You had to love the headline the Philadelphia Inquirer put on the jump page of columnist Trudy Rubin’s Sunday commentary about word that the Obama administration is hoping to talk with at least some mid-level Taliban leaders about giving up the fight and “coming over” to the “government” side. “Relax–No deal with Taliban is Imminent,” the headline read. “I suggest everyone take a deep breath,” Rubin wrote. “The US position toward talks with the Taliban has shifted somewhat, but no deal with top Taliban leaders is imminent, or even likely.”
January 31, 2010 | Filed under
Commentary |
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On Friday January 15, 2010, the Pentagon responded to a FOIA request submitted by the ACLU last April, and released (PDF) the first ever list of 645 prisoners held, as of September 22, 2009, in the US prison at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan (the Bagram Theater Internment Facility), which has been in operation for eight years.
January 27, 2010 | Filed under
Law |
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Two reports coming out of Afghanistan illustrate the depth of hypocrisy and subterfuge characterizing the US/NATO intervention in that country. One could cite a myriad of such examples, so immoral and wrong is the US war there. In the first report, a 2009 human rights assessment prepared by Canada’s Foreign Affairs Department, obtained by The Canadian Press and reported at CBC News, revealed a skyrocketing suicide rate among Afghan women:
January 24, 2010 | Filed under
Torture |
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After years of stonewalling, the U.S. Defense Department has released the names of people imprisoned at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.
Made available in response to an American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, the list contains the names of 645 prisoners who were detained at Bagram as of September [...]
January 22, 2010 | Filed under
World |
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Afghanistan is in dire need of NATO military instructors, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee has warned.
Senator Carl Levin, who visited Afghanistan earlier this week, said the training was crucial in the strategy to help Afghans take the lead in securing their own nation.
But as Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra reports from a NATO [...]
January 15, 2010 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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Under the stewardship of neoconservative Fred Hiatt, the editorial and op-ed pages of The Washington Post have steadily moved to the right; the paper’s key writers — Charles Krauthammer, David Broder, Richard Cohen, Kathleen Parker, and others — have marched along in lockstep. They have supported the use of military force in Iraq and Afghanistan; offered apologies for the CIA crimes of torture and abuse, extraordinary renditions, and secret prisons; and criticized efforts by the Obama Administration to reverse these policies and to rely on multilateral diplomacy and arms control and disarmament to resolve outstanding problems.
January 15, 2010 | Filed under
Commentary |
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A court in Abu Dhabi has acquitted the man accused of beating an Afghan grain trader in 2004.
Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, a member of the UAE royal family, claimed he was drugged by two other men, and therefore unaware of his actions, which included torturing the man with electric prods, driving over him and [...]
January 11, 2010 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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From the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):
Mohammed Sulaymon Barre was released from Guantanamo on December 20, 2009, and returned to his family in Somaliland. Mr. Barre had fled Somalia during the civil war in theearly 1990s. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees granted Mr. Barre refugee status in Pakistan where he lived and worked [...]
January 11, 2010 | Filed under
TPRvideo |
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Let’s face it, if James Cameron had made a movie with the Iraqi resistance as the heroes and the U.S. military as the enemies, and had set it in Iraq or anywhere else on planet earth, the packed theaters viewing “Avatar” would have been replaced by a screening in a living room for eight people and a dog. Nineteen years ago, Americans packed theaters for “Dances with Wolves” in which Native Americans became the heroes, but the story was set in a previous century and the message understated.
December 28, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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A disturbing new study released last month by the Army Mental Health Advisory Team has found that an increasing number of soldiers serving in Afghanistan are suffering from some type of mental health related injury and “significantly lower morale” compared with previous years due to an uptick in violence and multiple deployments.
December 8, 2009 | Filed under
Nation |
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