Terrorist: Anyone - especially Muslims and/or Arabs - who fights against the United States

the money quote is in bold below...

glenn...

I've often written that Terrorism is the most meaningless, and thus most manipulated, term in American political discourse. But while it lacks any objective meaning, it does have a functional one. It means: anyone -- especially of the Muslim religion and/or Arab nationality -- who fights against the United States and its allies or tries to impede their will. That's what "Terrorism" is; that's all it means. And it's just extraordinary how we've created what we call "law" that is intended to do nothing other than justify all acts of American violence while delegitimizing, criminalizing, and converting into Terrorism any acts of resistance to that violence.

Just consider: in American political discourse, it's not remotely criminal that the U.S. attacked Iraq, spent 7 years destroying the country, and left at least 100,000 people dead. To even suggest that American officials responsible for that attack should be held criminally liable is to marginalize oneself as a fringe and unSerious radical. It's not an idea that's even heard, let alone accepted. After all, all Good Patriotic Americans were horrified that an Iraqi citizen would so much as throw a shoe at George Bush; what did he do to deserve such treatment? The U.S. is endowed with the inalienable right to commit violence against anyone it wants without any consequences of any kind.

lemme see if i got this straight...

• accountability...? no, not for us...
• rule of law...? lip service...
• international conventions...? quaint but obsolete...
• justice...? an ideal, poorly suited to reality...
• human rights...? good talking point when browbeating other nations...
• war crimes...? maybe for ratko mladic...
• lies...? lies and propaganda serve our national interests...
• civilian casualties...? criminal when perpetrated by others, merely unfortunate when perpetrated by us...
• endless war...? maintains the flow of cash to our super-rich elites and keeps their government puppets in power...

and there ya have it...

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Global outrage at the Wikileaks revelations - except in the U.S.

the rest of the world is sitting up and taking serious notice of the wikileaks document dump...

Robert Fisk: The shaming of America

Our writer delivers a searing dispatch after the WikiLeaks revelations that expose in detail the brutality of the war in Iraq - and the astonishing, disgraceful deceit of the US

Torture, killing, children shot – and how the US tried to keep it all quiet

The largest leak in history reveals the true extent of the bloodshed unleashed by the decision to go to war in Iraq – and adds at least 15,000 to its death toll

Iraq war logs: How civilians have paid heaviest price

Leaked military files analysed by the Guardian reveal secret US tally of Iraqi deaths

WikiLeaks and Assange Honored

You are not likely to learn this from the “mainstream media,” but WikiLeaks and its leader Julian Assange have received the 2010 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award for their resourcefulness in making available secret U.S. military documents on the Iraq and Afghan wars.

Poisonous US weapons in Iraq kill thousands and mar generations

According to Brian Becker, Director of the anti-war A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, WikiLeaks is revealing the horrible truth that has been known for years.

“The police forces and army that were trained by the Americans… engaged in systematic torture, abuse, rape and it was unreported and unpublished by their masters, by the US trainers,” he said.

Now, however hard Washington may want to hush WikiLeaks, it should think twice: following the report, the UN chief investigator for torture has already called on Barack Obama to investigate possible cases of torture in Iraq, Becker pointed out.

[See Brian Becker interview here]

meanwhile, in the very country that's guilty of perpetrating the whole friggin' mess, the former baghdad bureau chief for the wapo shares her opinions in the daily beast, opinions that would NEVER get published in the wapo...

WikiLeaks Exposes Rumsfeld's Lies

Thanks to Wikileaks, though, I now know the extent to which top American leaders lied, knowingly, to the American public, to American troops, and to the world, as the Iraq mission exploded.

glenn, meanwhile, decries the appalling lack of censure coming from the u.s. establishment news media...

NYT v. the world: WikiLeaks coverage

[T]he U.N. chief investigator for torture called on the Obama administration to formally investigate this complicity in Iraqi abuse, pointing out that "if leaked US files on the Iraq conflict point to clear violations of the UN convention against torture, Barack Obama's administration has a clear obligation to investigate them," and that "under the conventions on human rights there is an obligation for states to criminalise every form of torture, whether directly or indirectly, and to investigate any allegations of abuse." Today, Britain's Deputy Prime Minister called on the British Government to fulfill that obligation by formally investigating the role British troops might have played in "the allegations of killings, torture and abuse in Iraq."

