World-News

You Don't Want to Know

By Jean MacKenzie

Call it protection money, call it extortion, or, as the Taliban themselves prefer to term it, "spoils of war," the fact remains that international donors, primarily the United States, are to a large extent financing their own enemy.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23276.htm



What Does Barack Obama Really Want in Afghanistan?

By William Pfaff

There have been eight years in which to capture bin Laden and it's not been done yet, and there seems no reason to think that anything important would change if the thousands of Marines now scheduled for Afghanistan did capture him. What did it change to capture and execute Saddam Hussein in Iraq?

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23285.htm



Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time

What are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

http://snipurl.com/qe5i7



Much Of Afghan Drug Money Going To 'Our Friends'

The Senate report says the United States inadvertently contributed to the resurgent drug trade ... by backing warlords who derived income from the flow of illegal drugs. ... These warlords later traded on their stature as U.S. allies to take senior positions in the new Afghan government.

http://snipurl.com/qe5jg


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Karzai
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Taliban
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Jean+MacKenzie
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=William+Pfaff

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis160.html

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Unwinnable war?

Human Events
by Patrick J. Buchanan

08/14/09

A CBS-New York Times survey in late July found 33 percent saying the war [in Afghanistan] was going well and 57 percent saying it was going badly or very badly. In a CNN poll in early August, Americans, by 54 percent to 41 percent, said they oppose the Afghan war that almost all Americans favored after 9-11 and Obama said in 2008 was the right war for America to fight. The president is now approaching a decision that may prove as fateful for him and his country as was the one made by Lyndon Johnson to send the Marines ashore at Da Nang in December 1965. Obama confronts a two-part question: If, after eight years of fighting, the Taliban is stronger, more capable and closer to victory than it has ever been, what will it cost in additional U.S. troops, casualties, years and billions to turn this around? And what is so vital to us in that wilderness land worth another eight years of fighting, bleeding and dying, other than averting the humiliation of another American defeat?

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=33141


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Taliban
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=com/margolis
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Patrick+J.+Buchanan

The Pentagon presented a grim portrait of the Afghanistan war Thursday, offering no assurances about how long Americans will be fighting there or how many U.S. combat troops it will take to win.

http://snipurl.com/pwzex



Afghanistan passes 'barbaric' law diminishing women's rights

Rehashed legislation allows husbands to deny wives food if they fail to obey sexual demands.

http://snipurl.com/pwzfq


From Information Clearing House

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Afghanistan's Women Yearn for More

Laura King, The Los Angeles Times: "One is the face of despair; the other, of hope. Zeinab, 22, believed that only death could provide an escape from her husband's merciless beatings. So she set herself on fire, leaving one-third of her body covered with oozing, blistering burns. She faces a lifetime of disfigurement and, unless she returns to her abusive husband, the likely loss of her two children. Twelve-year-old Nazira's classroom is a sweltering tent, and her desk is a plastic mat on the ground. But her teachers say she is one of their brightest pupils, encouraged by a mother and father who want her to get as much education as she can. Her eyes sparkle when she describes her ambition: to become a doctor."

http://www.truthout.org/081509B?n



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Robert+Gates
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Laura+King

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/13-6

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Why are we in Afghanistan?

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

08/14/09

Okay, let’s see if I get this straight: the real problem is Pakistan, not Afghanistan. However, we can’t go into Pakistan because we’re hated there, and the very act of intervening could and would give al-Qaeda the kind of momentum it needs to overthrow the Pakistani government. And we can’t even pressure the Pakistanis to crack down on the Islamists who may be sympathetic to al-Qaeda, because they can’t do it, and our insisting on it would only lead to hard feelings and ‘misunderstanding.’ Okay, I get it. So, please tell me: why are we in Afghanistan?

http://tinyurl.com/q47uam


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Pakistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=al-Qaeda
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=raimondo

Bob Ainsworth, the Defence Secretary, bemoaned an attitude of "defeatism" in Britain over the Afghanistan campaign today as the bodies of four British soldiers were returned home to be met by their families.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6794974.ece


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/12-11



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=John+Nichols

ABC News

08/10/09

In a dramatic change of policy ordered by the Obama administration, the U.S. military has been given approval to ‘kill or capture’ 50 Taliban-connected drug lords whose names are on a classified ‘kill list’ being circulated to commanders, according to a report prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and obtained by ABCNews.com. Military officials expressed anger today that the ‘classified program’ had been revealed in the Senate report...

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=8295405&page=1


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

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Afghan Drug Lords: Targeted Until Proven Innocent

By Stephen M. Walt

This is a formula to escalate the cycle of violence in Afghanistan, not to end it. For anyone who's been awake and watching the many failed strategies in the US war on drugs at home, it just looks stupid.

http://informationclearinghouse.info/article23252.htm



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Taliban
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=assassin
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=war+on+drugs
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=what+change

AS THE US expands its involvement in Afghanistan, military experts are warning that it is taking on security and political commitments that will last at least a decade and a cost that is likely to eclipse that of the Iraq war.

http://snipurl.com/plstc


From Information Clearing House



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/08/10-10



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/08/AR2009080802283.html


Informant: Duane Roberts

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Obamageddon

AntiWar.Com
by Justin Raimondo

08/10/09

An American president is launching the most ambitious, the most expensive, and certainly the most dangerous military campaign since the Vietnam War — and the antiwar movement, such as it is, is missing in action. After a long and bloody campaign in Iraq and the election of a U.S. president pledged to get us out, our government is once again revving up its war machine and taking aim at yet another ‘terrorist’ stronghold, this time in Afghanistan. Yet the antiwar movement’s motor seems stuck in the wrong gear, making no motions toward mounting anything like an effective protest. What gives?

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/08/09/obamageddon/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp



http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Obama
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Afghanistan
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=Walter+Pincus
http://freepage.twoday.net/search?q=raimondo