, and three elderly villagers. According to a report by Carlotta Gall of the New York Times, a "16-year-old newly married girl was cut down while she was carrying a bundle of grass to her family's farmhouse... A 75-year-old man walking to his shop was hit by so many bullets that his son did not recognize the body when he came to the scene."

It came in November 2009 to two relatives of Majidullah Qarar, the spokesman for the Minister of Agriculture, who were shot down in cold blood in Ghazni City in another Special Operations night raid. It came in Uruzgan Province in February 2010 when U.S. Special Forces troops in helicopters struck a convoy of mini-buses, killing up to 27 civilians, including women and children.

[Jackson Holly]

Inglorious Bastards 

No excuses ... our red, white and blue soldier boys are psychopathic killers.

[LightCaster]

And it came this April 5th in an airstrike in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan in which a residence was hit and four civilians -- two women, an elderly man, and a child -- were killed along with four men, immediately identified in a NATO press release as "suspected insurgents." ("Insurgents were using the compound as a firing position when combined forces, unaware of the possible presence of civilians, directed air assets against it.") The usual joint investigation with Afghans has been launched and if those four men later morph into "civilians," the usual apologies will ensue. (Of course, "suspected insurgents," too, can have wives, children, and elderly parents or relatives, or simply take over compounds with such inhabitants.) And it came this Monday morning on the outskirts of Kandahar City, when U.S. troops opened fire on a bus, killing five civilians (including a woman), wounding more, and sparking angry protests.


Planetary Predators

Whether in the skies or patrolling on the ground, Americans know next to nothing of the worlds they are passing above or through. This is, of course, even more true of the "pilots" who fly our latest wonder weapons, the Predators, Reapers, and other unmanned drones over American battle zones, while sitting at consoles somewhere in the United States. They are clearly engaged in the most literal of video-game wars, while living the most prosaic of god-like lives. A sign at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada warns such a drone pilot to "drive carefully" on leaving the base after a work shift "in" Afghanistan or Iraq. This, it says, is "the most dangerous part of your day."

One instructor of drone pilots has described this form of warfare vividly: "Flying a Predator is like a chess game... Because you have a God's-eye perspective, you need to think a few moves ahead." However much you may "think ahead," though, the tiny, barely distinguishable creatures you're deciding whether to eradicate certainly don't inhabit the same universe as you, with your looming needs, troubles, and concerns.

Here's the fact of the matter: in the cities, towns, and villages of the distant lands where Americans tend to make war, civilians die regularly and repeatedly at our hands. Each death may contain its own uniquely nightmarish details, but the overall story remains remarkably repetitious. Such "incidents" are completely predictable. Even General McChrystal, determined to "protect the population" in Afghanistan as part of his counterinsurgency war, has proven remarkably incapable of changing the nature of our style of warfare. Curtail air strikes, rein in Special Operations night attacks -- none of it will, in the long run, matter. Put in a nutshell: If you arrive from the heavens, they will die.

Having watched the video of the death of the 22-year-old Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen in that July 2007 video, his father said: "At last the truth has been revealed, and I'm satisfied God revealed the truth... If such an incident took place in America, even if an animal were killed like this, what would they do?"

Putting aside the controversy during the 2008 presidential campaign over the hunting of wolves from helicopters in Alaska, Noor-Eldeen may not have gone far enough. For that helicopter crew, his son was indeed the wartime equivalent of a hunted animal. An article on the front page of the New York Times recently captured this perspective, however inadvertently, when, speaking of the CIA's aerial war over Pakistan's tribal borderlands, it described the Agency's unmanned drones as "observing and tracking targets, then unleashing missiles on their quarry."

"Quarry" has quite a straightforward definition: "a hunted animal; prey." Indeed, the al-Qaeda leaders, Taliban militants, and local civilians in the region are all "prey" which, of course, makes us the predators. That the majority of drones cruising those skies 24/7 and repeatedly launching their Hellfire missiles are named "Predators" should, then, come as no surprise.

Americans are unused to being the prey in war and so essentially incapable of imagining what that actually means, day in, day out, year after year. We prefer to think of their deaths as so many accidents or mistakes -- "collateral damage" -- when they are the norm, not the exception, not what's collateral in such wars. We prefer to imagine ourselves bringing the best (of values and intentions) to a backward, ignorant world and so invariably make ourselves sound far kindlier than we are. Like the gods of Olympus, we have a tendency to flatter ourselves, even as we continually remake the "rules of engagement," those ROEs, to suit our changing tastes and needs, while creating a language of war that suits our tender sensibilities about ourselves.

In this way, for instance, assassination-by-drone has become an ever more central part of the Obama administration's foreign and war policy, and yet the word "assassination" -- with all its negative implications, legal and otherwise -- has been displaced by the far more anodyne, more bureaucratic "targeted killing." In a sense, in fact, what "enhanced interrogation techniques" (aka torture) were to the Bush administration, "targeted killing" is to the Obama administration.

For the gods, anything is possible. In the language of Olympian war, for instance, even sitting at a console thousands of miles from the not-quite-humans you are preparing to obliterate can become an act worthy of Homeric praise. As Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported, Colonel Eric Mathewson, the Air Force officer with the most experience with unmanned aircraft, has a new notion of "valor," a word "which is a part of almost every combat award citation." "Valor to me is not risking your life," he says. "Valor is doing what is right. Valor is about your motivations and the ends that you seek. It is doing what is right for the right reasons." What the gods do is, by definition, glorious.


Descending From on High

And it's not only the American way of war, but the American way of statecraft that arrives as if from the heavens, ready to impose its own definitions of the good and necessary on the world. American officials, civilian and military, constantly fly into the embattled (and let's be blunt: Muslim) regions of the planet to make demands, order, chide, plead, wheedle, cajole, intimidate, threaten, twist arms, and bluster to get our "allies" to do what we most want.

Our special plenipotentiaries like Richard Holbrooke do this regularly; our secretary of state follows. Our Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Centcom commander, and Secretary of Defense descend from the clouds on Islamabad, Kabul, or Baghdad frequently. Our Vice President careens Iraq-wards to help mediate disputes, and even our President, the "heaviest political artillery" (as one analyst called him), recently dropped in for a six-hour visit to "Afghanistan" (actually the hanger of a large American air base and the presidential palace in Kabul). While there -- as Americans papers reported quite proudly -- he chided and "pressed" Afghan President Hamid Karzai, offered "pointed criticism" on corruption, and delivered "a tough message." He then returned to the U.S., only to find, to the surprise and frustration of his top officials, that Karzai -- almost immediately accused of being unstable, possibly on drugs, and prone to child-like tantrums -- responded by lashing out at his American minders.

We are, of course, the rational ones, the grown-ups, the good governance team, the incorruptible crew who bring enlightenment and democracy to the world, even if, as practical gods, in support of our Afghan war we're perfectly willing to shore up a corrupt autocrat elsewhere who is willing to lend us an air base (for $60 million a year in rent) to haul in troops and supplies -- until he falls.

