The Rise And Rise Of George Galloway

I met GG, fake tan and all during the Hillhead Bye-election. Suave, smooth, articulate, full of himself and about to win. Who cares about any of that. 
Galloway is a conviction politician who could have led the Labour Party if he was a cynic and Blair-style toady. He stuck to his guns and now he has stuck it to Nu£abour. Respect, George. 
MORE HERE

Israel Strikes Iran - What Then?

What would Iran do? Everyone would be poised for a massive military response. They might be surprised.
Iran would almost certainly give the required 90 days notice of its intention to quit the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and terminate inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iranian officials would not necessarily announce that they intended to proceed with development of a nuclear weapon, but they would certainly make clear that as a nonnuclear state that had been attacked by another state with nuclear weapons, that was a decision that was entirely up to them. All enriched uranium stocks would be removed from IAEA seal, and all monitoring cameras would be removed. MORE

Global March To Jerusalem

SCENE FROM YESTERDAY'S MARCH

Obama Accepts Offer Of (Burnt?) Koran?

Egypt: The Hijacked Revolution?

The Trench: Neoliberal Egypt: The Hijacked Revolution:

Gaza, Le Goût de la Liberté

Kandahar Massacre Discrepancies

Photo Trayvon Yes! Photos 9 Afghani Children Massacred No!

OpEdNews - Article: Photo Trayvon Yes! Photos 9 Afghani Children Massacred No! No Interest - Change Coming:

Afghan Cop Shoots Dead Sleeping Colleagues

MoD News - Afghan Cop Shoots Dead Sleeping Colleagues:

UK Soldiers Disciplined In Killings/Woundings Of Civilians

This is only a very partial picture. The MoD has censored many details of the incidents, citing the usual reasons such as the need to protect national security. We have no way of course of knowing whether those reasons are valid or merely to avoid emb
The names of regiments or the locations of the incidents are sometimes given. The names of those killed or wounded are never disclosed.
We are interested to hear more details about these incidents, such as what happened, why were the investigations launched, or what resulted from the investigations.
If you can help, please get in touch. I can be contacted onrob.evans@guardian.co.uk

Afghan Police- '9 officers killed by colleague in eastern Paktia'

Afghan police say 9 officers have been killed by a colleague in eastern Paktika province  | ajc.com:

Grieving Kandahar Massacre Survivors Speak

George Galloway wins Bradford West By-election

BBC News - George Galloway wins Bradford West by-election:

Common Ground

Plan B???!

This guy is asking if NATO has a Plan B. I think he really means a Plan Z.

NATO STRATEGISTS AT WORK

Adam Werritty paid £70,000 by Tory donor-funded Pargav Limited | UK news | The Guardian

Adam Werritty paid £70,000 by Tory donor-funded Pargav Limited | UK news | The Guardian:

Mohamed Merah Buried In France

Mohamed Merah buried near Toulouse - Europe - World - The Independent:

Defence Secretary: Britain could commit more forces

Defence Secretary: Britain could commit more forces 


'via Blog this'

Taliban Online

Official site. Google Translate doesn't help. I wouldn't log in if I were you.
ستاسو پوښتني او د ذبیح الله مجاهد ځوابونه:

'via Blog this'

French troops leave Afghanistan

French troops leave Afghanistan 

Cover-Up In Kandahar?

One Mokhoyan resident, Ahmad Shah Khan, told The Associated Press that after the bombing, U.S. soldiers and their Afghan army counterparts arrived in his village and made many of the male villagers stand against a wall.
"It looked like they were going to shoot us, and I was very afraid," Khan said. "Then a NATO soldier said through his translator that even our children will pay for this. Now they have done it and taken their revenge."
Neighbors of Khan gave similar accounts to the AP, and several Afghan officials, including Kandahar lawmaker Abdul Rahim Ayubi, said people in the two villages that were attacked told them the same story.
...Ghulam Rasool, a tribal elder from Panjwai district of Kandahar province, where the shootings occurred, gave an account of the bombing at a March 16 meeting in Kabul with President Hamid Karzai.
"After the incident, [the Americans] took the wreckage of their destroyed tank and their wounded people from the area," Rasool said. "After that, they came back to the village nearby the explosion site.
"The soldiers called all the people to come out of their houses and from the mosque," he said.
"The Americans told the villagers, 'A bomb exploded on our vehicle. ... We will get revenge for this incident by killing at least 20 of your people,'" Rasool said. "These are the reasons why we say they took their revenge by killing women and children in the villages." MORE

Soldiers killed in Afghanistan | ITV News

Soldiers killed in Afghanistan | ITV News:

Both men were new fathers it is being reported.

