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Syndicate
Twenty US Soldiers Involved in Kandahar Killings
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231686.html
"An Afghan committee says that up to 20 US soldiers have been involved in the Sunday killing of at least 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar Province.."
Breaking: Panetta Orders US Marines in Helmand to Disarm
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231714.html
"US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has ordered the disarmament of the US marines meeting with him in Helmand Province."
Jack Cafferty: Military Industrial Complex Has This Country by the Throat (and vid)
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/13/jack-cafferty-military-industrial-...
"How much is enough?' he said Tuesday. 'The United States has been in Afghanistan for more than ten years. And President Obama insists we will remain in Afghanistan until the end of 2014. Why? What will be accomplished by staying in that godforsaken hellhole for another 20 months that hasn't been accomplished in 10 and a half years?..."
and Canada?
Canadian Training Mission Meant to Free Up US Soldiers For Combat: Documents
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Canadian+training+mission+meant+free+s...
"Since the Canadian training mission in Afghanistan began last year, the federal government has said the purpose is to help Afghan army and police develop the skills needed to take responsibility for the country's security in 2014. But shortly before visiting Afghanistan this past Christmas, Gov Gen David Johnston was told another reason 950 Canadian troops have been deployed to Kabul and two other central Afghan cities:
to free up US soldiers for combat.
The statement is found in briefing notes that were prepared in advance of Johnston's visit to Afghanistan, Kuwait and HMCS Vancouver in the Mediterranean and obtained by Postmedia News through Access to Information. According to the briefing note for Johnston, 'location and billets were based on...where it was assessed that Canada could get the greatest effect on the ground and free up American forces to move to a combat role.'
It's the first time such an objective has been mentioned. The Department of National Defence did not respond to questions.."
Ha! What a joke!
The goal of the "training mission" is to "train 352,000 Afghan soldiers by the time Canada and its NATO allies leave in 2014."
But suddenly the opizishin is outraged to discover that the "training mission" is also freeing up US soldiers to fight! Why didn't Peter McKay tell us this?
Who could possibly have imagined that Canada's "training mission" would result in enhancing the ability of NATO and its Afghan stooges to kill more Afghans?
Jack Harris and John McKay are shocked - shocked! - that instead of Canadians handing out lollipops to school children they are actually assisting in NATO's continued military assault on Afghanistan!
Peter MacKay Vows to Keep Canadian Trainers in Afghanistan Despite Upheaval
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/peter-mackay-vows-to-keep-canadi...
"Liberal Defence Critic John McKay, whose party supported the training mission, said every incident involving an American or other allied troop puts Canadian forces at risk while endangering the work and sacrifice that has clearly been made.
'We spent billions and billions of dollars in Afghanistan, and we have 158 dead and hundreds with injuries, but we don't seem to be any closer,' he said. 'We might be approaching enough is enough. I don't think we're quite there yet, but I'm hoping that the senior leadership in our military and in our government has talked to our counterparts and been very blunt with them.'
NDP defence critic David Christopherson, however, said the incidents should be the last straw, and that as other countries change their timetable for withdrawal, Canada would be well advised to do the same. 'The recent events in Afghanistan are certainly tragic and it certainly underscores the no-win situation,' he said. 'It is time for our troops to come home."
'
They're also accomplices. But wasn't that Jack Layton's position all along...that combat was actually the wrong mission for Canada, and that we should play a more 'constructive' role? The fact of the matter is that whatever we do in the context of Afghanistan lightens the load on US military expenditures. They really mean it when they pat us on the head to say we're quite valuable as allies.
Some of my righteous dude Liberal friends actually supported the CIA, ISI, and Saudi's covert interventions in 1980s Afghanistan. And today they are just rabidly anti-NDP as usual and taking no real stands on anything significant. I find debating with Liberals is like trying to staple jello to a wall.
I find you have a curious assortment of friends, all of whom appear to quite enjoy their jello days at the Wellington Street institution.