All of this is par for the course for the Olympians from North America. It all seems normal, even benign, except in the rare moments when videos of slaughter begin to circulate. Looked at from the ground up, however, we undoubtedly seem as petulant as the gods or demiurges of some malign religion, or as the aliens and predators of some horrific sci-fi film -- heartless and cold, unfeeling and murderous. As Safa Chmagh, the brother of one of the Reuters employees who died in the 2007 Apache attack, reportedly said: "The pilot is not human, he's a monster. What did my brother do? What did his children do? Does the pilot accept his kids to be orphans?"


As with tales humans tell of the gods, there's a moral here: If you want it to be otherwise, don't descend on strange lands armed to the teeth, prepared to occupy, and ready to kill.

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. His latest book, The American Way of War (Haymarket Books), will be published in May.

[A small bow of thanks and appreciation to TomDispatch regular William Astore, who helped inspire this piece.]

[LightCaster]

Inglorious Bastards  

No excuses ... our red, white and blue soldier boys are psychopathic killers.

Jackson, i will repost my answer cuz it is how i see it.

Nightmares and vomiting, casual symptoms when you face the truth about every day horrors in occupied Iraq and Afghanistan. Over 1.300.000 victims in Iraq and over 100.000 in Afghanistan. And how about war veterans, and what they are bringing to home from there? That is a reality of that genocide/atrocities conducted over those "brown" people there. Like it was that one in Europe during WWII, remember? Nobody protected Jews until it was over. When will US stop with that ongoing crime against humanity? After 2 mil? 3 mil? 6 mil? And what we will do about it?

Thing that bothers me the most is that people in western culture doesn't want to be educated or informed, they wish to be entertained. They just don't care.

We Like War

Cause of this crimes done by those soldiers is spiritual sickness. Spiritual sickness can be described as an "material spirituality" or "money is a God". That kind of spirituality is pumping up the Ego, vanity, and brings decadence as an result. Moral, empathy, care for others, even love is distorted or completely erased from the mind of the material spiritualists. That kind of the state of the mind can be seen as shizoidal and pathological compulsive-impulsive need to ensure material security no matter what. That brings a feeling of "Power over the others", that imagined power can be transformed in an animal impulse that destroys anything that oppose to that power. In one moment that becomes a need for aggression and hunger for blood, as an pasion and perverted sexual satisfaction. It as an road or a path on the dark side. A material spirituality is completely opposite to any religion of the human kind and can be described, for example, as a Satanism, in the Christian way of understanding an spiritual opposition. Degradation of a human mind into a mind of the beast can be seen on some tapes, presented by Alex in his show, where you can see that soldiers are creating animal sound during a torture of the kids. It is a clear example of the devastation of the human mind caused by material spirituality, as it is described above.

Only God can stop this. And He will. American people doesn't have excuse for this. 90% of U.S. citysens are in compliance with wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and they are calmly watching this atrocities, holocaust, call it as you like. Next target of NWO-U.S.-Nazi monsters is Iran, and people will not react on that next crime against humanity. 90% will comply again. So, anything that God puts on U.S. as a punishment will be very well deserved. Americans have no right to complain to  God for it. They don't deserve that right any more.

[LightCaster]

One Marine's 'Liberty Walk' for the Rest of Us!

Chris Hedges
Truthdig
Mon, 12 Apr 2010 09:14 EDT

I met Ernest Logan Bell, a 25-year-old Marine Corps veteran, as he walked along Route 12 in upstate New York with a large American flag strapped to the side of his green backpack. There was a light drizzle and he was wearing a green Army poncho. Bell was on a six-day, 90-mile-long self-styled "Liberty Walk" from Binghamton to Utica in a quixotic campaign to challenge Democratic incumbent Rep. Michael Arcuri in the 24th Congressional District. He camped out along the road for three nights and stayed in cheap motels the other nights and was accompanied by Kevin Barlow, an unemployed welder. Bell opposes the health care law, calls for an end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, advocates the abolishment of the Federal Reserve, is against the bailouts for Wall Street and wants to see immediate government relief for workers trapped in prolonged unemployment, including his own. He carried a handwritten sign: "End the Fed." In his backpack he had a copy of "The U.S. Constitution for Dummies" and a book on the Federal Reserve by Ron Paul that he planned to deliver to Arcuri's office in Utica.

Bell, who lives in Lansing, N.Y., is the new face of resistance. He is young, at home in the culture of the military, deeply suspicious of the federal government, disgusted by the liberal elite, unable to find work and angry. He swings between right-wing and left-wing populism, expressing admiration for Reps. Paul and Dennis Kucinich and the tea party movement. He started out as a supporter of John McCain in the last presidential election but soured on the Arizona senator and the Republican Party's ties to Wall Street. He did not vote in that election. He has raised about $1,000 from neighbors and friends for his own campaign. He is adept at martial arts and made it to the semifinals of the 2010 Army National Guard Combative Championship at Fort Benning in Georgia, in which, in his last bout, he suffered a broken nose, bruised his opponent's ribs and thighs and lost in a split decision.

Bell grew up in Oakwood, Texas, a small town in East Texas between Dallas and Houston. His father was an alcoholic, and his parents frequently separated and reunited. They divorced when he was 13. His mother raised Bell, his younger brother, who is currently in the Army's 82nd Airborne, and his younger sister in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. There was little money, and his mother worked off and on at odd jobs. There were 18 people in his high school graduating class and, with no real jobs in Oakwood, Bell, along with a few of his classmates, joined the military.

"You couldn't stay in Oakwood, Texas, and have a job," he said flatly.

"I got out of the Marine Corps and went back to Texas for 10 months and was involved in the John McCain campaign," he said. "I really got disillusioned with the neoconservatism. I had never been involved in politics. The idea that we needed all these troops all around the world defending freedom, as they called it, when we were actually engaged in nation-building and supporting special interests that drive these wars, was something I began to understand. As far as foreign and economic policy, I could see there was no difference between the two main political parties. There is a false left-right paradigm which diverts the working class from the real reasons for their hardships."

"I just walked through the town of Norwich," he told me as a car passed and the driver honked his support for Bell, "and there is a strong tea party movement there. The tea party movement, for the most part, is just a bunch of disgruntled Americans. They know something is wrong and they are ready to be engaged. A lot of the people in my area who are in the tea party are Democrats. People are confused. They are shellshocked. They don't know what to think. But acting like these problems started Jan. 20 [the date of the presidential inauguration] is absurd. To single out the current president and not the presidents before him is not productive for trying to figure out what is going on."

Bell's own employment struggle mirrors that of many of his neighbors. He moved to upstate New York two years ago after leaving the Marine Corps to be near Shianne, his 3-year-old daughter. He and the girl's mother are separated. Bell found work as a carpenter with a traveling construction crew. He earned $14.50 an hour and could sometimes make as much as $800 a week. Then the financial meltdown knocked the wind out of the local economy.

"Everybody in my apartment building has had their hours cut, are unemployed or have taken minimum-wage jobs," he said. "I was laid off last year. I try to find work as an independent carpenter. I don't have health insurance."