Fancy A Job In Afghanistan? Vacancy.

Dwyer C-IED Site Manager Job - HEL:

'via Blog this'

Mission Impossible

With the West's rush for the exit from the war depending on building up the size of Afghan security forces, some Afghan officials say that corners were being cut when it came to security checks. "The foreigners just want the numbers keep going up so that they can say they have finished their job and it is time to go," said one official. "In such situations it is not surprising that some bad people are slipping through."General John Allen, the American head of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (Isaf ) insisted that these types of attacks are to be expected in this type of war. "We experienced these in Iraq. We experienced them in Vietnam. On any occasion where you're dealing with an insurgency and where you're also growing an indigenous force... the enemy's going to do all that they can to disrupt both the counterinsurgency operations and the developing nation's security forces." READ MORE

US Meeting Pakistan On Botched Attacks

A workable relationship is also important because Pakistan is seen as key to striking a peace agreement with the Taliban that would allow U.S. troops to withdraw from Afghanistan without the country descending into further chaos.
Pakistan would also benefit from patching up relations because U.S. assistance has helped keep its struggling economy afloat. The U.S. has given Pakistan billions of dollars in aid since 2001 to enlist its support in fighting Islamist militants, but the relationship has been plagued by mistrust.
The Pakistani army said Gen. Pervez Kayani and the top U.S. commander in the region, Gen. James Mattis, and the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, will discuss the investigation of the American airstrikes and ways to improve border coordination. The meeting will be held at army headquarters in Rawalpindi, just outside the capital, Islamabad, the army statement said. MORE

Non-Denial Denial Suggests US May Consider Some Panjwai Dead Legitimate Targets

DOD’s Non-Denial Denial Suggests They May Consider Some Panjwai Dead Legitimate Targets | 

American Journalism

UK Gagging To Leave Debacle - Need US Permission

"The option we take depends on the US," said a Whitehall source. "If the Americans increase the size and speed of their withdrawal then we may have to consider a much quicker exit in early 2014."
During David Cameron's recent visit to see the US president, Barack Obama, at the White House, both leaders spoke about transferring security responsibility to the Afghans during 2013.
Officials say this was misinterpreted as a signal that more troops would come back early, but that is not what the military wants. MORE

Atrocities In Afghanistan

Fascism & Anglo-American Killing by presstv

Soldats Britanniques Tués

Deux soldats britanniques de la force de l'OTAN en Afghanistan ont été tués lundi par un soldat Afghan.

Mohamed Merah s'était rendu en Israël

Mohamed Merah s'était rendu en Israël by infolivetv

Support For War In Afghanistan Hits All-Time Low

Support For War In Afghanistan Hits All-Time Low:

BBC News - Why Taliban are so strong in Afghanistan

BBC News - Why Taliban are so strong in Afghanistan:

Gen. John Allen 'Not Saying Things Are Perfect'

Thanks for clearing that up, General.

US Media On The Ball In Afghanistan

Team America Cleaning Up the Last Talibs in 2005

From the Washington Post 13 March, 2005.