So, did any of the anti-NDP supporters here actually vote in any of the last several elections in protest of Canadian troops in Afghanistan? Or are the comments here just a lot of hot air?
I know which party I voted for, and it's the only party in Ottawa on the record as calling for withdrawing combat troops from the CIA's 30 year-long project in Central Asia. I guess that gives me the right to complain about our troops having been there ever since the Libranos secretly slid them into a U.S.-style combat role in Kandahar beginning in 2005 after a lot of stuttering and stammering to the NDP's questioning in Parliament.
I can't speak for anyone anywhere else Fidel, but there were no such candidates in my riding that one could select from to register a protest. Actually I think it might be fairer to say NDP non-supporters. Saying 'anti' like that makes us sound like anti-christs or something.
So you're living in an Amish community? Jehovah's?
So, I think what you're saying is that you didn't actually cast a vote of protest for any candidate whose party is on the record for opposing Canada's participation in the U.S.-led military occupation of Afghanistan. Is that right?
What do you think about Canadian troops still there in Afghanistan now that it's 2012? If you don't vote for a party promising to bring the troops home, then why would you even complain about it in a public forum like this one? I'm pretty sure our amazing willpower alone couldnt stop them from murdering Afghans from 2005 on, and that's one of the reasons why I voted NDP every chance I had.
Roadside bomb kills 10 civilians in Afghanistan
Actually, a Jehovah candidate would have been a step up from the Cons, Libs and Dipsters on the issue of Afghanistan involvement if you understand anything of that religion. But no, here we didn't have any party available that took a stand against Afghanistan involvement, and even then it represents but a single issue one way or another, which although important enough to get out of bed for if it actually meant changing anything, still represents scarce meat on the bone when considering every other foreign policy issue of contention.
Impossible to do for reasons already elaborated on.
and from the NDP Platform:
What do they have to say on the matter of our latest military re-alignment to the peacemaking role in Afghanistan...from south to north away from the previous mission of actual combat operations? I think these statements provide us with a clue in the absence of elaboration on their website. Such statements are quite difficult to come anywhere in fact. Even google fails us in this regard. The above quote from the platform however constitutes almost precicely the sum total of their remarks about policy in Afghanistan, after 10 plus years of war and many billions of dollars in public expenditures, lives lost, bodies and minds forever maimed.
The Afghan People's Right to Resist - by John V Walsh
http://dissidentvoice.org/2012/03/the-afghan-peoples-right-to-resist/
"The news of the latest US atrocities against the Afghan people struck like a thunderclap over the weekend. Here were whole families killed for sport by a US soldier - although many reports say it was a detatchment of soldiers and that seems the more likely story.
As FAIR reported here, the media treated this as simply a public relations disaster like the urination on the bodies of slaughtered Afghans by the soldiers of the Empire or the 'accidental' burning of the Koran. This is not war; it is an occupation. Every occupation is built on a mountain of corpses.
Let us be perfectly clear. The right to resist occupation by any and all means is enshrined in international law and somewhere deeply in the human brain. And that includes resisting by force. So whose cause is just? It is the cause of those Afghanis who are fighting to throw off a bloody Occupation. That has to be recognized. It may not be a slogan around which to build a movement of millions. But it is surely the truth and we must point it out at every turn..."
Afghans Furious As US Massacre Suspect Flown to Kuwait
http://rt.com/news/afghanistan-us-soldier-kuwait-617/
"...It was the demand of the families of the martyrs of this incident, the people of Kandahar and the people of Afghanistan to try him publicly in Afghanistan,' said Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamidzai, a Kandahar lawmaker who is part of a parliamentary commission investigating the shootings.
Meanwhile, American military defense lawyer Michael Waddington says the decision to remove the soldier from the country may complicate the situation. The prosecutor won't be able to cross-examine statements from Afghan witnessesw unless the defense is able to cross-examine them he said.
Witnesses to the atrocity say that several drunken American servicemen were involved. Since then Afghanistan has been shaken by mass protests..."