The dearth of work, which left him attempting to survive at times on $600 a month, saw him enlist last year in the New York National Guard, even though it means almost certain deployment to Afghanistan. The enticement of a $20,000 signing bonus was too lucrative to pass up. The National Guard unit he joined recently returned from a tour in Afghanistan.

"We are training to go back to Afghanistan," he said. "The fact that they are still using Army National Guard, state-level troops, to police the streets of Afghanistan is not good. These units are really overstretched. We do not get the benefits. We don't get health insurance like active-duty military. But the guard gets deployed just as much. Some of these guys have been on three and four tours."

"The winters [in New York state] are really hard," Bell said. "There are less jobs and the heating costs are high. I pay about $200 a month for electric and gas. I live really cheaply. I don't have cable. I don't go out or spend money that is not necessary. It is a struggle. But at least I have not had to devote 40 hours a week to a minimum-wage job that does not pay me a living wage. People here are really hurting. The real underemployment rate must be at least 20 percent. A lot of people are working part-time jobs when they want full-time jobs. There are many people like me, independent contractors and small business owners, who can't file for unemployment insurance. Unemployment [coverage] is not available to me because I worked as a '1099,' a self-employed contractor, even when I worked for the construction company."

"People are scared," he said. "They want to live their lives, raise their children and be happy. This is not possible. They don't know if they can make their next mortgage payment. They see their standard of living going down."

Bell said that he and those around him were being pushed off the edge. He said he feared that the social and political repercussions would be unpleasant.

"I hope there is a populist revolution," he said. "We have to take the corporate bailouts and the money we are sending overseas and use that money in our communities. If this does not happen there will be more anger and eventually violence. When people lose everything they start to 'lose it.' When you can't find a job, even though you look repeatedly, it leads to things like random shootings and suicides. We will see acts of domestic terrorism. The state will erode more of our civil liberties to control mass protests. We are seeing some student protests, but we will see these on a wider scale. I hope the protests will be constructive. I hope people will not resort to extreme measures. But people will do what they have to do to survive. This may mean things like food riots. The political establishment better work very fast to take the pressure off."

[LightCaster]

Americans Kill Muslims Like Roaches

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford

April 14, 2010
uruknet.info

Click to download an audio in MP3 format.

The current American imperial offensive "has all the characteristics of a race war," and is viewed as such by much of the world. "In Muslim nations, the U.S. treats the inhabitants like roaches, stomping human beings underfoot and cursing them when they scurry to get out of the way."

Americans Kill Muslims Like Roaches
A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"Highways of death inevitably appear whenever U.S. troops are deployed among populations that Americans think of as less than human."

The latest American atrocity in Afghanistan – the wanton slaughter of civilians on an inter-city bus near Kandahar – is yet more bloody proof that the United States military offensive in the Muslim world has all the characteristics of a race war. The men, women and children in the packed, full-size bus found themselves suddenly boxed in between two American convoys on a highway of death – a place where the natives are instantly liquidated if they are unfortunate enough to find themselves in proximity to U.S. soldiers. Such highways of death inevitably appear whenever U.S. troops are deployed among populations that Americans think of as less than human.

In Iraq, the road between central Baghdad and the airport was also known among the natives as the "highway of death." American convoys routinely fired on commuters on their way to work if they felt the Iraqi vehicles got too close. Civilian employees of the United States share in the imperial privilege of killing Muslims at will. In 2005, British mercenaries took a leisurely drive along Baghdad’s "highway of death" playing Elvis Presley records while shooting Iraqi motorists for sport. So confident of impunity were the soldiers of fortune, they videotaped their ghoulish joyride, to entertain friends and relatives back home. And they were right; neither the mercenary killers nor their corporate employers were punished.

In 2007, Blackwater mercenaries opened fire on commuters trapped in a traffic jam in Baghdad’s Nisour Square, killing 17 and wounding at least 20 – apparently because they were bored. But, why not? U.S. troops had been committing mass murder in villages like Haditha for years. Early in the war, they leveled Fallujah, a city larger than Birmingham, Alabama, after first bombing the hospital. Casual killing is a prerogative of imperial occupiers when the natives are considered sub-human.

"They would never behave in such a manner in European."

In the newly-released WikiLeaks video of a 2007 aerial human turkey-shoot over a suburban Baghdad neighborhood, the voices of the American helicopter pilots and gunners are testimony to the endemic, pathological racism of the U.S. occupying force. The Americans beg their commanders for permission to kill Iraqis milling about on the street below, presenting no threat to anyone. They are thrilled when their cannon fire rips into over a dozen men, including two journalists. "Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards," says one G.I. When they fire on a car that stopped to aid one of the victims, severely wounding two children, the Americans crack that it served the Iraqis right for bringing children into a battle. But there was no battle, just Americans bringing casual death into an Iraqi neighborhood.

Americans seem unable to resist raining death from the skies on wedding parties in Afghanistan. Apparently, any gathering of Afghans, anywhere, for any reason, is sufficient cause for Americans to unleash high-tech weapons of destruction. They would never behave in such a manner in European countries because, well, people live there. But in Muslim nations, the U.S. treats the inhabitants like roaches, stomping human beings underfoot and cursing them when they scurry to get out of the way. This is race war, pure and simple. The fact that it's commander-in-chief is a Black man does not alter the character of the crime, on iota. For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford. On the web, go to www.BlackAgendaReport.com.

Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

[LightCaster]

Obama’s Record On Guantanamo Just As Shoddy As Bush’s

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard

April 14, 2010

During his 2008 campaign, President Obama promised the country "change we can believe in." Yet, more than a year into his administration, he has delivered "more of the same" on issues pertaining to Guantanamo Bay. The island prison is still open, detainees still await trials, and officials have recommended the worst of George W. Bush’s policies — indefinite detention.

The Bush way of thinking seems to be the guiding force behind many of the administration’s decisions on terrorism and Guantanamo. Following the attempted Christmas Day bombing of a U.S. airliner, Obama administration officials decided to read the suspect his Miranda rights, claiming former President Bush would have done the same thing. I commend using our federal courts to try suspected terrorists, but I’m alarmed at how U.S. officials arrived at that decision.

If Obama’s invocation of Bush stopped there, I might cut him some slack. Unfortunately, the Bush mindset never left 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue along with its former inhabitant. Not long after taking office, Obama promptly revamped the conviction machine known as the military commissions, an alternative legal system that, as a presidential candidate, he had led us to believe he would abandon altogether in favor of federal trials.

The military commissions system is a second-tier justice system that is tolerant of flimsy evidence and uncorroborated hearsay by unnamed sources. Cases tried under the military commissions allow evidence that is unreliable or tainted by abuse. In fact, an internal Department of Defense review found that the case of my client, Kuwaiti detainee Fayiz Al Kandari, is "made up almost entirely of hearsay evidence recorded by unidentified individuals with no first-hand knowledge of the events they describe."