'The conventional wisdom, however, is about a year past its sell-by date. Karzai is a genuinely popular leader who won 55 percent of the votes in Afghanistan's October presidential contest, against more than a dozen other candidates in a reasonably fair election -- arguably a greater margin of victory than President Bush won against just one main challenger in 2004. The Taliban, the Islamist fanatics who ruled the country and harbored Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, are spent as an effective military force, which their inability to disrupt the Afghan elections clearly demonstrated. Neighboring Pakistan suffers far more from political violence than Afghanistan. And Karzai has proven a deft politician who has edged out the warlords or "promoted" them to politically irrelevant positions. (Take Karzai's former defense minister, Marshal Mohammed Fahim, who is now without a job; the potentate of western Afghanistan, Ismail Khan, has lost the key governorship of Herat and received instead the consolation prize of the Ministry of Energy.)' More here if you're not sick of similar drivel from the US newsfeeds for the last 11 years.

Green On Blue Killings - Timeline

– January 8: An Afghan soldier shoots dead a Nato soldier and is himself killed when a dispute ends in a shoot-out on a southern base in Zabul.
– January 20: Four French soldiers are shot dead and 16 wounded by a member of the Afghan army in Kapisa province, eastern Afghanistan.
– January 31: Nato says one of its force members has been killed by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform in the south of the country.
– February 20: An Albanian member of the Nato force is killed and one of his compatriots injured by an Afghan police officer in southern Afghanistan.
– February 23: Two US soldiers are shot dead by an Afghan soldier during a demonstration in the eastern province of Nangarhar.
– February 25: Two US military advisers are killed in their office at the interior ministry in Kabul. The attacker, a member of the police, flees.
– March 1: Two US soldiers serving with the Nato force in the south are killed by an Afghan soldier and a local civilian.
– March 26: Two British soldiers are killed by an Afghan wearing an army uniform in the southern province of Helmand.

Unborn Afghan Child Was 17th Massacre Victim

American officials were not immediately available for comment, and a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force referred all questions to the United States Army in Washington State, where Sergeant Bales’s unit was based.
Afghan and American officials have said that American officials have paid compensationto the family members of the 16 dead and six wounded victims last Saturday ; at the rate of $50,000 for each fatality and $11,000 for each wounding, that totals $866,000.
Other Afghan officials still insisted Monday that only 16 persons were killed in Sergeant Bales’s rampage March 11. “The foreigners have made a mistake,” said Ahmed Jawed Faisal, head of the Kandahar Media Information Center. “There is no 17th person dead. According to our records, it is 16.” MORE

Pay That Blood Money Quick And Let's Move On

The Trench: Afghan Victims Forgotten in Washington's Blame Game

The Trench: Afghan Victims Forgotten in Washington's Blame Game:
This animosity is further compounded by witness testimony that U.S. military officials had encouraged villagers to return to the area. After losing his brother, Mohammad Dawood, to one of Bales's first bullets, Mullah Baran captured the all-encompassing breakdown within U.S. "The Americans said they came here to bring peace and security, but the opposite happened. Now, this village is a nest of ghosts."
In regards to the conditions of Bales's trial, Panetta claimed that Karzai accepted the administration's decision to fly him out of the country and hold "a transparent process" for Afghans - as if Karzai had a choice. Livid at being undermined once again, Karzai travelled to the villages and condemned Washington's failure to cooperate with his own investigation. A demand that U.S. troops withdraw from village areas by 2013 soon followed. Karzai knows too well that a failure to punish Bales to the maximum extent will land on his desk, and seems to expect the inevitable. Pulling Bales out of the country represents the fastest motion by the Obama administration. Now that the Pentagon's legal charges are being handed down, Bales's lawyer said he expects the government to face "a very difficult case to prove."

The Trench: Phasing Out the Taliban

The Trench: Phasing Out the Taliban:

'via Blog this'

Panjwai Massacre Conscience Money

It was not immediately clear how much money had been paid out in all. Afghan officials and villagers have counted 16 dead — 12 in the village of Balandi and four in neighboring Alkozai — and six wounded. The U.S. military has charged Bales with 17 murders without explaining the discrepancy.
The 38-year-old soldier is accused of using his 9mm pistol and M-4 rifle, which was outfitted with a grenade launcher, to kill four men, four women, two boys and seven girls, then burning some of the bodies. The ages of the children were not disclosed in the charge sheet. MORE