But these calls for investigations -- and the U.N.'s explanation of the legal obligation to do so -- are virtually nonexistent in the American media. The only mention in the NYT of the U.N.'s statement is buried deep down in a laundry list of short items on one of its blogs. Along with most American media outlets, The Washington Post has no mention of this matter at all (while whitewashing American guilt, the NYT -- in the form of Judy Miller's former partner, Michael Gordon -- prominently trumpeted from the start of its coverage the "interference" in Iraq by Iran in aiding "Iraqi militias," a drum Gordon has been dutifully beating for years).

The notion that the Obama administration not only should -- but must -- investigate the role its military played in enabling this widespread, stomach-turning torture and abuse in Iraq is simply suppressed in American political discourse, most of all by the newspaper which played the leading role in enabling the attack on that country in the first place. It's not hard to see why. The last thing American political and media elites in general want is a discussion of the legal obligations to investigate torture and bring the torturers to legal account, and the last thing which enablers of the Iraq War specifically want is a focus on how we not only allowed but participated in the very human rights abuses which we claimed (and still claim) our invasion would stop.

accountability...? what a quaint notion...

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And I'm heading back to Afghanistan to face this...

an on-going tragedy of epic proportions continues in afghanistan...

al jazeera...

A Nato air strike is said to have killed between 70 and 130 people in the Afghan province of Kunduz.

Nato say they targeted Taliban fighters who had seized two fuel tankers.

Al Jazeera's James Bays reports from a nearby village, where locals say many of the killed were civilians.

according to several accounts i've read, including juan cole, there were numerous civilians gathered around the tankers hoping to get some free fuel...

The governor [Kunduz Governor Eng. Mohammad Omar] said the Taliban fighters hijacked two oil tankers carrying aircraft fuel for NATO forces from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway. The militants were distributing fuel for free when the raid took place.

But a security official, seeking anonymity, said the death toll was more than 200. He claimed warplanes struck the people who had gathered to receive free oil distributed by the hijackers. The official would not give further details.

what with the unrest due to the disputed election results and the completely understandable outpouring of rage over civilian deaths, it's going to be a tough time to be headed back there, but back there i will be as of a week from this sunday... unfortunately, being there is no more of a guarantee of an informed perspective than sitting here in the u.s... anyway, stay tuned...

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Fred Kagan is complicit in war crimes and should be tried accordingly

read the horror that issues from this man's mouth...

first this...

KAGAN: The interesting thing is that when we were fighting those battles and doing that damage [in Iraq], on the whole the Iraqis were not bitching about collateral damage. You had nothing like the degree of upset about how many civilians were being injured and how much damage was being done to the infrastructure in Iraq at a much higher level of destruction than you have in Afghanistan at a much lower level of destruction.

and then this...

KAGAN: ... Afghans don’t fight in their cities. Iraqis do. For good or ill, Iraqis expect to fight in their cities. That’s where the insurgents dug in, Saddam Hussein planned to dig in to the cities or lure us into an urban fight. It’s sort of understood that the battlefield is going to be there, that doesn’t mean that they don’t complain about it, that doesn’t mean that it’s not a problem, but it does mean that when the insurgents dig in and we root them out, the Iraqis don’t on the whole say “darn it, you shouldn’t have blown up all of our houses.” They sort of accept that. Afghans do not.

i'm sitting here in the capital city of a country that has endured and continues to endure horrific and unacceptable civilian casualties, a high percentage of them children and this son-of-a-bitch, fred kagan, has the unutterable gall to talk about how iraqis ACCEPT civilian casualties and afghans DON'T...! jeezus fricking kee-rist on a pogo stick...! can you name me one single person, mom, dad, brother, sister, grandparent, uncle, aunt, cousin, niece, nephew, friend, or acquaintance that you can imagine in your wildest dreams in any country of any region of the world telling you that, of course, THEY CAN ACCEPT CIVILIAN CASUALTIES...!

fred kagan is an evil man...

(thanks to think progress... the video and audio transcripts are available on the aei website here...)

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Using Obama's visit to Afghanistan as a springboard, let's look at what's going on there

it ain't pretty...

civilian casualties in two separate incidents...