This is evidence that would be laughed out of federal court in real criminal proceedings. Such multiple layers of hearsay introduced through highly redacted and secret documents, often from anonymous sources, is little more than rumor in the real world. In the commission system, however, a judge can find such statements based on the "totality of circumstance" not only admissible, but can base an entire case solely on their existence.

But it doesn’t stop there, either. As if kangaroo courts and their rules of evidence weren’t enough, the Obama administration is considering indefinite detention for some Guantanamo detainees, extending one of the Bush administration’s worst policies. In fact, a secret group known as the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force recently recommended approximately 50 detainees to be held indefinitely without trial, claiming these detainees are considered too dangerous to be released but too difficult to prosecute – even in the conviction-friendly military commission system.

Congress meanwhile has jumped on the bandwagon with legislation that, if passed, would make the recommendation of indefinite detention a reality. In early March, Senators John McCain (R-Arizona) and Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut) introduced a bill that would allow the U.S. government to arrest so-called "enemy belligerents" and imprison them for years in military custody with no charges. Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has called the legislation "probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades."

Now it is tempting to assume the decision to hold detainees indefinitely is based on a review of credible evidence. But if the evidence is so persuasive, why not introduce it in a public trial in a federal court of law and secure a legitimate conviction? And if the evidence is not reviewed by a court of law, who does review the evidence and determine the fates of individual suspects?

In these cases, evidence is classified and the identities of those making the determinations are closely guarded. This process is entirely secret and inherently un-American. A system that authorizes indefinite detention based on secret evidence can only result in distrust and suspicion much like the maligned Soviet system of years past. Remember two additional things: First, no one knows what the newly created laws of material support and conspiracy even mean. Secondly, it should not be unreasonable to believe that other countries will hold Americans under unclear laws, in secret proceedings, or in the alternative, indefinitely under no system at all if a secret group from that country deems it "necessary."

It pains me to say that nothing has changed since Obama became President. In fact, people are questioning whether we can believe that any change will ever come. On February 5, 2008, Obama said, "change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time." He is right. We are not waiting for a new administration to bring about a false sense of hope. We are asking this administration to stand strong and bring the change it promised because it is right and not just a little better than before.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard represents Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti who has spent seven and a half years in U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay without trial.

[LightCaster]

Gates of Hell: Wikileaks ‘Irresponsible’ for Releasing Video

Jason Ditz

US-Nazi Secretary of War Robert Gates of Hell

Laments that Watchdog Will 'Not Be Held Accountable'

April 13, 2010

With growing concerns over the massive number of civilians being killed in America’s assorted wars, Secretary of War Robert Gates of Hell took time out to publicly condemn Wikileaks for its release of a July 12, 2007 video showing US helicopters massacring civilians in Iraq.


Gates insisted it was "irresponsible" of Wikileaks to release the classified video and that it showed only a "soda straw" view of the overall war. He also lamented that Wikileaks "can put out anything they want and not be held accountable."


The video was leaked a week ago and showed the Apache helicopters killing at least a dozen civilians, including two Reuters employees. The military had previously claimed the incident was a result of "combat operations against a hostile force," though the video clearly shows no action taken by any of the people killed.


Gates’ comments came as he attempted to shrug off the recent attack on a busload of civilians in Afghanistan and several other US attacks on civilians there, urging people to "face the reality that we are in a war."

_______________________________________________________________

Face the reality that we are in a war!!!???

It is not a war, and you know that you lying piece of shit!

It is an extermination of nations that didn't do anything wrong to you!

Whats the problem? They have Oil and you wish it? They have land and you wish it, for your sick world domination plans?

You will burn in Hell for this! You and your Brotherhood of Death, your Scull and Bones SS Pedhofilic society, your Bohemian Grove Moloch Asslovers, all of you will burn in Hell where you belong.

Hell that you are bringing on Earth will be ended by the Hand of our Allmight Lord Jesus Christ, i can promise you that.
________________________________________________________________

Dear Lord,
 
Please, please, please, raise your sword, punish them for the tears of the children of this world. May your hand stop them, perish them from the face of the Earth forever.

Save us from them Dear Lord, i am begging you on my knees with the tars on my face. Look on us Lord, Look what they are doing to us all day every day.

Amen.

[LightCaster]

The Case for the Impeachment of Barack Obama

by Dave Lindorff
Counterpunch

Back in 2005-06, I wrote a book, The Case for Impeachment, in which I made the argument that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, as well as other key figures in the Bush/Cheney administration--Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--should be impeached for war crimes, as well as crimes against the Constitution of the United States.

These days, when I mention the book’s title, people sometimes ask, half in jest, whether I’m referring to the current president, Barack Obama.

 

Sadly, it is time to say, just 14 months into the current term of this new president, that yes, this president, and some of his subordinates, are also guilty of impeachable crimes--including many of the same ones committed by Bush and Cheney.

 
Let’s start with the war in Afghanistan, which Obama has taken full ownership of with an escalation that will bring the number of US troops in that country (not counting mercenaries hired by the Pentagon and CIA) to 100,000 by this August.

 
The president has authorized the use of Predator drone aircraft for a program of bombing conducted against Pakistan which has illegally expanded theAfghan War into another country without any authorization from Congress. These pilotless drones are known to kill far more innocent bystanders than enemy targets, making them fundamentally illegal on principle as weapons. Furthermore, this wave of attacks in Pakistan is a war of aggression against another nation if the word “war” is to have any meaning at all, and as such it is illegal under the UN Charter. Indeed initiating a war of aggression against a country which does not pose an immediate threat to the invader is described in the Charter and in the Nuremberg Tribunal Charter as the gravest of all war crimes.

 
The president, as commander in chief, has also, in collusion with Attorney Eric Holder, blocked any prosecution of those who authorized and perpetrated torture against captives in the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan, and the so-called War on Terror--notably Federal Appeals Court Judge Jay Baybee, and Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, who as Justice Department attorneys authored the legal briefs justifying torture-- and has in fact continued to permit the application of torture against captives. All of this is in clear violation of the Geneva Conventions, which as a signed set of treaties, are part of the law of the United States. Under those treaties, failure on the part of those up the chain of command to halt or to punish those who commit torture are themselves guilty of the crime of torture.

 
As commander in chief, President Obama has also overseen a strategy in Afghanistan of expanded attacks on civilians in Afghanistan. As in Iraq under the Bush administration, this current phase of the war in Afghanistan is seeing more civilians killed than enemy combatants, because of the widespread use of weapons like helicopter gunships, aerial bombardment, fragmentation bombs, etc., as well as a tactic of night raids on housing compounds where insurgents are suspected of hiding--raids that frequently lead to the deaths of many women and children and innocent men. It is significant that even the recent execution-style slaying of nine students, aged 11-18, by US-led forces, has not led to an investigation or prosecution of a individual. Rather, the incident is being covered up and ignored, with the clear acquiescence of the White House and the leadership at the Pentagon.

 
It is also widely believed that under the command of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who is known to have directed a large-scale death-squad operation in Iraq before moving to his current position, a similar death-squad campaign of assassination is being conducted now in Afghanistan--a campaign that like the notorious Phoenix Program in the 1960s in Vietnam, is almost certainly resulting in the deaths of many innocent Afghans.