General Allen’s Naiveté: Claims Taliban resurgence not in Pakistan’s interests - National Afghanistan Headlines | Examiner.com

General Allen’s Naiveté: Claims Taliban resurgence not in Pakistan’s interests - National Afghanistan Headlines | Examiner.com:

Backlash Pour Sarkozy D'Affaire Mohamed Merah

http://neoclassics.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/backlash-pour-sarkozy-daffaire-mohamed.html

Media Take On Mohamed Merah

Panjwai Massacre - More Details Emerge

In fact the final death toll is now reported as 17 rather the 16 reported here:

The Real Victims In The Kandahar Massacre

Certain sections of the US media and blogosphere are already trying to make a victim out of the wretched criminal who committed the massacre. The real victims had names, although you won't read them or hear them in the Washington Post or on CNN. They were Masooma, Farida, Palwasha, Nabia, Esmatullah - the daughters of Mohamed Wazir. Faizullah, his son. Mohamed Dawood, son of Abdullah. Khudayad, son of Mohamed Juma. Nazar Mohamed. Payendo. Robeena. Shatarina, the daughter of Sultan Mohamed. Zahra, the daughter of Abdul Hamid. Nazia, the daughter of Dost Mohamed. Essa Mohamed, the son of Mohamed Hussain. Akhtar Mohamed, the son of Murrad Ali. Nine of them under the age of 12. All dead.

Wounded, but alive: Haji Mohamed Naim, son of Haji Sakhawat. Mohamed Sediq, the son of Mohamed Naim. Parween. Rafiullah. Zardana. Zulheja. They came from  Alkozai, Najeeban and a little settlement called "Ibrahim Khan Houses" in the Panjawi district of Kandahar Province.  
Bales won't be in the dock alone if he if there is nobody else standing there. My only consolation in this is that the trial of Bales will show up the US military and it's attendant media groupies for exactly what they are and have been in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the eyes of the whole world.

Afghanistan And Public Opinion

By John Brissenden

Grand claims are made for public opinion by the media, by politicians and by policymakers. The day after the worldwide Iraq protests in 2003, The New York Times declared that “there may still be two superpowers on the planet: the United States and world public opinion.”
The Ministry of Defence makes the link between warfare and popular consent quite explicit in its definitive policy document on Strategic Communication, published last year:
“War...requires the political and majority support of the population in whose name it is waged. The authority to use the military instrument is nuanced and can occur without prior approval by Parliament. However, for major operations such approval is expected by the wider UK population and it is important to maintain public support.”
In fact, as we shall see, the authority to use the military instrument can only be exerted without prior approval by Parliament. The constitution provides no mechanism by which Parliamentary approval may be given at the point at which decisions to deploy military forces are taken. More

US Bombings - A Brief History Pt 2

The data allows for a remarkable visiual depiction of the secret bombing campaign known as Operation Menu. I wonder what an equivalent map of Afghanistan will look like when America/NATO/ISAF are finished with their madness.

US Bombings - A Brief History Pt 1

I Am trying to source a similar graphic for Iraq and Afghanistan

Toulouse Siege : Mohamed Mera Dead - Video Clip

Helicopter Crash (Paktia Province) - Feb 6th

“This is where I come to do fucked-up things.”

His face had been clear and smooth, his smile almost shy. It was a statement of happy expectation, as though Afghanistan were a playground. He was the de facto leader of a platoon I will call Destroyer, and although he is a real person, not a composite, I have heard his words in many variations, from many American combat troops. But he and some of his men were the first I had met who seemed very near to committing the dumb and vicious acts that we call war crimes.We marched on, toward houses the soldiers planned to raid and doors that would soon be blasted open, toward men who would be ripped awake, blindfolded, and hauled away. The sergeant’s words rattled in my head. I hoped the men would not do anything terrible. READ MORE

Kandahar Shooter Had Debts of $1.5M

Robert Bales, a 38-year-old Staff Sergeant, was found guilty of securities fraud before joining the army, and still owed his victims hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation and punitive damages.
He carried out the financial crimes while working at MPI, a brokerage firm in Ohio. A report filed by federal regulators in 2003 concluded he had "engaged in fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, churning, unauthorised trading and unsuitable investments" on behalf of clients.
Read more: 

No Evidence in Massacre Apart From 16 Dead People And US Army Nutter

Lawyer for US psychopath says victims could be mistaken.

