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DAILY PHOTO OF U.S. SOLDIERS

Family and friends walk behind the casket carrying the comingled remains of Army Chief Warrant Officer Matthew G. Kelley, Chief Warrant Officer Joshua M. Tillery, Chief Warrant Officer Benjamin H. Todd, and Chief Warrant Officer Phillip E. Windorski carried on a cason during funeral services at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., Thursday, March 18, 2010. The four Soldiers died from wounds sustained in Iraq and were assigned to the 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y., at the time of their deaths on Jan. 29, 2009. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen) March 19, 2010

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DAILY PHOTO OF IRAQIS

Relatives mourn Iraqi policeman Mohammed Flayiey during his funeral in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, March 10, 2010. The officer was killed Tuesday night when gunmen approached a police checkpoint and opened fire, police said. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban). March 19, 2010

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DAILY PHOTO OF AFGHANS

Afghan children look on U.S occupation forces with 293D Military Police Company, 97th Military Police Battalion arrive at a local police station on the outskirts of Kandahar, southern Afghanistan March 18, 2010. (REUTERS/Shamil Zhumatov) March 19, 2010

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DAILY PHOTO OF PAKISTANIS

Police officers help a protester injured by a rubber bullet police fired to disperse angry crowd in Islamabad, Pakistan on Friday, March 19, 2010. Violence erupted in the capital's outskirts when police tried to fight a mob of students protesting the hike in public transport fares. (AP Photo/B.K.Bangash) March 19, 2010

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>> Sexual assaults in the U.S. military An annual report from the Department of Defense reveals that over the past year, reports of sexual assaults in the military have increased by 11 percent, including a 16-percent spike in reported incidents in combat areas, principally in Iraq and Afghanistan. While 87 percent of the reported assaults were male-on-female, seven percent were male-on-male.

.......[more]
posted 19 March 2010

>> Say hello to Marjah ... or 'Little America' To Western reporters, Helmand is the poppy-growing heartland of the Taliban and the home of Marjah, the demonstration project for the Barack Obama administration's new and improved Afghan strategy, "Operation Moshtarak" (Together). To the locals, the irrigated heartland of Helmand has another name: "Little America".

.......[more]
posted 16 March 2010

>>Pentagon considers Afghanistan spy ring claim
The US Defence Department says it may look into an official who allegedly ran a secret spy ring in Afghanistan and Pakistan using its funds.......[more]
posted 16 March 2010

>>GI bill of goods: Recession dries up job expectations for returning vets
those who answered the call in the nation's most recent wars have been hit harder by the staggering economy than the rest of America.......[more]
posted 12 March 2010

>> SoCal Marine, wife charged with Iraq scam A Marine Corps captain and his wife have been charged with skimming $1.75 million from government contracts in Iraq.......[more]
posted 05 March 2010

recent news items >>

>>U.S. "Bling Bling" Embassy
The new U.S. Embassy is officially open for business in Baghdad. And.... it was already built .... [more]
posted 30 june 2003

more news coverage about Iraq






Learn about a Texans for Peace initiative to assist women business professionals and entrepreneurs in Baghdad.

Womens Business Center of Baghdad

Learn about Depleted Uranium (DU) and its effects on Iraq and our soldiers:

International Coalition to Ban DU
Uranium Medical Research Centre

Depleted Uranium at the IAEA

 

Iraq War Images

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Show your support...order an "End The War in Iraq!" t-shirt today (we have yard signs and bumper stickers too)

(reverse reads "Bring Our Troops Home Now!")

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Antiwar protests continue; Iraq violence; 10,000 Marines can't pacify Helmand; Pakistan refusing to hand over Taliban

Antiwar protests are scheduled throughout the U.S. and around the world on Saturday - the 7th anniversary of the start of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Iraq war has already outlasted World War II, World War I, and the U.S. Civil War and, along with the war in Afghanistan, could end up being the costliest in U.S. history. In the words of Texan Molly Ivins, "every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. ...We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, 'Stop it, now!'" More and more military vets are joining in the protests along with a wide variety of peace and human rights organizations. In Washington, DC, a protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,will begin with a noon rally in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, followed by a march led by Cindy Sheehan whose son was killed in Iraq in 2005. Maggie Pondolfino, a representative of Military Families Speak Out whose son is currently in Afghanistans says, "I'm the proud mother of an active-duty infantry soldier. . . . We love and support our troops. And it is because we do that we will vocally show our opposition whenever our government sends them to ill-advised, immoral, unwinnable wars."

Never about bringing democracy, improving the living conditions of Iraqis and Afghans, nor eliminating weapons of mass destruction, these battlefields are part of the U.S.'s "projection of force" around the world in a vain attempt to establish mlitary and political dominance over a region with vast oil and natural gas resources and to break the OPEC cartel. The citizens of the impacted countries are only pawns in a global chess game.

In a visit to Hong Kong on Friday, former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she "regretted" the Bush administration failed to work closer with Iraqis to rebuild the war-torn country. Rice served George W. Bush as national security adviser and later as America's chief diplomat. She now is a senior fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution research group at Stanford University. The invasion, and its aftermath, destabilized the entire nation and created escalating levels of violence.

