Think tank: 92% of Afghans never heard of 9/11
Daniel Tencer | Raw Story.com Fewer than one in 10 Afghans are aware of the 9/11 attacks and their precipitation of the war in Afghanistan, says a study from an international think tank. A report (PDF) from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated [...]
Robert Gates: ‘We’re Not Ever Leaving’ Afghanistan
Marcus Baram | Huffington Post.com In a shocking indication of a split between the White House and the Pentagon over the war in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes that the U.S. military will never leave the war-torn country. During a dinner hosted by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for Afghan President Hamid Karzai in [...]
Afghanistan bomb attacks kill twenty-one US soldiers in 48 hours
Ben Farmer | Telegraph.co.uk A series of bomb attacks have badly hit US troops in eastern and southern Afghanistan in the past 48 hours. The death toll among in the Nato-led coalition has reached 484 this year and is predicted to far surpass 2009’s total of 521. Deaths have risen consistently each year since 2001. [...]
U.S. to spend $100 million on Afghan bases
UPI.com The Pentagon says it plans to spend $100 million on air base expansions in Afghanistan with construction efforts continuing into at least 2011. Despite growing disaffection with the war and President Obama’s pledge to begin withdrawing U.S. troops in July 2011, many of the projected installations have extended completion deadlines, The Washington Post reported [...]
Petraeus: We’re Not Leaving Iraq
Pentagon Surprised to Hear Reports that War Ended Jason Ditz | Antiwar.com As Obama Administration officials and a willing mainstream media report that yesterday was the end of the Iraq War it would likely surprise many that 56,000 US troops remain on the ground engaging in combat operations. But it seems like the spin is [...]
US Announces Second Fake End to Iraq War
Jason Ditz | AntiWar.com It was another of those great TV moments. Embedded reports filming as the “last” brigade of American troops in Iraq cross the border into Kuwait bringing over seven years of unhappy conflict to its final, conclusive end. America was, at last, at peace. But like so many other great TV moments, [...]
Obama Redefines Troops to ‘End’ Iraq Combat Mission
Jason Ditz | AntiWar.com 50,000 Troops To Be Renamed ‘Transitional’ Forces To great fanfare, President Barack Obama has pledged to put an end to America’s “combat mission” in Iraq by the beginning of September “as promised and on schedule.” There may be no small measure of incredulity for those who remember his campaign promise to [...]
The US isn’t leaving Iraq, it’s rebranding the occupation
Seumas Milne | Guadian.co.uk For most people in Britain and the US, Iraq is already history. Afghanistan has long since taken the lion’s share of media attention, as the death toll of Nato troops rises inexorably. Controversy about Iraq is now almost entirely focused on the original decision to invade: what’s happening there in 2010 barely [...]
U.S. plans for possible delay in Iraq withdrawal
Craig Whitlock | WashingtonPost.com The U.S. military has prepared contingency plans to delay the planned withdrawal of all combat forces in Iraq, citing the prospects for political instability and increased violence as Iraqis hold national elections next month. Under a deadline set by President Obama, all combat forces are slated to withdraw from Iraq by [...]
Obama, The War President
Helen Thomas | CommonDreams.org President Barack Obama does have a foreign policy. It’s called war. The President has not defined any real difference between his hawkish approach to international issues and that of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush. Where’s the change we can believe in? Bush left a legacy of two wars, neither [...]
President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
gMelvin A Goodman | Truthout.org The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November. [...]
Sound familiar? US refuses to allow UN inspectors to investigate its WMDs
RawStory.com The United States said Wednesday that it remained opposed to international inspections of biological weapon sites, even though it stressed its commitment to a UN treaty covering such arms and invaded Iraq in part over its alleged stalling of — UN weapons inspectors. “When it comes to the proliferation of bio weapons and [...]
Karzai Says Afghan Army Will Need U.S. Until 2024
RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr. and ELISABETH BUMILLER | NewYorkTimes.com President Hamid Karzai said Tuesday that Afghanistan would not be able to pay for its own security until at least 2024, underscoring his government’s long-term financial dependence on the United States and NATO even as President Obama has pledged to begin withdrawing American troops in 2011. [...]
Tell Congress To Vote NO
RethinkAfghanistan.com Sign the petition to tell Congress we cannot afford a war that does not make us safer.
Obama Invokes 9/11 to Explain Afghanistan Troop Surge
Jason Leopold | truthout.org After months of deliberations, President Barack Obama finally outlined his revised strategy for the Afghanistan war in a nationally televised address Tuesday night. The commander-in-chief repeatedly invoked 9/11, attempting to justify his plan to escalate the eight-year-old war, which calls for the rapid deployment of 30,000 additional US troops to the [...]
Obama orders 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, plans withdrawal in 2011
AP | RawStory.com President Barack Obama announced Tuesday he was dispatching 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, accelerating a risky and expensive war buildup, even as he assured the nation that U.S. forces will begin coming home in July 2011. The first new Marines will join the fight by Christmas. The escalation — to be completed by [...]
Robert Baer: What We’re Up Against In Afghanistan Is A “War Of National Resistance”
HuffingtonPost.com In the latest video from the Brave New Foundation’s “Rethink Afghanistan” project, former CIA agent Robert Bear says that what the U.S. faces when it comes to the Afghan insurgency isn’t terrorism, but a war of national resistance. “The people that want their country liberated from the West have nothing to do with Al [...]
Arnold Schwarzenegger visits Iraq – and aims to transfer military tactics to California
Oliver August | TimesOnline.co.uk The governor of California trots out his most famous one-liner wherever he goes but, at the Victory military base in Baghdad today, he apparently meant it. “I’ll be back,” Arnold Schwarzenegger growled after working out with a group of American soldiers on active duty in Iraq, all with necks and trunks [...]
ExxonMobil-led consortium nets ‘supergiant’ Iraq oil field
Ahmed Rasheed and Muhanad Mohammed | DailyStar.com An ExxonMobil-led consortium has beaten rival Russian, French and Chinese groups to bag initial rights to develop Iraq’s West Qurna field, the Oil Ministry said, adding momentum to Iraq’s bid to unlock its oil riches. With reserves of 8.7 billion barrels, West Qurna is among the prized Iraqi fields [...]
Top Obama Advisers Favor Adding Troops in Afghanistan
Elisabeth Bumiller | David Sanger | NYTimes.com Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are coalescing around a proposal to send 30,000 or more additional American troops to Afghanistan, butPresident Obama remains unsatisfied with answers he has gotten about how vigorously the governments of Afghanistan and Pakistanwould help execute [...]