 
Domestically, the president has continued to allow the policy of detention without trial of hundreds of captives in Guantanamo Bay and other prisons, including Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan, and his director of national security has even stated that it is the policy of this administration that American citizens deemed by the administration to be enemy combatants or terrorists may be targeted for summary execution. Such officially sanctioned state murder is a blatant violation of the Constitution’s insistence that every American has a right to a presumption of innocence and to a trial by a jury of his or her peers.

 
The president has also continued and in some ways even expanded the Bush/Cheney administration’s program of warrantless spying by the National Security Agency on the electronic communications of millions of Americans. A part of that program, the monitoring of communications of a now defunct Islamic charity, was just declared illegal by a federal judge in a case that was brought against the Bush/Cheney administration, but which continued to be defended by the current administration. There has not been a decision as yet by the Obama administration about whether to appeal that decision. While the case in question does not represent a crime by the Obama administration, it is clear that it only represents the very tip of the huge iceberg of domestic spying, and the administration’s vigorous efforts to shut down this case or to win it are clear evidence that the NSA is continuing to do the same thing on a vast scale. In fact, the only reason this case even got to trial is because of a government error that resulted in a memo describing the monitoring being mailed inadvertently to the victims of the spying.

 
While we’re at it, I would also suggest that there is amble evidence to call for the impeachment of Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who appears, as head of the New York Federal Reserve, to have colluded in an effort to cover up a massive fraud at Lehman Brothers, and who has subsequently as Treasurer, participated in unprecedented giveaways of taxpayer funds to several of the country’s largest banking institutions.

 
The above enumeration of criminal and Constitutional transgressions makes it clear that this president, like his predecessor, has, almost since his first day in office, continued down a road of criminal and unconstitutional behavior that threatens the survival of Constitutional government in the United States.

 
Let me state it simply: President Barack Obama, as well as Attorney General Eric Holder, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and Treasury Secretary Geithner, should be impeached for war crimes and high crimes against the Constitution.

 
Of course, having watched the Democratic Congress shamelessly duck its solemn duty to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their criminal subordinates for two years, I have no illusions about that same Democratic Congress allowing an impeachment bill to be filed against this president.

 
Having said that, I think it is important to at least make the point publicly that this president, like the one before, deserves to be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors.

 
Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback). He can be reached at dlindorff@mindspring.com

[LightCaster]

Obama Threatens Iran with Nuclear War

by Kourosh Ziabari
Global Research,
April 15, 2010

In his latest statements, President Obama has expressively warned Iran against an imminent nuclear strike. The surprising remarks by the politician who snatched the Nobel Peace Prize for his conciliatory stance in recent years, violated the UN Charter and astounded public opinion.


"The continued presence of all options on the table"; this is the disappointing message which a Nobel Peace Prize laureate dispatches internationally. In his latest interview with CBS news, American President Barack Obama refused to rule out the possibility of a military strike against Iran by harking back to the famous catchphrase of former U.S. President George W. Bush who once devised, regarding Iran's nuclear program, the popular sentence of "all options are on the table".


Putting the quality and quantity of these options aside, the very "table" on which the options should be placed is as well a matter of controversy. Who is in the position to decide the destiny of Iran's nuclear program? Which table is the U.S. President referring to? What's wrong with Iran's nuclear program in lieu of which a 70-million nation should go on with crippling sanctions, continued threats of military strike, isolation and economic embargo? What's the definite answer to the simple question that "why should the U.S., France and Israel possess nuclear weapons"? Which one is more offensive and violent? Iran's nuclear program which has been demonstrated again and again that does not have anything to do with military purposes, or the adventurous, aggressive trajectory Washington and its European allies have begun to go across?

 
Robert Parry, an award-winning American investigative journalist austerely answers the questions we have in mind. In an April 2 article in Consortium News, he notes: "if two countries with powerful nuclear arsenals were openly musing about attacking a third country over mere suspicions that it might want to join the nuclear club, we'd tend to sympathize with the non-nuclear underdog as the victim of bullying and possible aggression."

 
As Robert Parry notes, the "bomb bomb Iran Parlor Game" has much to do with the regular psychological operations the U.S. government ruthlessly directs against its victims and it has been seen several times during the post-World War II era that the U.S. government has resorted to the most brutal methods of black propaganda to demonize and demoralize its opponents. 

 
In order to thwart Iran's efforts to achieve the zeniths of high technology and prevent the country from becoming an influential player in the Persian Gulf region and beyond, Washington has mobilized a large number of conservative think-tanks and pundits to direct psychological warfare against Iran multilaterally. Although the New York Times by itself suffices to wage a spotless and perfect psy-op by running misleading and untruthful articles which get circulated, syndicated and believed globally, numerous websites, blogs and community portals have also been activated to function as the podium of White House so as to disseminate illusive and deceptive stories regularly and misrepresent what's happening in Iran.

 
Over the past three decades and especially following the eruption of nuclear dispute with Iran, U.S. has been carrying out media operations to incite anti-Iranian sentiments vigorously. Some recent efforts include the establishment of websites such as "United Against Nuclear Iran" and the production of Hollywood-sponsored movies "300" and "The Wrestler".

 
The American psychological warfare, however, is not limited to mainstream media outlets, NY Times and Fox News-like stuff, campaign websites and TV shows. A number of bloggers also have been mobilized to take part in the cyber maneuver against Iran. It means that the wave of American psychological operation against Iran has become so extensive and far-reaching that even involves bloggers and independent commentators who run e-zines and online publications.

 
Above all, carrying out psychological operations is one of the most sensitive and delicate responsibilities of the U.S. Army, CIA's Special Activities Division (SAD) and National Clandestine Service (NCS). SAD is in charge of providing the U.S. President with "special" options where diplomacy and military action is likely to fail. U.S. President has the authority to order the commencement of a new clandestine operation whenever necessary. Covert and intangible intervention in foreign elections is one of the main tasks of SAD. It also carries out missions to undermine or even overthrow a regime which does not comply with the interests of the U.S. administration. SAD has a long history of carrying out inconceivable and paralyzing missions of psychological propaganda against different countries including Bolivia, Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran.


In Iran, where people still remember the bitter memory of U.S.-backed coup d'etat of 1953 which brought down the democratic government of Dr. Mosaddeq and inaugurated the tyranny of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, SAD has accomplished numerous operations, several of which have been revealed by the investigative journalists.

 
In July 2008, for example, the renowned American journalist Seymour Hersh published an article in the New Yorker and revealed that the Bush administration had taken practical steps, including the authorization of a Presidential Finding to legitimize the illegal entry of paramilitary troops into Iran, through the borders of Iraq, so as to help overthrow the government of Iran. Based on the documents he had obtained, Hersh wrote: "Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran. [...] These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership."