Taliban Halts Talks with the US, Karzai Wants Security Control A Year Earlier
http://rt.com/news/afghanistan-taliban-nato-leave-651/
"The Afghan Taliban says it has suspended talks with the US.."
Who else could the CIA, ISI, and Saudis possibly have been holding talks with besides the Taliban?
We can bet those clandestine talks behind closed doors in swanky hotel rooms of Islamabad and Karachi did not include groups representing Afghan women, nor the other 80% of the Afghan resistance, And never mind Karzai's political opposition. Uncle Sam and their cold war pals in Pakistan's army intelligence only see the Taliban, their former proxy government in Kabul, as legitimate opposition. All other Afghans will be told to go to hell.
This headline is absurd. No, Canada is not leading the way out of Afghanistan. Other countries withdrew some time ago.
Our corrupt stooges who repent not of their stoogeries are only following Warshington's lead as per usual. And the talk in Warshington is of maybe leaving Afghanistan. Some day in the distant future. Our obedient lapdogs in Ottawa would never dream of taking the lead on anything. They are incapable of it - their craniums were opened and brains siphoned-off to the states along with the oil some time ago.
'US Led Forces Give No Value to Afghan Lives' (and vid)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231720.html
"Interview with Mohammad Doud Miraki, author and Afghanistan expert:
'It is my sincere opinion that they do not want peace in Afghanistan..'
The War Is Over, The War Is Lost, Bring Them Home - by Clancy Sigal
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/03/13/the-war-is-over-the-war-is-lost-b...
"...The Afghani war is over. Yet the President, his cheerfully on-message advisers, and most of the stenographer media refuse to call it a night when the situation on the ground, with its secret night-raids and fuckedup soldiers, can only get much worse. What are we waiting for, an engraved invitation to leave?"
The Horror, The Horror - by Pepe Escobar
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201231491311254.html
'We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig...cow after cow...village after village...army after army..' Colonel Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now
"...And forget about 'stability'. The 'Afghan security forces' that will theoretically be in charge by 2014, or even before, are doomed. Their illiteracy rate is a staggering 80 per cent. At least 25 percent become deserters. Child rape is endemic. Over 50 percent are permanently stoned on hashish, or steroids.
This was Afghanistan's Haditha moment - as in Iraq, or My Lai as in Vietnam..."
Afghan Massacre Suspect on Flight to US
http://rt.com/news/us-soldier-kandahar-massacre-kansas-747/
"An American soldier suspected of shooting 16 civilians in Afghanistan on Sunday is being moved to a military base in Kansas, officials say. The transfer to a 'safer' detention facility sparked fury among Afghan lawmakers who urged a public trial in Afghanistan. It also drove hundreds of Afghans into the streets across the country in further protests against the rampage..."
and take all the rest of your mad murdering military home as well NATO!
And don't expect him to get the Bradley Manning treatment, either.
'United States Seeks Indefinite Stay in Afghanistan' (and vid)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/232019.html
Interview with Conn Hallinan of Foreign Policy in Focus magazine
Wait a minute WAIT-A-Minute! 9/11 was the worst attack on America since Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor! And the CIA and Pentagon capitalists knew nothing, we repeat, NOTH-ing about it!! It was complete and total SURPRISE attack, as in Jim Naybors "Surprise-surprise Sargent Carter, we got the saaaaame room" kind of surprise. Elvis bin Laden and the CIA's expendible jihadi assets in Afghanistan orchesrated it all. Remember all the good guys from the 1980s and 90s who helped Afghans rid their country of the evol empire? At least, that's what lapdog newz media have repeated constantly for the last ten years. And then they turned on us, like a son goes against the father. 9/11 is now the realm of legend and myth. And we have to fight them on their terrortory so that they don't attack us here at home, like Hitler said just before he ordered the army to be merciful toward civilians in their humanitarian war against Poland. But this is unprecedented for sure.
