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Afghanistan war logs: Secret CIA paramilitaries' role in civilian deaths

Innocent Afghan men, women and children have paid the price of the Americans' rules of engagement

Behind the military jargon, the war logs are littered with accounts of civilian tragedies. The 144 entries in the logs recording some of these so-called "blue on white" events, cover a wide spectrum of day-by-day assaults on Afghans, with hundreds of casualties.

They range from the shootings of individual innocents to the often massive loss of life from air strikes, which eventually led President Hamid Karzai to protest publicly that the US was treating Afghan lives as "cheap". When civilian family members are actually killed in Afghanistan, their relatives do, in fairness, get greater solatia payments than cans of beans and Hershey bars. The logs refer to sums paid of 100,000 Afghani per corpse, equivalent to about £1,500.

US and allied commanders frequently deny allegations of mass civilian casualties, claiming they are Taliban propaganda or ploys to get compensation, which are contradicted by facts known to the military.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/ju ... engagement

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Nato probes reports raid killed 45 Afghan civilians

International forces in Afghanistan say they are urgently investigating reports as many as 45 civilians died in an air strike in Helmand province on Friday.

Nato's initial investigation found no evidence, but a BBC journalist visiting Regey village spoke to several people who said they had seen the incident.

At the time, dozens were sheltering in the village from nearby fighting.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-10756940

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Afghan War Leaks Expose Costly, Deceitful March of Folly

The brutality and fecklessness of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan have been laid bare in an indisputable way just days before the House of Representatives is scheduled to vote on whether to throw $33.5 billion more into the Afghan quagmire, when that money is badly needed at home.

On Sunday, the Web site WikiLeaks posted 75,000 reports written mostly by U.S. forces in Afghanistan during a six-year period from January 2004 to December 2009. The authenticity of the material – published under the title “Afghan War Diaries” – is not in doubt.

http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/20 ... ks-expose/

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WikiLeaks says evidence of war crimes in documents

WikiLeaks founder says evidence of war crimes in 91,000 leaked Afghanistan documents

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Monday he believes there is evidence of war crimes in the thousands of pages of leaked U.S. military documents relating to the war in Afghanistan.

The remarks came after WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing group, posted some 91,000 classified U.S. military records over the past six years about the war online, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures.

http://wire.antiwar.com/2010/07/26/wiki ... cuments-3/

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From Amnesty International :

Afghanistan leak exposes NATO's incoherent civilian casualty policy

Amnesty International has called on NATO to provide a clear, unified system of accounting for civilian casualties in Afghanistan, as leaked war logs paint a picture of an incoherent process of dealing with civilian casualties.

Around 92,000 leaked US military files on the war in Afghanistan covering the period 2004-2009 were released Sunday by the website Wikileaks.

"The picture that emerges from the leaked data on civilian casualties is that NATO's leadership did not know exactly what was happening on the ground," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International's Asia-Pacific Director.

"The military logs bear out Amnesty International's longstanding concerns that there is no coherent or consistent system for accounting for civilian casualties."

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-upda ... 2010-07-26

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Deaf, Dumb, and Blind

The White House is screaming like a stuck pig. WikiLeaks’ release of the Afghan War Documents "puts the lives of our soldiers and our coalition partners at risk."

What nonsense. Obama’s war puts the lives of American soldiers at risk, and the craven puppet state behavior of "our partners" in serving as US mercenaries is what puts their troops at risk.

Keep in mind that it was someone in the US military that leaked the documents to WikiLeaks. This means that there is a spark of rebellion within the Empire itself.

And rightly so. The leaked documents show that the US has committed numerous war crimes and that the US government and military have lied through their teeth in order to cover up the failure of their policies. These are the revelations that Washington wants to keep secret.

http://original.antiwar.com/roberts/201 ... and-blind/

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China Calls Our Bluff: "The US is Insolvent and Faces Bankruptcy as a Pure Debtor Nation but [U.S.] Rating Agencies Still Give it High Rankings"

America's biggest creditor - China - has called our bluff.

As the Financial Times notes, the head of China's biggest credit rating agency has said America is insolvent and that U.S. credit ratings are a joke:


The head of China’s largest credit rating agency has slammed his western counterparts for causing the global financial crisis and said that as the world’s largest creditor nation China should have a bigger say in how governments and their debt are rated.

“The western rating agencies are politicised and highly ideological and they do not adhere to objective standards,” Guan Jianzhong, chairman of Dagong Global Credit Rating, told the Financial Times in an interview.

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2 ... lvent.html

[Schnauzer]

In ALL of these reports (and I refer to every one of them) I cannot but object to the constant use of the word 'WAR' when referring to them.

As far as I am aware, there has never been a declaration of 'WAR' upon any of the nations now under constant attack from the invading forces which assail them with such ferocity.

It surely must occur to us ALL, that the actions of the US/UK/Israel and many others that are currently persecuting and oppressing innocent nations, is wrong.

The indiscriminate murder and torture of civilians (evidence freely available) over the past few years, perpetrated by the said forces, coupled with the fact that it has been admitted that the action against Iraq was illegal, can only serve to illustrate just how gullible the citizens of those nations ARE when they accept that there is a 'WAR'.

Fortunately, there are still some who have the good sense to realise that the whole murderous scenario is a well planned campaign of violence upon those who will not accept oppression. (IMHO)

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Obama Seeks Massive Expansion of Arms Exports

While much has been made of the Obama Administration’s attitude toward business, there is one industry which he seems extremely accommodating to, and is going to bat to grow. We are speaking, of course, of the arms export industry.

Already the world’s largest exporter of arms by no small measure, the President’s pledge to massively grow the industry will require, first and foremost, trimming the approval process, the full effort of which has yet to be realized.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/07/30/obam ... s-exports/

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‘Correlation’ Between US Aid and Colombian Army Killings

BOGOTÁ — "There are alarming links between increased reports of extrajudicial executions of civilians by the Colombian army and units that receive U.S. military financing," John Lindsay-Poland, lead author of a two-year study on the question, told IPS.

The report, produced in conjunction with the U.S. Office on Colombia (USOC), studies the application in Colombia of the so-called Leahy Law, passed in 1996, which bans military assistance to a foreign security force unit if the U.S. State Department has credible evidence that the unit has committed gross human rights violations.

http://original.antiwar.com/helda-marti ... -killings/