 
Hersh cited the federal law of America which brands a Presidential Finding as highly classified and only available to the Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate and the ranking members of their respective intelligence committees. This greatly highlighted the significance of his discovery of the documents. "The Finding was focused on undermining Iran's nuclear ambitions and trying to undermine the government through regime change, working with opposition groups and passing money” Hersh quoted an informed, anonymous source as saying.

 
SAD has also carried out globally significant actions such as preventing the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from winning the parliamentary elections in 1948 and 1960s, overthrowing the government of Guatemala in 1954 and staging the 1957 coup d'etat of Indonesia which removed from power the popular, democratically-elected President Ahmad Sukarno and led to a terrible massacre in which almost 1 million people lost their life.

 
Anyway, history seems to be repeated once again. White House and its numerous teams, departments, groups, unions and forces of psychological operations, under the decree of someone who right after winning a Nobel Prize of "Peace" began to drum for a war of bloodshed in the Middle East, are gathering together to launch a new scenario of war games and violence; however, they've simply forgotten an undeniable reality: Iran is a different country; different from all of the countries throughout the world.

[Jackson Holly]

When you are just totally speechless ... write a poem ...

~~~~ O ~~~~

I DON’T LIKE IT WORTH A DAMN

I betcha sweetheart
El Presidente don’t worry none
‘bout starvin’ beggars and such
that populate the very-same world
his holiness sits on.

“Stay ‘way from my door, pee-on”,
I betcha he says,
“while I build myself
a sterile, blood satin,
steel and plastic,
gunpowder, super-sonic
double-bladed, jaded
kill-happy, totalitarian
dream machine.”

“In my realm”, says he no doubt,
“each needle-point, axe-handle
mega-kiloton murder
is a work of art.”

Stand back now sweetheart
and I ask you -
can a twisted mind hold noble ideas?
One potato, two potato, three potato, four.

“You may like kissin’ Barry Soetoro’s ass
but I don’t like it worth a damn,"
says she no doubt.

~~~~~ O ~~~~~

[LightCaster]

Beautifully poem Jackson, keep them coming.

[Viper]

I don't like the word kid, learned recently it means a baby goat, baphomet anyone?

[LightCaster]

I don't like the word kid, learned recently it means a baby goat, baphomet anyone?

Sorry Viper i didn't get that. Can you explane me with more words what is that you wish to point on? English is not my native language, so i didn't understand it.

[Viper]

Sorry Viper i didn't get that. Can you explane me with more words what is that you wish to point on? English is not my native language, so i didn't understand it.

I was saying the name in english given to a young goat is "kid", just something i learned last week or something, no big deal, i've stopped using it is all.

[LightCaster]

I was saying the name in english given to a young goat is "kid", just something i learned last week or something, no big deal, i've stopped using it is all.

You are right about that. I remember now about that info from somewhere in the past.

About Baphomet.

It represent goat headed God from the dark side. It is also one of names for the leader of one New Age secret society. Crowley used it when he was the Outher Head Of Order, leader of the O.T.O. and A.'.A.'.. It is a name for the Head of that order even today.

Goat of Mendes (Sigil of Baphomet, Sabbatic Goat)

The so-called “Mendes Pentacle”(sometimes, Mendez) or Sabbatic Goat emblem was first connected to Satanism in the nineteen sixties, falsely attributed to the nineteenth century occultist Eliphas Levi.

This symbol is commonly confused with Levi’s depiction of the Templar icon Baphomet, which was never presented as a symbol of evil, but of harmony, redemption, and union with the divine. Nonetheless, the two have been confused so often it is nearly impossible to separate them in modern usage.

The name “Mendes goat” derives from a connection Levi made between the Templar Baphomet, the Goat of the witch’s Sabbat (as depicted in popular art of the time), and the Egyptian god Ammon, of Mendes, Egypt- an emblem (according to Levi) of fertility and sexual freedom. Levi’s connection was spurious (The God in question was represented by a ram, not a goat), but the confusion has persisted. A simplified version of the symbol shown was adopted as the emblem of Anton Lavey’s Church of Satan in 1966. The Hebrew letters surrounding the pentacle spell out “Leviathan,” the mythic sea monster of the Old Testament. This emblem is occasionally called the “Judas Goat” by modern Satanists.



Sabbatic Goat by Swedish Occultist Oswald Wirth



Pentacles from nineteenth century grimoire ‘The key of black magic,’ falsely attributed to Eliphas Levi

Related Symbols:

Baphomet

This enigmatic figure, known as Baphomet,  was first described during the trials of the Templars, a medieval order of Crusader Monks accused of Heresy, witchcraft, and other crimes. The Order, founded in 1118 by nobleman Hughes de Payens, was the first of a number of “Military Orders.”

Originally conceived as a means of protecting Christian pilgrims to Jerusalem, the new order excited the public imagination, and they became extraordinarily popular. They were exempted from taxation, and had amassed great wealth and property by the 13th century.

Eventually, with all this money and power, the Templars became a political threat to the Church and especially King Phillip of France, who issued secret orders (using contrived information) to have all of the Templars in France arrested. Torture elicited hundreds of confessions of various crimes and heresies. The laundry list of unlikely crimes included spitting on the cross, denying Christ, and worshiping an idol; namely, a grotesque bearded head (other descriptions conflicted) called Baphomet.

Indeed, a number of supposedly Templar artifacts have surfaced which bear an image of an unusual male/female hybrid which resembles alchemical drawings of the soul of the world.  Historians over the years have debated the possibility that the Baphomet rumor was true or an artifact of torture, and many suggestions about the origin of the word have been put forward. Some have proposed that the name is a corruption of the name Mohammed, or from the Greek, a phrase meaning “baptism of wisdom,” or “Bufihimat,” Moorish-Spanish for “father of wisdom”. Others have suggested more intriguing possibilities- that baphomet is a kabbalistic cipher for the Gnostic Goddess Sophia, or a variant name for the Greek Titan Goddess of wisdom “Metis.”

The interpretation of Baphomet pictured above was drawn by the nineteenth century occultist Eliphas Levi (Alphonse Constant), using elements from various descriptions. It was drawn with the head of a Goat, a human body with cloven feet and wings. According to Levi, it was a relevatory figure, requiring study to understand. This particular drawing is quite popular with Satanists and Ritual magicians, for varying reasons. However, save for a few details, Levi’s connection between his version of Baphomet, and the legendary idol of the Templars is mostly nonexistent. Levi’s description of the figure:

    “The goat on the frontispiece carries the sign of the pentagram on the forehead, with one point at the top, a symbol of light, his two hands forming the sign of hermeticism, the one pointing up to the white moon of the Quabbalic Chesed, the other pointing down to the black one of Geburah. This sign expresses the perfect harmony of mercy with justice. His one arm is female, the other male like the ones of the androgyn of Khunrath, the attributes of which we had to unite with those of our goat because he is one and the same symbol. The flame of intelligence shining between his horns is the magic light of the universal balance, the image of the soul elevated above matter, as the flame, whilst being tied to matter, shines above it. The ugly beast’s head expresses the horror of the sinner, whose materially acting, solely responsible part has to bear the punishment exclusively; because the soul is insensitive according to its nature and can only suffer when it materializes. The rod standing instead of genitals symbolizes eternal life, the body covered with scales the water, the semi-circle above it the atmosphere, the feathers following above the volatile. Humanity is represented by the two breasts and the androgyne arms of this sphinx of the occult sciences.”

