Veterans Day / US Indirectly Funding the Taliban - Afghanistan

First off I want to take a moment to recognize Veterans Day, a day to remember all of our Troops. To remember them for their heroics, and their bravery to support our country!

The American Hero always comes through
To capture our hearts with a spirit so true Some proudly are soldiers who march in harm’s way
Insuring our freedom, courageous they stay While others come forth as civilians so brave
Determined in purpose, so steadfast to save We should always keep clear a place in our heart
For each has a value beyond precious art Their duty to country will not be surpassed
Please honor their courage, for some it’s their last We live in a world which can be hard to bear
Thank God for these people, how greatly they care Do ponder new heroes and what they will face
And pray for their safety no matter their place Our heritage brings out the best, we all know
Our great book of heroes is destined to grow. ©2003Roger J. Robicheau

Now onto the question: Should we be sending our brave troops into a war that may not have a victory to attain?


As US Ambassador Casts Doubt on Troop Increase in Afghanistan, New Report Reveals US Indirectly Funding the Taliban

In a last-minute dissent ahead of a critical war cabinet meeting on escalating the Afghan war, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry has cast doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems. Meanwhile, a report reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting. Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack.


The U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan is warning against sending more troops to fight in the Afghan war. In a last-minute dissent, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry sent two cables this week casting doubt on a troop escalation until the Afghan government can address corruption and other internal problems.

Well today we turn to a new report that reveals how the US government is financing the very same insurgent forces in Afghanistan that American and NATO soldiers are fighting.
“How the US Funds the Taliban” is the cover story of the latest issue of the Nation magazine.

Investigative journalist Aram Roston traces how the Pentagon’s civilian contractors in Afghanistan end up paying insurgent groups to protect American supply routes from attack. The practice of buying the Taliban’s protection is not a secret. US military officials in Kabul told Roston that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon"s logistics contracts consists of payments to the Taliban.

That translates into millions of dollars being funneled to the Taliban. This summer, anticipating a surge of US troops, the military expanded its trucking contracts in Afghanistan by 600 percent to a total of over two billion dollars.

Well, Aram Roston joins us now here in the firehouse studio. He"s the author of the book “The man who pushed America to War: The Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi.” His latest piece “How the US Funds the Taliban” was supported by the investigative fund at the Nation institute.

Aram Roston, Investigative journalist and author of The Man Who Pushed America to War: The Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmad Chalabi. He’s written the cover story in the latest issue of The Nation magazine, “How the US Funds the Taliban.”

CIA Paying off Afghan Drug Dealer....

WASHINGTON Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

The newspaper said that according to current and former American officials, the CIA pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA's direction in and around Kandahar.

The CIA's ties to Karzai, who is a suspected player in the country's illegal opium trade, have created deep divisions within the Obama administration, the Times said.

Allegations that Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for months. He denies them.

Critics say the ties with Karzai complicate the United States' increasingly tense relationship with his older brother, President Hamid Karzai. The CIA's practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.

Some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, a central figure in the south of the country where the Taliban is dominant, undermines the U.S. push to develop an effective central government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.

"If we are going to conduct a population-centric strategy in Afghanistan, and we are perceived as backing thugs, then we are just undermining ourselves," Maj. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the senior American military intelligence official in Afghanistan, was quoted by the Times in an article published on its Web site.

Ahmed Wali Karzai told the Times that he cooperates with American civilian and military officials but does not engage in the drug trade and does not receive payments from the CIA.

Karzai helps the CIA operate a paramilitary group, the Kandahar Strike Force, that is used for raids against suspected insurgents and terrorists, according to several American officials. Karzai also is paid for allowing the CIA and American Special Operations troops to rent a large compound outside the city, which also is the base of the Kandahar Strike Force, the Times said.

Karzai also helps the CIA communicate with and sometimes meet with Afghans loyal to the Taliban, the newspaper reported.

CIA spokesman George Little declined to comment on the report.



Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/27/karzais-brother-on-cia-pa_n_336279.html

Bernie Sanders Keeps it Real on Afghanistan

Sen. Bernie Sanders: President Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to reduce nuclear arms, ease tensions with the non-Western world and stress diplomacy. Americans should be proud that we have a president who is restoring respect for our country around the globe. This well-deserved prize is an inspiration for the president and for rest of us to do some really hard thinking about how we create a more peaceful and just world -- including our role in Afghanistan. We are now in our ninth year in Afghanistan -- twice as long as were engaged in World War II. We have lost more than 800 troops. We have spent more than $200 billion. What do we hope to accomplish in Afghanistan? What is our exit strategy?