At least 13 Afghan police and civilians have died in two incidents involving international forces, officials say.

Four Afghan police and five civilians died in an apparently mistaken air strike by international coalition forces in Farah province.

Separately, the Nato-led Isaf said it had "accidentally" killed at least four civilians in Paktika province.

The incidents are the latest in a series of controversial clashes involving foreign troops.

seven and a half years AFTER the u.s. topples the taliban, no infrastructure...


Haji Baz Mohammad

What puzzles poorer Afghans is why so many basic problems haven't been solved, despite the billions of dollars of international aid.

A short walk from the affluent neighbourhoods of Wazir Akbar Khan and Shari Naw, in the streets of downtown Kabul, Afghanistan's unemployed are gathered in their hundreds.

Most say they have to wait for days, hoping to find one day's work to feed their entire family.

Kabul is considered the safest spot in the country, but basic services such as clean drinking water, electricity, and sewage systems remain unavailable to most people.

Waiting outside one of Kabul's main government hospitals is Haji Baz Mohammad. He has accompanied a patient from his home province in northern Afghanistan. He is busy praying and is visibly sad.

"We are not politicians or people who have the aid money," he says. "Where are the roads, clinics and reconstruction that were promised to us?"

i spent my first two weeks in kabul puzzling over those same questions... where's the infrastructure...? where has the money gone...? it seems that the afghan on the street can answer those questions...

Saqib Baghlani, 43, a high school teacher, sits on his old Chinese bicycle.

He welcomes the demise of the Taleban. "Afghanistan has made remarkable progress compared to its pre-war and Taleban days," declares the tall, confident, blue-eyed teacher.

But he says the failures of his government are unacceptable.

He insists that President Hamed Karzai should fire corrupt officials and provide people with basic services, such as health care and clean drinking water, as this could bring peace.

Afghan children at a refugee camp in Kabul, Afghanistan 12/06/08
There is growing international pressure to improve living standards

"Go and see who owns these expensive houses in (the suburb of) Wazir Akbar Khan and who is driving land cruisers," he says. "Karzai should ask these officials how they got so rich overnight, instead of making empty promises again and again."

karzai doesn't have to ask... he knows the answer... it is under his leadership and with his administration's tacit consent that those fat cats have gotten ever fatter... and, yes, some of that money left afghanistan in my pocket, but damn little i can assure you in comparison to the billions being raked in by dyncorp, louis berger, and kbr...

so what does our erstwhile presidential candidate, barack obama, propose...?

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged steadfast aid to Afghanistan in talks with its Western-backed leader Sunday and vowed to pursue the war on terror "with vigor" if he is elected, an Afghan official said.

[...]

Obama has made Afghanistan a centerpiece of his proposed strategy for dealing with terrorism threats.

The Illinois senator has said the war in Afghanistan, where Taliban and al-Qaida-linked militants are resurgent, deserves more troops and more attention as opposed to the conflict in Iraq.

and just what exactly do the AFGHANS think of more troops...?

from juan cole...

The USG Open Source Center translates a report in Dari Persian on a parliamentarian and two close observers from Afghanistan who entertain the severest doubts about Barack Obama's plan to send more US troops to Afghanistan.

Afghan Observers Sceptical of Senator Obama's Plan To Send More Troops
Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran External Service
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Document Type: OSC Translated Text

An Afghan parliamentarian has criticized one of the US presidential candidates for his plan to deploy more troops in Afghanistan. Elaborating on his foreign policy this week, Barack Obama said that as president, he would send two more US combat brigades to the Afghan theatre.

According to a report (source indistinct) from Kabul, Afghan MP Kabir Ranjbar asserted on Friday that increasing the number of US and other foreign servicemen would not help Afghanistan at all.

Wahid Mozhda, another Afghan political observer, has also warned that the Obama's plan to deploy up to 10,000 additional troops will worsen the situation in Afghanistan. This Afghan observer states according to this plan, the US is trying to resolve the problem through military measures, which is obviously not an effective strategy.