Related Symbols:

[LightCaster]

Afghan anger at US casualty payments

uruknet.info

By Habiburrahman Ibrahimi
April 14, 2010


KABUL - An ad hoc system of payments by the United States military primarily to victims of its Helmand operations has enraged Afghans who feel a price has been put on their lives.

The existence of payment guidelines for commanders in the field regarding civilian casualties was first reported by Western media in February and quickly picked up by their Afghan counterparts.

According to the original Associated Press report, the death of a child or adult is worth US$1,500 to $2,500, loss of limb and other injuries $600 to $1,500, a damaged or destroyed vehicle $500 to $2,500, and damage to a farmer's fields $50 to $250.

While these are sizeable amounts in a country where the average daily wage is under $5, the reported measure has stirred outrage among politicians, rights groups and ordinary citizens, who view it as simple blood money.

"Afghans must seem like animals to the Americans if they can put prices on them," said Ismail, a 55-year-old Afghan businessman in Kabul, shaking with anger as he spoke.

"If someone killed an American and offered to pay $10,000, would they accept it? They destroy a complete village if one of their soldiers is killed, but set a price of $2,500 for an Afghan's life," he added.

"They do not respect the traditions, customs and laws of the Afghan people," a member of the Afghan parliament, Haidar Jan Nayimzoi, told the Institute for War and Peace Reporting. "An Afghan never sells his blood for money ... By paying money the Americans will not receive support but rather turn people against them."

The payment guidelines were reportedly used during recent operations in Helmand against the Taliban by the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, which incorporates most US units deployed in southern Afghanistan.

Insisting that such "solatia" or "ex-gratia payments" are made from a unit's own funds on a purely discretionary basis, the ISAF says the spirit of the measure has been misinterpreted. It did not confirm the figures in the Associated Press report.

These are "payments of money or donations in kind made to a victim or victim's family as an expression of sympathy", ISAF joint command spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Todd Vician, said in written comments to IWPR.

"There is no official 'price list' to cover payments to people or families who have suffered loss or injury as a result of action by ISAF forces."

Commanders are not legally obliged to make the payments, receipt of which does not prevent victims from making additional formal claims for compensation, Vician added.

The issue has intensified the debate around the rise in numbers of civilian casualties as foreign troop levels climb in Afghanistan. This year, 30,000 more US troops and several thousand from other North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries will bring the total to more than 150,000.

Last year, the United Nations estimated that 2,412 civilians died in the conflict, the highest number since the Taliban were driven from power in 2001. It attributed two-thirds of these deaths to insurgent actions and around a quarter to international forces.

Incidents that year prompted Afghan President Hamid Karzai to demand an end to aerial bombardments, the main cause of most of the casualties blamed on foreign forces. The ISAF rejected the demand.

Caught between the wrath of the Afghan people and the need to support its overseas partners, the Kabul government played down the controversy over the cash payments.

Presidential spokesman Siamak Herawi told IWPR that the money paid out was a form of humanitarian aid, and that the US and Afghan presidents recently discussed the need to better support victims of the conflict.

"President Barack Obama and President Karzai have accepted this issue in principle and hope action will be taken soon and that the assistance will be increased," Herawi said.

Critics said that even if well intentioned, the informal cash system sends the wrong message and clashes with traditional Afghan values.

But the ISAF insists that following an incident, payments are usually only made after consultation between the commander and local Afghan elders, and involve nominal amounts to cover victims' immediate needs.

As well as US forces, other countries with troops in Afghanistan have paid reparations through a combination of livestock, food products and money.

In 2007, Polish troops in Paktika province opened fire on the village of Nangarkhel, killing six civilians and wounding three. After conciliatory talks that also involved US forces, families of victims received $2,500, and some sheep and flour in accordance with the local Pashtunwali code of tribal conduct.

But direct donation of money by foreign troops for injury or loss of life and the low amounts by world standards make matters worse, critics say.

"If the Americans really want to provide such assistance they should do it through the Afghan government," said Lalgol, the head of the Afghan Human Rights Organization, who like many Afghans goes by one name.

"And if they really want to help the victims' families, it should be as much as the Americans pay for the lives of nationals of other countries."

Again, the ISAF notes that victims are entitled to file for greater sums if they feel this is justified.

"Guidelines on condolence or compensation payments vary from nation to nation, but the broad underlying principle is that, where death, injury or damage to property is caused by ISAF, affected persons may submit a claim for compensation which will be considered by the nation involved," ISAF spokesman Vician said.

Abdol Ghani, a 27-year-old resident of Kandahar, said his brother died in Wardak province while riding on a bus that came under US fire. He was neither an insurgent nor a criminal, just someone trying to get home to Kandahar from Kabul, Ghani says.

"The Americans came to our home three days later and wanted to pay us money but my father forced them out of the house with their dollars. Afghans don't sell the blood of their martyrs, they either take swift revenge or bide their time," he said.

Unsurprisingly, the sensitivity of the matter has not been lost on the Taliban, who say the payments are evidence of a broader failure.

"The Americans want to hide their defeat by resorting to such things. They will try anything," a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mojahed, said.

One resident of Helmand province, who declined to give his name, favored reparations in kind for material damage, but an eye for an eye for bereavement.

"If the Americans compensate for damage to people's land or houses it will have a positive impact on the people in Helmand because they are very poor," he said, while advocating strict Islamic law for troops whose actions killed innocent people.

"If two Americans are executed by the Afghan government for killing civilians, the people will not only trust the government, but also the Americans will be so cautious in their operations that they will not kill even an ant."

That extreme view indicates the strength of feeling the issue of civilian casualties stirs among ordinary Afghans, who fear that fighting in 2010 will bring even greater tragedy.

Habiburrahman Ibrahimi is an IWPR trainee.

[LightCaster]

Afghans 'abused at secret prison' at Bagram airbase

By Hilary Andersson, BBC News

No Justice Forever

April 15, 2010

Afghan prisoners are being abused in a "secret jail" at Bagram airbase, according to nine witnesses whose stories the BBC has documented.

The abuses are all said to have taken place since US President Barack Obama was elected, promising to end torture.

The US military has denied the existence of a secret detention site and promised to look into allegations.

Bagram was the site of a controversial jail holding hundreds of inmates, who have now been moved to another complex.

The old prison was notorious for allegations of prisoner torture and abuse.

But witnesses told the BBC in interviews or written testimony that abuses continue in a hidden facility.

Sleep deprivation

"They call it the Black Hole," said Sher Agha who spent six days in the facility last autumn.

"When they released us they told us we should not tell our stories to outsiders because that will harm us."

Sher Agha and others we interviewed complained their cells were very cold.

"When I wanted to sleep and started shivering with cold I started reciting the holy Koran," he said.

But sleep, according to the prisoners interviewed, is deliberately prevented in this detention site.