Support for Afghan war at all-time low

By Paul Steinhauser
CNN Deputy Political Director
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Support for the war in Afghanistan is at an all-time low, according to a new national poll.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Tuesday morning indicates that 39 percent of Americans favor the war in Afghanistan, with 58 percent opposed to the mission.

Support is down from 53 percent in April, marking the lowest level since the start of the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks.

The poll suggests that 23 percent of Democrats support the war. That number rises to 39 percent for independents and 62 percent for Republicans.

"Most of the recent erosion in support has come from within the GOP," said Keating Holland, CNN's polling director. "Unlike Democrats and independents, Republicans still favor the war, but their support has slipped eight points in just two weeks."

How does Afghanistan compares with Iraq?

"The Afghan war is almost as unpopular as the Iraq war has been for the past four years," Holland said, noting that support for the war in Iraq first dropped to 39 percent in June 2005 and has generally remained in the low to mid-30s since.

The poll's release comes after the two deadliest months for the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In August, 48 U.S. troops were killed in the fighting, surpassing the previous high of 45 the month before.

President Obama has called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" and has placed great emphasis on defeating the Taliban and al Qaeda militants operating there and in Pakistan.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is expected to approve sending thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan to deal with the growing threat from roadside bombs, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said last week.

Gates has concluded there is not enough manpower or equipment in Afghanistan to protect U.S. troops from such bombs, Morrell said. Watch U.S. senators on the next U.S. moves in Afghanistan »

The CNN/Opinion Research poll was conducted Friday through Sunday, with 1,012 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey's overall sampling error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

George Will calls for pull-out

George Will calls for pull-out
By: Mike Allen
August 31, 2009 04:46 PM EST

George F. Will, the elite conservative commentator, will call in his next column for U.S. ground troops to leave Afghanistan, according to publishing sources.

“[F]orces should be substantially reduced to serve a comprehensively revised policy: America should do only what can be done from offshore, using intelligence, drones, cruise missiles, airstrikes and small, potent special forces units, concentrating on the porous 1,500-mile border with Pakistan, a nation that actually matters,” Will writes in the column, scheduled for publication later this week.

President Obama ordered a total of 21,000 more U.S. troops into Afghanistan in February and March, and casualties have mounted as the forces began confronting the Taliban more aggressively. August saw the highest monthly death toll for the U.S. since the invasion in 2001, the second record month in a row.

Will’s prescription – in which he urges Obama to remember Bismarck’s decision to halt German forces short of Paris in 1870 - seems certain to split Republicans. He is a favorite of fiscal conservatives. The more hawkish right can be expected to attack his conclusion as foolhardy, short-sighted and naïve, potentially making the U.S. more vulnerable to terrorist attack.

The columnist’s startling recommendation surfaced on the same day that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, sent an assessment up his chain of command recommending what he called “a revised implementation strategy.” In a statement, McChrystal also called for “commitment and resolve, and increased unity of effort.”

In the column, Will warns that any nation-building strategy could be impossible to execute given the Taliban’s ability to seemingly disappear into the rugged mountain terrain and the lack of economic development in the war-plagued nation.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked Monday by Peter Cook of Bloomberg TV: “Are we winning in Afghanistan?”

“I think it's a mixed picture in Afghanistan,” Gates replied. “I think that there aren’t too many people with too rosy a view of what's going on in Afghanistan. I think there are many challenges. But I think some of the gloom and doom is somewhat overdrawn as well. … I think that there are some positive developments. But there is no question our casualties are up and there's no question we have a very tough fight in front of us, a lot of challenges.”

ReThink Afghanistan

It's time to rethink Afghanistan...






http://rethinkafghanistan.com/

Blackwater no more....

After $1.3 billion in government contracts and controversy over the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians, Blackwater Worldwide is moving on. The Washington Post reported this week that Blackwater, the for-profit military company contracted by the Bush government to provide securities services in Iraq, will not have it’s Iraq contract renewed. But the powerful military corporation has no plans to slow down after what has been an extraordinarily profitable decade.



Nation contributor Jeremy Scahill, author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, discusses the legacy and future of Blackwater Worldwide, including its expansion into hot new markets: Chasing Somalian pirates, and total intelligence gathering.

Israel Bombed the UN Headquarters...

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israel shelled the United Nations headquarters in the Gaza Strip on Thursday, engulfing the compound and a warehouse in fire and destroying thousands of pounds of food and humanitarian supplies intended for Palestinian refugees.

U.N. workers and Palestinian firefighters, some wearing bulletproof jackets, struggled to douse the flames and pull bags of food aid from the debris after the Israeli attack, which was another blow to efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. Dense smoke billowed from the compound.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who is in the region to end the devastating offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers, demanded a "full explanation" and said the Israeli defense minister told him there had been a "grave mistake."