In addition, Mr Fahim Dashti, a journalist and observer, has said that the US government officials have decided to increase troops in Afghanistan, at a time when they have failed to defeat remnants of the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida in this country. Fahim Dashti says sending additional US and other foreign troops to Afghanistan will cause more problems in the long term, because it may antagonize the people's anti-American feelings. The Afghan analyst accentuated that countries like the USA should organize and equip the Afghan native forces, including the national army and police, as soon as possible if they really want to put an end to insecurity in Afghanistan.

i agree... more troops is not the answer...

this from cbs on obama's visit...



at least obama had the guts to go where no high-level u.s. official has gone - jalalabad...

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The Indian Embassy blast in Afghanistan hits a little close to home for me

the indian embassy is directly across the street from where i regularly held meetings...

from reuters...



and, needless to say, our worthless u.s. news media doesn't bother to give us the full background...

juan cole...

[A] suicide bomber struck at the Indian Embassy in Kabul, killing 28 persons and wounding 141. The Indian ambassador was not there at the time, but Indian embassy guards and possibly other Embassy personnel appear to have been killed.

India has 3,000 nationals doing reconstruction work in Afghanistan. Since the neo-Taliban want to pull down the Karzai government, trying to scare the Indians into leaving would be a way of removing one foreign pillar of support from the edifice of state.

Since the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence is alleged to be secretly backing some Taliban elements, there is a danger that New Delhi will read this assault on its embassy in Kabul as an indirect strike by Pakistan. Pakistan had long considered Afghanistan its sphere of influence (which the military called its 'strategic depth' against India). Pakistan exercised its regional hegemony through the Taliban in the 1990s. The Northern Alliance gradually allied with India, Russia and Iran. The Taliban were mostly Pushtun, while the Northern Alliance was Tajik (Persian-speaking) , Hazarah (ditto but Shiite) and Uzbek. So from a Pakistani and Pushtun Taliban point of view, when the US put the Northern Alliance in charge of Kabul in late 2001, it more or less turned Afghanistan into an Indian sphere of influence. Pakistan and the Taliban are fighting back against this change.

The bombing in Kabul came after allegations over the weekend that the US had mistakenly bombed a wedding party and earlier had also killed civilians in another area in an air strike aimed at militants.

virtually every afghan i talked to when i was there made the same point - that pakistan is working diligently to destabilize afghanistan and has been the force behind the most deadly attacks... meanwhile, the u.s. continues to pour billions of dollars into the pakistan military, knowing full well what's going on...

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More of "we simply MUST face the reality of what we're doing"

i've posted several times on ali hussein, the poor little two-year old sadr city boy whose life was ripped away in an attack by u.s. forces... this slide show is courtesy of terrancedc at booman tribune... not pleasant viewing by any means, but essential viewing nonetheless to keep us mindful of the consequences of our actions as a nation...

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As painful and heartbreaking as it is, as a country, we simply MUST face the reality of what we're doing

Two-year-old Ali Hussein is pulled from the rubble of
his family's home in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City
in Baghdad, Iraq on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. The child,
who later died in hospital, was in one of four homes
allegedly destroyed by U.S. missiles. More than two
dozen people were killed when Shiite militants ambushed
a U.S. patrol in Baghdad's embattled Sadr City district,
bringing the death toll in area on Tuesday to more than
30, a U.S. military spokesman and Iraqi officials said.
(AP Photo/Karim Kadim)



Ridh Hadi places his two-year old
nephew, Ali Hussein, into a coffin in
the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad,
Iraq on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

helen thomas...

Some readers resented The Washington Post for publishing an Associated Press photograph of a critically wounded Iraqi child being lifted from the rubble of his home in Baghdad’s Sadr City “after a U.S. airstrike.”

Two-year-old Ali Hussein later died in a hospital.

As the saying goes, the picture was worth a thousand words because it showed the true horrors of this war.

Neither side is immune from the killing of Iraqi civilians. But Americans should be aware of their own responsibility for inflicting death and pain on the innocent.

damn right...

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Why they hate us...

meanwhile, in that country that sits right on the other side of iran from where i'm sitting now in afghanistan...

from yahoo news...


Ridh Hadi places his two-year old nephew,
Ali Hussein, into a coffin in the Shiite
stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad, Iraq
on Wednesday, April 30, 2008. The child
died on Tuesday after U.S. forces struck
back at militia fighters with 200-pound
(90-kilogram) guided rockets that
devastated at least three buildings in the
densely packed district that serves as the
Baghdad base for the powerful Mahdi
Army militia.
(AP Photo/ Karim Kadim)

from the sf chronicle...