Operation Du Raid A Toulouse

Villagers: Afghan slayings were act of retaliation | TuscaloosaNews.com

Villagers: Afghan slayings were act of retaliation | TuscaloosaNews.com:

Afghan Massacre Sign Of Total Failure

Terror And Trauma In The Afghan Quagmire

“Our government told us to come back to the village, and then they let the Americans kill us.” MORE

Staying The Course With Condi

''Now let's train the Afghan security forces, let's diminish the Taliban's capability, let's help the Afghan people with governance and let's try and keep our nerve and keep moving forward because we cannot afford to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban and the terrorists."
Read more: 

The Spanish Holocaust

Siege of Teruel, April, 1938

Professor Paul Preston's recent book, The Spanish Holocaust is available now.

One of the many remarkable things about this narrative of butchery is, indeed, how it proves Garzón's central accusation – that Franco enacted a ruthless plan involving the "detention, torture, forced disappearance and physical elimination of thousands of people for political and ideological motives … a state of affairs that continued, to greater or lesser extent, after the civil war ended".

Preston provides facts, figures and harrowing descriptions in the first full and proper attempt to explain the horror. He does not shy away from strong words – "holocaust" is deliberately chosen to describe the extent of cold-blooded killing "because its resonances with systematic murder should be evoked in the Spanish case, as they are in those of Germany or Russia". Nor does he ignore the undoubted cruelty and the crimes committed on the Republican side of a three-year civil war sparked by a 1936 military rightist uprising against an elected government. Two-thirds of the clergy in the Catalan province of Lleida were killed. A third of all monks in the Republican zone also died. That is extreme religious persecution. I attended a talk by Professor Preston last week and it was a salutory one. None of us can afford to be complacent as the forces of fascism gather strength across Europe and in the US under an assortment of mendacious flags and pretexts.

France-Algérie : Les Blessures Invisibles

Murder In War Is No Anomaly

By Chris Hedges
Military attacks like these in civilian areas make discussions of human rights an absurdity.Robert Bales, a U.S. Army staff sergeant who allegedly killed 16 civilians in two Afghan villages, including nine children, is not an anomaly. To decry the butchery of this case and to defend the wars of occupation we wage is to know nothing about combat. We kill children nearly every day in Afghanistan. We do not usually kill them outside the structure of a military unit. If an American soldier had killed or wounded scores of civilians after the ignition of an improvised explosive device against his convoy, it would not have made the news. Units do not stick around to count their “collateral damage.” But the Afghans know. They hate us for the murderous rampages. They hate us for our hypocrisy. More

Afghanistan and American Imperialism

Afghan doubts about an exclusively American investigation are surely inflamed, again understandably, by the history of untruths by the US military about episodes of violence in Afghanistan. As the war correspondent Jerome Starkey documented: "US-led forces in Afghanistan are committing atrocities, lying, and getting away with it."
Starkey was writing in the wake of one incident where the American military, thanks to his investigative reporting, got caught out over the wanton killing of Afghan villagers. In February, 2010, US forces entered a village in the Paktia Province in Afghanistan and, after surrounding a home where a celebration of a new birth was taking place, shot dead two male civilians (government officials) who exited the house in order to inquire why they had been surrounded, and then shot and killed three female relatives (a pregnant mother of 10, a pregnant mother of six, and a teenager).
The Pentagon then issued statements insisting that the dead men were insurgents and that the dead women were already gagged and killed inside the house by the time US forces had arrived, victims of an "honor killing." They depicted as liars the Afghan villagers who insisted that it was US soldiers who did the killing and that the dead were all civilians. American media outlets largely regurgitated the American military version uncritically. But enough evidence subsequently emerged disproving those claims such that the Pentagon was forced to admit that their original version was totally false and that, just as the villagers attested, it was US troops who killed the women. MORE