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the military fired artillery shells at the U.N. compound after Hamas militants opened fire from the location. Three people were wounded.

"It is absolutely true that we were attacked from that place, but the consequences are very sad and we apologize for it," he said. "I don't think it should have happened and I'm very sorry."

A senior Israeli military officer had also said Israeli troops shelled the compound after coming under fire from Palestinian militants there _ an account dismissed by a U.N. official there at the time as "nonsense."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/15/israel-shells-un-headquar_n_158078.html

Cheney Saddam......

Recently Vice President Dick Cheney gave an interview covering several topics from the invasion of Iraq to the torturing of people at good ole' G-Bay.....

Cheney Defends His Torture Policies

"I have been ... focused very much on whatwe needed to do to defend the nation."– Dick Cheney, December 15, 2008

Saddam Defended His Torture Policies

"I'm doing it for Iraq. I'm not defendingmyself. But I am defending you."– Saddam Hussein, December 5, 2005

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http://www.michaelmoore.com/mustread/index.php?id=1085

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KARL: Now, President Bush recently said that his greatest regret was that the intelligence was wrong on weapons of mass destruction. Is that your biggest regret?

CHENEY: No, I wouldn't -- I understand why he says that. I certainly share the frustration that the intelligence report on Iraq WMD generated but in terms of the intelligence itself, I tend to look at the entire community and what they've done over the course of the last several years. Intelligence -- it's not a science, it's an art form in many respects and you don't always get it right.

I think while I would mention that as a major failure of the intelligence community, it clearly was. On the other hand, we've had other successes and failures. I think the run-up to 9/11 where we missed that attack was a failure. On the other hand we've had great success since 9/11 in terms of what the intelligence community has contributed overall to the defense of the nation, to defeating al Qaeda, to making it possible for us to do very serious damage to our enemies.

KARL: You probably saw Karl Rove last week said that if the intelligence had been correct we probably would not have gone to war.

CHENEY: I disagree with that. I think -- as I look at the intelligence with respect to Iraq, what they got wrong was that there weren't any stockpiles. What we found in the after action reports, after the intelligence report was done and then various special groups went and looked at the intelligence and what its validity was. What they found was that Saddam Hussein still had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stocks.

They also found that he had every intention of resuming production once the international sanctions were lifted. He had a long reputation and record of having started two wars. Of having brutalized and killed hundreds of thousands of people, some of them with weapons of mass destruction in his own country. He had violated 16 National Security Council resolutions. He had established a relationship as a terror sponsoring state according to the State Department. He was making $25,000 payments to the families of suicide bombers.

This was a bad actor and the country's better off, the world's better off with Saddam gone and I think we made the right decision in spite of the fact that the original NIE was off in some of its major judgments.

Blackwater..... War Profiteers??

Check out this new video from BravenewFilms.org

Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof

By Sewell Chan / New York Times

Sorry, folks, the paper isn’t free. And the Iraq war isn’t over, at least not yet.

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others.

The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate.

The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.

The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

(A headline in the fake business section declares: “Public Relations Industry Forecasts a Series of Massive Layoffs.” Uh, sure.)

Gawker is reporting that the prank looks like the work of the liberal pranksters known as the Yes Men, who were the subject of a 2004 documentary film.

Later on Wednesday morning, the Yes Men issued a statement claiming credit for the prank. The statement said, in part:

In an elaborate operation six months in the planning, 1.2 million papers were printed at six different presses and driven to prearranged pickup locations, where thousands of volunteers stood ready to pass them out on the street.

Catherine J. Mathis, a Times spokeswoman, said: “This is obviously a fake issue of The Times. We are in the process of finding out more about it.”

Alex S. Jones, director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a co-author of “The Trust,” a history of the family that controls The Times, said in a telephone interview that the paper should be flattered by the spoof.

“I would say if you’ve got one, hold on to it,” Mr. Jones, a former Times reporter, said of the fake issue. “It will probably be a collector’s item. I’m just glad someone thinks The New York Times print edition is worthy of an elaborate hoax. A Web spoof would have been infinitely easier. But creating a print newspaper and handing it out at subway stations? That takes a lot of effort.”

He added, “I consider this a gigantic compliment to The Times.”

There is a history of spoofs and parodies of The Times. Probably the best-known is one unveiled two months into the 1978 newspaper strike. A whole cast of characters took part in that parody, including the journalist Carl Bernstein, the author Christopher Cerf, the humorist Tony Hendra and the Paris Review editor George Plimpton.

