Our Awful Situation

Archive for the ‘Afghanistan’ Category

At Last, Some Truth About Iraq and Afghanistan

Posted by patriot on June 25th, 2008

No, it’s not about oil! They hate us because we’re free, right? Or so I’ve been told…

After a sea of lies and a tsunami of propaganda, the ugly truth behind the Iraq and Afghanistan wars finally emerged into full view this week.

Four major western oil companies, Exxon, Mobil, Shell, BP and Total, are about to sign US-brokered no-bid contracts with the US-installed Baghdad regime to begin exploiting Iraq’s oil fields. Saddam Hussein had kicked these firms out three decades ago when he nationalized Iraq’s foreign-owned oil industry for the benefit of Iraq’s national development. The Baghdad regime is turning back the clock.

This agreement comes as talks are continuing between the Washington and its Baghdad client regime over future US basing rights in Iraq. After some face-saving Iraqi objections, it is expected that Baghdad will sign a compact with Washington giving US forces control of Iraq and its air space in a manner very similar to Great Britain’s colonial arrangement with Iraq.

Interestingly, the same oil companies that used to exploit Iraq when it was a British colony are now returning. As former US Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently admitted, the Iraq war was all about oil. VP Dick Cheney stated in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq was about oil, and for the sake of Israel.

US military deny that new prison is planned as ‘Guantanamo Two’

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 22nd, 2008

You’d think they could think of a more clever name than “Gitmo Two”:

A US military spokeswoman has dismissed suggestions that a new prison planned for Afghanistan is intended to receive prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, the detention centre in Cuba that is facing increasing criticism in America.

“This is not going to be Guantanamo Two,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Rumi Nielson-Green, spokeswoman for Combined Joint Task Force 101 based at Bagram Airfield, north of the Afghan capital Kabul. “That is absolutely false.”

Feds arrest Miami Beach munitions dealer

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 21st, 2008

Strange, strange, strange:

A 22-year-old munitions dealer and others in his Miami Beach company were arrested on charges of selling prohibited Chinese weaponry to the U.S. government to supply allied forces in Afghanistan, according to law enforcement officials.

Efraim Diveroli, president of AEY Inc., and three other employees were arrested Thursday night and Friday morning — accused of conspiring to misrepresent the types of munitions they sold to the U.S. Department of Defense as part of a $300 million Army weapons contract, officials said.

Diveroli and the others are charged with violating the Arms Export Control Act stemming from an investigation that began earlier this year by the Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Afghanistan Unraveling

Posted by Charlie Kilo on June 11th, 2008

The forgotten war:

In the middle of a consuming presidential election, the American public is focused on the faltering economy first and the Iraq war second. So it’s easy to forget that there’s another, older war going on in Afghanistan — one that’s shown alarming signs of deterioration in recent months, according to many experts.

Hunger Prompting Desperate Acts

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 31st, 2008

I cannot imagine this:

An Afghan father, unable to feed his family, sold his 11-year old daughter for $2,000 to buy food for the rest of his family, IRIN News reported Sunday.

Illiterate and unable to find work, the man could no longer support his family by scavenging, he told a reporter for the UN-based news agency, because high food prices mean less food is being thrown away and more Afghans are scavenging.

“I know people will say I am a cruel and merciless father who sold his own child, but those who say so don’t know my hardship and have never felt the hunger that my family suffers,” said the Afghan man, identified only by a pseudonym.

New Mega-Prison in Afghanistan

Posted by patriot on May 17th, 2008

Those enemy combatants aren’t coming home anytime soon…

The Pentagon is moving forward with plans to build a new, 40-acre detention complex on the main American military base in Afghanistan, officials said, in a stark acknowledgment that the United States is likely to continue to hold prisoners overseas for years to come.
…
Until now, the Bush administration had signaled that it intended to scale back American involvement in detention operations in Afghanistan. It had planned to transfer a large majority of the prisoners to Afghan custody, in an American-financed, high-security prison outside Kabul to be guarded by Afghan soldiers.

But American officials now concede that the new Afghan-run prison cannot absorb all the Afghans now detained by the United States, much less the waves of new prisoners from the escalating fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Pentagon Considers Adding Forces in Afghanistan

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 3rd, 2008

The forgotton war:

The Pentagon is considering sending as many as 7,000 more American troops to Afghanistan next year to make up for a shortfall in contributions from NATO allies, senior Bush administration officials said.

They said the step would push the number of American forces there to roughly 40,000, the highest level since the war began more than six years ago, and would require at least a modest reduction in troops from Iraq.

The planning began in recent weeks, reflecting a growing resignation to the fact that NATO is unable or unwilling to contribute more troops despite public pledges of an intensified effort in Afghanistan from the presidents and prime ministers who attended an alliance summit meeting in Bucharest, Romania, last month.

Bush Details $70 Billion War Funding

Posted by Charlie Kilo on May 2nd, 2008

What’s another $70 billion anyway?

President Bush sent lawmakers a $70 billion request Friday to fund U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next spring, which would give the next president breathing room to make his or her own war policy.

Friday’s request fills in the details of the $70 billion placeholder that the White House asked for when it sent its budget to Congress in February. The money is for the budget year that begins Oct. 1.

Afghan detainees not “abused” by military

Posted by patriot on April 17th, 2008

Riiight. Because getting kicked in the kidneys isn’t abuse:

Military interrogators assaulted Afghan detainees in 2003, using investigation methods they learned during self-defense training, Pentagon documents released Wednesday show.

Pentagon documents released Wednesday state U.S. military interrogators hit Afghan detainees in 2003.

Detainees at the Gardez Detention Facility in southeastern Afghanistan reported being made to kneel outside in wet clothing and being kicked and punched in the kidneys, nose and knees if they moved, according to the documents.

A 2006 Army review concluded that the detainees were not abused but that the incident revealed “misconduct that warrants further action.”

New anti-terror weapon: Hand-held lie detector

Posted by Charlie Kilo on April 9th, 2008

Hey, Sarg, red means what again?

First Afghanistan and then someday your neighborhood (but only if you’re Lucky). Via MSNBC:

The Pentagon will issue hand-held lie detectors this month to U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan, pushing to the battlefront a century-old debate over the accuracy of the polygraph.

The Defense Department says the portable device isn’t perfect, but is accurate enough to save American lives by screening local police officers, interpreters and allied forces for access to U.S. military bases, and by helping narrow the list of suspects after a roadside bombing. The device has already been tried in Iraq and is expected to be deployed there as well. “We’re not promising perfection — we’ve been very careful in that,” said Donald Krapohl, special assistant to the director at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment, the midwife for the new device. “What we are promising is that, if it’s properly used, it will improve over what they are currently doing.”

But the lead author of a national study of the polygraph says that American military men and women will be put at risk by an untested technology. “I don’t understand how anybody could think that this is ready for deployment,” said statistics professor Stephen E. Fienberg, who headed a 2003 study by the National Academy of Sciences that found insufficient scientific evidence to support using polygraphs for national security. “Sending these instruments into the field in Iraq and Afghanistan without serious scientific assessment, and for use by untrained personnel, is a mockery of what we advocated in our report.”

Where do you even begin with all the Orwellian jokes?

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