Silent Slaughters

Just a couple of days after “ Sergeant Massacre” left his base in southern Afghanistan and singlehandedly perpetrated the My Lai of the Afghan War, shooting and evidently in some cases stabbing to death 16 Afghan villagers, including nine children, a district police chief in Kapisa Province reported that a NATO air strike had killed three civilians and injured two more. Mistaken for insurgents, two shopkeepers had, he claimed, died on the spot, as had an elderly man later. A NATO spokesman responded that the dead were, in fact, insurgents, though “additional information” on those deaths was being collected.

Since then, while the media has been filled with discussion of theuntil recently unidentified sergeant’s atrocity and what it means for America’s war in Afghanistan, those other dead Afghans have typically faded into obscurity. There have been no further reports on what happened to them, nor, as far as we know, has one of the scores of U.S. and NATO “investigations” so-thorough-they-never-manage-to-see-the-light-of-day been launched. But those three contested deaths, not the sergeant’s grim, up-close-and-personal slaughter, best catch the nature of America’s Afghan War, ever since in December 2001 a B-52 and two B-1B bombers took out110 of 112 Afghan villagers celebrating a wedding. Though the sergeant’s acts have been headlined, Afghans have been dying, largely unnoticed here, for a long while now. The truth is this: from the air and on the ground, Americans have been profligate with Afghan lives. More here

Why the British Army has been so keen to stay in Afghanistan

Why the British Army has been so keen to stay in Afghanistan

Afghan slaughter suspect had criminal record — RT

Afghan slaughter suspect had criminal record — RT:

Bales 'The Good Guy'

Talk like that infuriates Fred Wellman, a retired Army lieutenant colonel from Fredericksburg, Va., who did three tours in Iraq. He said comments like those of Bales' neighbors and his attorney simply feed into the notion of "the broken veteran."
Wellman does not deny that 10 years of war have severely strained the service. But while others might see Bales as a wounded soul, Wellman sees a man who sneaked off base to commit his alleged crimes, then had the presence of mind to "lawyer up" as soon as he was caught.
"That may play well with certain circles of the civilian community, which doesn't understand our lives," Wellman said. "But he's going to be tried by a military court ... and chances are three or four of those guys had things happen to them, may have had three or four tours, may have lost people, may have been blown up. And NONE of them snapped and killed 16 people." He added: "It's just too easy, and a lot of us, we're not buying it."

Afghanistan Today - Anti-Americanism on the rise

Afghanistan Today - Anti-Americanism on the rise:

Kandahar Horror - Afghans React

For Haji Nuur Mohammed, 60, it’s simply too difficult to believe that no military personnel noticed the massacre as it evolved on Sunday night.
Mohammed’s mud compound sits in between two of the homes where people were killed. The rampaging soldier must have walked right by. It is a thought that for a moment makes him stare in reflection at his wrinkled hands.
“The shooting echoed through the silent night, and was without a doubt heard by the US soldiers at the camp,” Mohammed said. MORE

We Had To Destroy Afghanistan To Rebuild It

The chilling words of one U.S. officer in Afghanistan: We had to destroy this country to rebuild it: NO THE INSIDE STORY OF THE CHAOTIC STRUGGLE FOR AFGHANISTAN BY BEN ANDERSON | Mail Online:

Afghans Face 'Two Demons' - Karzai

The erosion of that relationship has roots in Afghanistan's most recent presidential election, Khalilzad says, when the Obama administration was perceived by many to be in support of Karzai's opponents. He says that did a lot of damage to the trust between the two presidents.
"Never point a gun to the king's head, because if he survives he's not going to forget that," Khalilzad says. "That's what we have at one level with President Karzai at the present time."
An Afghan by birth, Khalilzad has seen his country invaded, occupied and go through different phases of socialism, communism and even monarchy. But he says he is "cautiously optimistic" about Afghanistan's future — if there is a strategic partnership agreement and a residual U.S. presence. MORE