And for April Fool’s Day in 1999, the British business executive Richard Branson printed 100,000 copies of a parody titled “I Can’t Believe It’s Not The New York Times.” Also that year, a 27-year-old Princeton alumnus named Matthew Polly, operating a “guerrilla press” known as Hard Eight Publishing, published a 32-page spoof of the newspaper.

Slipping through the news cracks.....

Just some videos that aren't making enough news rounds...


Mitt Romney Blasting Mccain!



Mccain's Health

John McCain has not yet released his medical records to the public. McCain is 72 years old, and has been diagnosed with invasive melanoma. In May of this year, a small group of selected reporters were allowed to review 1,173 pages of McCain's medical records that covered only the last eight years, and were allowed only three hours to do so. John McCain's health is an issue of profound importance. We call on John McCain to issue a full, public disclosure of all of his medical records, available for the media and members of the general public to review.



Sign the petition:

http://therealmccain.com/

Signed by 45,642 people, 2,187 doctors:



Mccain Economic shift!





Alaska women rally against Palin!

This is the largest political rally in state history......



From Mudflats:

Never have I seen anything like it in my 17 and a half years living in Anchorage. The organizers had someone walk the rally with a counter, and they clicked off well over 1400 people (not including the 90 counter-demonstrators). This was the biggest political rally ever, in the history of the state. I was absolutely stunned. The second most amazing thing is how many people honked and gave the thumbs up as they drove by. And even those that didn’t honk looked wide-eyed and awe-struck at the huge crowd that was growing by the minute. This just doesn’t happen here.

So, if you’ve been doing the math… Yes. The Alaska Women Reject Palin rally was significantly bigger than Palin’s rally that got all the national media coverage! So take heart, sit back, and enjoy…Sarah Palin most definitely does not speak for all Alaskans.

UPDATE: According to John Amato over at C&L, Alaskan right-wing talk radio host Eddie Burke exposed the names of this rally's organizers on the air. And he called those who protested "socialist, baby killing, maggots."





Sarah's Interview mishap....





A number of the claims that Palin made were false. She has never issued an order to the Alaska National Guard and every vice president “over the last 30 years had met a foreign head of state before being elected.” In addition to saying that she hasn’t “really focused much on the war in Iraq” in March 2007, Palin also called for “an exit plan” from Iraq. Although she can see Russia from some parts of Alaska, Palin has never actually traveled there.



ThinkProgress has put together a document compiling what we know about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R), Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) vice presidential running mate. Here are the issues:

http://thinkprogress.org/palin-digest/

9/11 Trademarked?

Today is a day that we should remember the lives lost 7 years ago on this day.....


Remember the people, not the political misuse of this event for WAR, and FEAR in politics......

Prosecutor Pressing War Profit charges....

I'm Alan Grayson, and I prosecute war profiteers in Iraq. In 2006, I ran for Congress in Orlando, and I lost the Democratic primary by 3000 votes. This year, I ran for Congress again, and I beat the same primary opponent by 7000 votes.

Here's why this time is different, not just for me, but for a lot of other candidates:

(1) People want solutions to their problems, and progressives offer solutions to them. In other years, Democrats supported "centrists," thinking that they could win that way. (Somehow, most Republicans never saw a need to do that.) This year, people want Democrats who are not afraid to be Democrats. They want Democrats with guts. They want Democrats who will stake out our position on what direction is good for America, and then move America in that direction. They want change.

(2) Because our problems are so severe, the last thing that people want to listen to are candidates who talk about themselves. You want to talk about what to do about the economy, health care, education, the war -- good. You want to talk about endorsements, where you're from, your loving spouse -- bad. Our formula was very simple: here's what's wrong, and here's what we're going to do about it. It's not about the candidate. It never is.

(3) The best campaign is one that involves people. Our staff and volunteers knocked on over 100,000 doors, and made over 100,000 phone calls. Our chief opponent ran a TV ad. That's a big difference. What people dislike most about elected officials is the sense that they are being ignored. When you run a campaign that touches people, and listens to them, then you're conveying the idea that you'll keep listening after the election is over.

(4) The best assurance that you can give to people that you'll do something good for them in the future is if you've done something good for them in the past. When I told people that I fight war profiteers in Iraq, it wasn't to make me look good. It was to give people a degree of comfort that I could be counted on to remain a progressive in Congress. And this opens up a wonderful possibility: that public-interest lawyers, and teachers, and social workers, and nurses -- and even documentary makers! -- will have a leg up when they run for public office, because the voters know that they will keep on doing good things for them. So, Robert Greenwald for Governor!

http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/52543-meet-the-war-profiteer-prosecutor-who-wants-to-prosecute-bush

WOW JOHN MCCAIN . . . Where is the Media?

If this video is true! WOW AMERICA!



http://vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/