"I could not sleep, nobody could sleep because there was a machine that was making noise," said Mirwais, who said he was held in the secret jail for 24 days.



BAGRAM AIRBASE

"There was a small camera in my cell, and if you were sleeping they'd come in and disturb you," he added.

The prisoners, who were interviewed separately, all told very similar stories. Most of them said they had been beaten by American soldiers at the point of arrest before being taken to the prison.

Mirwais had half a row of teeth missing, which he said was from being struck with the butt of a gun by an American soldier.

No-one said they were visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross during their detention at the site, and they all said that their families did not know where they were.

In the small concrete cells, the prisoners said, a light was on all the time. They said they could not tell if it was night or day and described this as very disturbing.

Mirwais said he was made to dance to music by American soldiers every time he wanted to use the toilet.

The ex-prisoners said they were imprisoned at the secret jail before being taken to the main detention centre at the Bagram airbase, a new complex called The Detention Facility in Parwan.

Bagram's prisoners were moved to the Parwan complex from the old notorious Bagram prison site on the airbase earlier this year.

In 2002, two prisoners were killed in the Bagram prison while in US custody after being suspended from the ceilings of their cells and brutally beaten.

New jail

The BBC was allowed into the new Bagram prison for an hour.

This was one of the first opportunities any outsider has had to set eyes on Bagram's interned prisoners since a jail was first established at Bagram soon after 9/11.

In the new jail, prisoners were being moved around in wheelchairs with goggles and headphones on.

   
ON BBC RADIO 4

Hilary Andersson investigates detention at Bagram on BBC Radio 4 at 2002 on 11 May 2010.

The goggles were blacked out, and the purpose of the headphones was to block out all sound. Each prisoner was handcuffed and had their legs shackled.

Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as "cages". The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid.

Guards can see down into the cells above.

The BBC was told by the military to wear protective eye glasses whilst walking past the mesh cells as prisoners sometimes throw excrement or semen at the guards.

Prisoner accounts we logged painted a much better picture of the Parwan Detention Facility.

The US military itself has admitted that about 80% of those at Bagram are probably not hardened terrorists. It is the process of giving every detainee an internal military trial of sorts, called a Detainee Review Board.

The prisoners are represented by soldiers who are not lawyers.

"To this date, no prisoner has ever seen a lawyer in Bagram", said Tina Foster, who represents several of Bagram's prisoners in cases she has filed in on their behalf in the US. Guantanamo Bay's prisoners are able to see their lawyers.

About 100 prisoners have been released through this process, but due to an increased intake, the number of prisoners at Parwan is now 800, up from about 650 in September 2009.

The BBC put the allegations of ongoing abuses as a secret site on the airbase to the US military at Bagram. The military categorically denied the existence of a secret detention site.

"I've never heard of it. This is the only detention facility in Afghanistan" said Vice Admiral Robert Harward who is in charge of the Detention Facility in Parwan.

The US military promised to investigate any allegations of abuse.


:: Article nr. 65095 sent on 15-apr-2010 17:02 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=65095

Link: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8621973.stm

[Xill]

The goggles were blacked out, and the purpose of the headphones was to block out all sound. Each prisoner was handcuffed and had their legs shackled.

Prisoners are kept in 56 cells, which the prisoners refer to as "cages". The front of the cells are made of mesh, the ceiling is clear, and the other three walls are solid.

Guards can see down into the cells above.

The BBC was told by the military to wear protective eye glasses whilst walking past the mesh cells as prisoners sometimes throw excrement or semen at the guards.

Prisoner accounts we logged painted a much better picture of the Parwan Detention Facility.

The US military itself has admitted that about 80% of those at Bagram are probably not hardened terrorists. It is the process of giving every detainee an internal military trial of sorts, called a Detainee Review Board.

The prisoners are represented by soldiers who are not lawyers.

"To this date, no prisoner has ever seen a lawyer in Bagram", said Tina Foster, who represents several of Bagram's prisoners in cases she has filed in on their behalf in the US. Guantanamo Bay's prisoners are able to see their lawyers.

About 100 prisoners have been released through this process, but due to an increased intake, the number of prisoners at Parwan is now 800, up from about 650 in September 2009.

The BBC put the allegations of ongoing abuses as a secret site on the airbase to the US military at Bagram. The military categorically denied the existence of a secret detention site.

"I've never heard of it. This is the only detention facility in Afghanistan" said Vice Admiral Robert Harward who is in charge of the Detention Facility in Parwan.

The US military promised to investigate any allegations of abuse.


:: Article nr. 65095 sent on 15-apr-2010 17:02 ECT

www.uruknet.info?p=65095

Link: news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8621973.stm

This is even worse than the Nazi regime was before they started with the extermination camps.
f**king bunch of sick bastards.

[LightCaster]

This is even worse than the Nazi regime was before they started with the extermination camps.
f**king bunch of sick bastards.

You are wrong. They are worse then Nazis. Nazis didn't use weapons of mass destructions like DU. Look what kind of mutants they are created in Iraq and Afghanistan. Look at those baby's. Look what kind of children are born in US by war veterans. They are not using extermination camps. They don't need it. Iraq and Afghanistan are one big extermination camp.

[LightCaster]

War Preparations? U.S. Warship Arrives in Georgia for Joint Training

Global Research
 April 15, 2010

TBILISI -- A U.S. frigate has arrived in Georgia's territorial waters to take part in joint Theater Security Cooperation (TSC) exercises with the Georgian Coast Guard, a Georgian official said on Wednesday.

 
USS John L. Hall, an Oliver Perry class guided missile frigate, docked on Wednesday in the port of Poti, some 50 km (31 miles) from the border with the former Georgian republic of Abkhazia.

 
The frigate will visit Batumi, another Georgian port on the Black Sea coast, on April 16 and leave Georgia's territorial waters on April 19.

 
During the visit, John L. Hall's crew will conduct multiple training sessions with the Georgian Coast Guard including first aid, damage control, search and rescue (SAR), rescue and assistance (R&A), and visit, board, search and seizure (VBSS) tactics.

 
Georgia, which is actively seeking NATO membership, signed in January last year a strategic partnership treaty with the United States, which has long provided economic and military support for Tbilisi, including training for its troops. The John L. Hall took part in similar exercises with the Georgian Coast Guard in March.

 
President Mikheil Saakashvili pledged to build new and stronger armed forces after Georgia's military conflict with Russia in August 2008. He has expressed hope that Washington will provide stronger support to Tbilisi in developing its military.

 
Some Georgian politicians have urged the U.S. and NATO to send their warships to Georgian territorial waters in the Black Sea to stave off the potential threat of a Russian sea blockade of the Georgian ports in case of a military conflict.

 
Russia maintains several patrol boats in the area to help Abkhazia guard its maritime border in the Black Sea.

 
Under mutual assistance treaties signed in November 2008 following Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and the other former Georgian republic of South Ossetia as independent states, Moscow pledged to help both republics protect their borders, and the signatories granted each other the right to set up military bases in their respective territories.