Green On Blue Cover Up

In the last six weeks, this is the seventh killing of an American soldier by an Afghan partner. Following the burning of Muslim holy books at Bagram Air Base, an Afghan soldier gunned down two US troops on February 23. Eight days later, two more American combatants were killed inside an Afghan ministry and two Army paratroopers were shot by Afghan soldiers in Kandahar province.
But Pentagon casualty announcements never mention the friendly-hand-gone-foe. Thus, the two soldiers killed on February 23 were said to have died of "wounds suffered when their unit came under small arms fire."
Though US officials claim that the latest anti-American outrage in Afghanistan was provoked by the Koran incident, the killing of Lance Cpl. Dycus shows this is not a momentary issue. FROM HERE

Robert Fisk On The Latest Civilian Massacre

General Allen told his men that "now is not the time for revenge for the deaths of two US soldiers killed in Thursday's riots". They should, he said, "resist whatever urge they might have to strike back" after an Afghan soldier killed the two Americans. "There will be moments like this when you're searching for the meaning of this loss," Allen continued. "There will be moments like this, when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back. Now is not the time for revenge, now is the time to look deep inside your souls, remember your mission, remember your discipline, remember who you are."
Now this was an extraordinary plea to come from the US commander in Afghanistan. The top general had to tell his supposedly well-disciplined, elite, professional army not to "take vengeance" on the Afghans they are supposed to be helping/protecting/nurturing/training, etc. He had to tell his soldiers not to commit murder. I know that generals would say this kind of thing in Vietnam. But Afghanistan? Has it come to this? I rather fear it has. Because – however much I dislike generals – I've met quite a number of them and, by and large, they have a pretty good idea of what's going on in the ranks. And I suspect that Allen had already been warned by his junior officers that his soldiers had been enraged by the killings that followed the Koran burnings – and might decide to go on a revenge spree. Hence he tried desperately – in a statement that was as shocking as it was revealing – to pre-empt exactly the massacre which took place last Sunday. In Full

Karzai Slams US Over Latest Massacre

The not so lone US gunman who killed 16 Afghan civilians

The not so lone US gunman who killed 16 Afghan civilians:

Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Curse of Kandahar

Al-Ahram Weekly | International | Curse of Kandahar:

Afghanistan War Daily

LINK HERE.

Massacre - Lone Gunman Theory Challenged

Karzai, incredulous, cited one villager’s account to explain his frustration:
“In his family, in four rooms, people were killed, women and children were killed, and they were all brought together in one room and then put on fire. That, one man cannot do.”
Multiple witnesses have claimed that up to 30 U.S. troops were involved in the massacre, according to McClatchy News, while Afghan parliamentarians put the number between 15 and 20 after a two-day probe in Panjwai, the village where the murders took place.
READ MORE

Panjwai Massacre Killer Identified

Kandahar Massacre - Sgt. Robert Bales

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Kandahar Killer Bales Quoted In Iraq Article

Please note that this was a 'humanitarian' operation.

The ability to conduct full-spectrum operations and transition to humanitarian activities proved how unique Stryker Soldiers are, he said.That sentiment was shared by the NCOs who were there, many of them in the Patriot Battalion."I've never been more proud to be a part of this unit than that day," Bales said now a member of 2-3 Inf. headquarters, "for the simple fact that we discriminated between the bad guys and the noncombatants and then afterward we ended up helping the people that three or four hours before were trying to kill us. I think that's the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy, someone who puts his family in harm's way like that."Clemmer, who won a Silver Star for his leadership through all phases of the complex battle, saw it as a moral victory as well as a tactical one."There is not an army in the world, in my opinion, that can go from taking pins out of grenades and throwing them over trenches to receiving wounded, treating the wounded and taking care of an enemy that we had killed throughout the night - treating enemy combatants with that humanity."For its actions in the Battle of Zarqa, 2-3 Inf. has been submitted for the Valorous Unit Award. The recommendation received the endorsement of the current commanding general of Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, and is awaiting final approval at Human Resources Command.Don Kramer is a reporter with Fort Lewis' Northwest Guardian. READ MORE CRAP