It's obvious that what Hallinan says and what lapdog newz media say about 9/11 are two very different things. One of them is lying like Joe Goebbels.
Whoa, wait just one sec here - are you saying they did Pearl Harbor too!? This is big.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Elvis bin Laden, Hamid Karzai, the Khadrs, Zawahiris, Ali Mohamed, Gulbby Hekmatyar, Rabbini, Moussaoui etc all fought for the CIA in the 1980s and 90s Afghanistan. They were on the side of ordinary humble Afghans against the evol Sovs. Those guys were fighting for freedom and democracy in the Stan.
And then for some strange reason those ruthless motherfuckers transformed themselves into social democrats and decided that to become vigilantes with social consciences in avenging imperialist-infidel oppression of ordinary Palestinians on that special day on 9/11/01. And what a special day it was. 9/11 was the ultimate surprise attack against the vicious, most high tech empire with the most extensive intelligence network in world history. They were taken by complete surprise on that infamous day.
Never forget.
US committed to continue talks with their former proxies, the Taliban: White House
Next up the Yanks will be pushing for the Taliban to have a seat at the UN, like they did with the Khmer Rouge in "Democratic Kampuchea."
What a farce!
'Sick Savages': 3/11 Afghans Will Never Forget
http://www.mybitforchange.org/2012/afghans-will-never-forget/
"...Everything seems to be falling apart for US strategists..."
The US Empire's Achilles Heel: Its Barbaric Racism - by Glen Ford
http://www.countercurrents.org/ford180312.htm
"...These three latest atrocities have brought the US [and Canadian] occupation to the point of crisis - hopefully a terminal one. But the whole war has been one atrocity after another, from the very beginning, when the high-tech superpower demonstrated the uncanny ability to track down and incinerate whole Afghan wedding parties - not just once but repeatedly. Quite clearly, to the Americans, these people have never been more than ants on the ground, to be exterminated at will..."
'US Killing of Afghan Civilians, Gruesome' (and vid)
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/232356.html
"This is nothing new. Because we have already, in the past, cases where the US forces raped people - raped men as well as women and covered up their murder. And this has been in fact the modus operandi of these crimnal gangs. Unfortunately they have committed similar crimes in the past.."
Questions Mount Over US Account of Massacre - by Patrick Martin
http://wsws.org/articles/2012/mar2012/afgh-m19.shtml
"Nearly every fact asserted by US officials in Kabul and Washington has been challenged either by the villagers where the massacre took place, by the Karzai government in Afghanistan, or by those acquainted with the arrested soldier, Staff Sergeant Robert Bates, 38...But the more important warcriminals are those in the White House, [Ottawa], The Pentagon, the CIA and throughout the US political establishment who are responsible for more than ten years of war in Afghanistan, and who are plotting new wars in Syria, Iran and elsewhere."
Murder Is Not An Anomaly In War - by Chris Hedges
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/266-32/10532-focus-murder-is-not...
"The scale of our state-sponsored murder is masked from public view. Civilians and combatants merge into one detested, nameless, faceless mass. The psychological leap to murder is short. And murder happens every day in Afghanistan. Military attacks like these in civilian areas make discussions of human rights an absurdity.."
or an imperative
Beatings, Sexual Abuse, Electric Shocks: US Torture Camps 'Still Operative'
http://rt.com/news/torture-afghanistan-prisoners-901/
"A new report reveals that US forces continue to send detainees to prison where torture is practiced, despite NATO's promise to suspend prison transfers last September. The report carried out by the Afghan Independent Rights Commission and the Open Society/ Foundation, documents numerous cases of torture in Afghan detention facilities between Feb 2011 and Jan 2012.
The document has credible evidence in 11 recent cases where practices such as 'beatings, suspension from the ceiling, electric shocks, threatened or actual sexual abuse, and other forms of mental and physical abuse' were commonplace."
don't worry Canada's own detainee/torture issue is deeply buried courtesy of our pols.