The U.S. Army said they were militants. Sadr City residents said at least some were civilians, and photographs showed the dust-covered body of at least one child being pulled from a mountain of rubble after Tuesday's fighting.

Whatever the facts, at least 28 people were dead after the four-hour battle, the latest deadly showdown between U.S. and Iraqi forces and Shiite Muslim militiamen over recent weeks.

Based on the photographs, it appeared that at least one of the dead was a civilian. In its captions, the Associated Press identified the boy in the bloodied shorts being carried from the ruins of a house as 2-year-old Ali Hussein.

The brother-in-law of an Iraqi journalist who works with the Los Angeles Times also was reported killed. The victim recently had moved his family out of the neighborhood because of the fighting.

The destruction and death toll underscored the intensity of fighting in Sadr City, where U.S. forces are pursuing militants who often operate from the narrow alleyways and crowded residential sectors of the sprawling Shiite stronghold. Clashes have occurred there nearly every day since the end of March, when an Iraqi military crackdown on Shiite militias sparked an uprising by fighters loyal to cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

With many of Sadr City's main roads peppered with roadside bombs and its side streets too narrow for U.S. tanks or other heavy vehicles to navigate, U.S. forces often call in air strikes or use guided rockets to hit their targets.

Locals say civilians often are caught in the chaos.

the last thing in this world any human being wants to do is to lay a two year-old boy into a coffin... that it took place as a result of being bombed by your so-called "liberators" is painful beyond imagining...

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Yes, it brings tears to MY eyes too...!

read the following... read it slowly... read it carefully... let the full impact sink in... then imagine yourself living in gaza... imagine that you or a loved one desperately needed medical care, but the ambulance couldn't reach you because someone was shooting at the ambulance... imagine that the only way you could even reach the emergency ambulance crew was through calling a radio station and putting your appeal for help on the air... imagine all that as you sit in your comfortable chair in front of your computer screen with all the conveniences of the 21st-century literally at your fingertips...

"I am bleeding uncontrollably, I need an ambulance." That was not a call to emergency services, it was an appeal broadcast live on radio in Gaza City.

Who knows whether there will ever be an ambulance or not. But this way the ambulance services still hear the appeal broadcast on Al-Iman FM Radio Station, one of few independent radio stations in Gaza. And if the emergency services cannot help, someone else who hears the appeal might.

The ambulance dispatcher announces he cannot get the ambulance to the man. An Israeli bulldozer is blocking the road, and an Israeli tank on a hilltop has been firing at the ambulance, he says. Nobody can say if anyone else got to help the man. But at least his SOS could have been heard.

Appeals again went on air after the Friday attacks on Bureij refugee camp, where the death toll climbed to 16 by the weekend. The deaths included six children among nine people killed Friday. Again, ambulance crews confirmed they could not reach many of the injured. But the appeals were made on radio for all to hear.

A man called from east of Jabaliya refugee camp asking for an ambulance for his wife about to deliver. The radio host asked his location, and that of Israeli tanks. "I can't look from the window to see," he said. "They will shoot me if I do."

A lady called to ask an ambulance to clear the remains of a body lying on the door. IPS confirmed later that it was the body of Abdelrazek Nofal, who was 19. He was blown to bits by an Israeli tank shell.

Someone else called from Bureij asking for ambulance, and for food and water. "My mother needs to be in hospital urgently," he called the radio station to say. Another difficult mission, with the Israeli troops patrolling the area.

The appeals are heard on radio day after day. No one can say what follows the appeals in each case. But the live broadcasts on the radio can be a lifeline – or at the least, a line of hope. Where emergency services and aid agencies are not listening in, the radio then calls them.

"It brings tears to my eyes," says radio host Khaled al-Sharqawi. "I can sometimes hear shooting, and women and children screaming, asking for ambulances, and the ambulances cannot reach them."

how can we allow this to be happening...?

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Just another day in Iraq

as i sit here in kabul, feel the brilliant sunshine streaming in my window, (particularly welcome after several days of rain) and view this youtube clip, i am reminded that this kind of horror could literally take place at any time on the very street below my room... i hope and pray every day for an end to this insanity...

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Scenes from an Iraki childhood

warning... it will break your heart...

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