On Friday in Baghdad, a bomb on a motorcycle went off near a market in Sadr City, killing three people and wounding seven. Rice served Bush as national security adviser and later as America's chief diplomat. Gunmen stormed an off-duty policeman's house and killed him in the Doura district. In Mosul, a roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed one soldier and wounded three others. Iraqi soldiers accompanied by U.S. advisers claim they killed a senior leader of al-Qaeda and captured six of his associates on Thursday.

In Afghanistan, continued militancy and conflicts are claiming more than 100 people's lives with overwhelming of them non-combatants as the U.S. occupation continues into its 9th year. Much has changed, but much remains the same.. The facts on the ground today are that the Taliban (or the insurgency) now controls large swathes of the country - even running parallel administrations. U.S. political and military leaders keep claiming "progress". Meanwhile, ordinary Afghans continue to suffer in this nation - one of the poorest on earth.

In Helmand Province, 10,000 marines are apparently not enough to pacify the Taliban. Operation Moshtarek continues, there are reports that 3 of the 13 districts still remain in Taliban control. The newly-appointed police chief of Baghran district can't even get to his job and phones in commands out of an office in Lashkar Gah. In Musa Qala district, the government controls the main town but the Taliban hold weekly court sessions in the rest of the district to settle property and other disputes. "The Taliban are not gone (from Marjah). They have only gone to the other districts of Grishk and Sangin," says former Helmand Gov. Sher Mohammed Akhundzada.

Michael D. Furlong, the senior Defense Department employee under investigation for allegedly running an unauthorized intelligence-gathering operation in Afghanistan, says his now-suspended program was fully authorized by top U.S. military commanders. According to Furlong, the program, which began in late 2008, was requested by Army Gen. David D. McKiernan, the former top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and approved by the U.S. Central Command. Most of the contractors hired by Furlong for the $24.8 million program -- one of the military's many "information operations" programs in the region -- were, like Furlong, Special Operations retirees.

In Pakistan on Friday, two people were killed and two wounded when suspected separatist militants fired at a mini-bus belonging to a military training school in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. Militants fired rocket-propelled grenades at a police checkpoint in the Mohmand region on the Afghan border but there were no casualties.

Pakistan is refusing to hand over captured Taliban leaders to Afghanistan on the grounds that they could be released or transferred to the U.S. The refusal to extradite Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban's deputy leader and military commander, together with several regional insurgent commanders seized by Pakistani forces in recent weeks, has deepened uncertainty over Islamabad's motives. Mediators involved in back-channel talks with the Taliban say that Baradar took part in the dialogue and appeared interested in a negotiated peace. There had been speculation that Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) had arrested Baradar in Karachi last month because of those talks, and because he had bypassed Pakistan. posted 19 March, 2010

War in Pakistan heats up; 6 US casualties in Iraq, 2 UK in Afghanistan; New "Northern Offensive"; IED attacks up

At least two civilians, one of them a woman, were killed by firing from Pakistani security forces in north-west Pakistan on Thursday. The incident happened in the tribal region of Darra Adamkhel, when troops fired at two passenger buses that were breaking a curfew. On Wednesday night, more than 50 militants armed with heavy weapons attacked a checkpoint on the border between Darra Adamkhel and the north-western city of Peshawar. The security forces returned fire, sparking clashes that continued all night. On Thursday morning, the security forces imposed a curfew on the road through Darra Adamkhel and started a search operation. Officials say the two buses were presumably unaware of the curfew.

Two missile strikes by pilotless U.S. drone aircraft on Wednesday killed at least nine "militants" in Pakistan's North Waziristan. Pakistani security forces on Wednesday killed five militants including two Taliban commanders who were wanted over an uprising in the northwestern Swat valley.

Imran Khan has warned that the Pakistani army's offensive in the tribal areas is pushing the country to the brink of “civil war”. He also blamed US-Pakistan military attacks in the areas bordering Afghanistan for creating the Pakistan Taliban, in the comments in London's Evening Standard paper on Wednesday. “They were like a bull in a china shop, fighting one or two guerrillas with aerial bombing of villages. “That turned people against the army and a new phenomenon was created: the Pakistan Taliban.” For Khan, who leads a marginal force in Pakistani politics Tehrik-i-Insaf (Movement for Justice), the way to deal with militants is through boosting state help for the poor. “You will have no problem with extremists in Pakistan if you have democracy with a welfare state,” he told an audience in London.

One U.S. soldier has been killed in combat in Baghdad on Thursday.

On Wednesday, the U.S. military said two American pilots died in a helicopter crash in Iraq on Saturday, during a "hard landing" in the Salahuddin province north of Baghdad as the U.S. occupation extends into it 7th year. Also, the one soldier died and three more were injured during a roll-over accident while on patrol in northern Iraq on Monday. Two British soldiers were killed by an IED in Southern Afghanistan on Tuesday.

On Thursday in Iraq, the decapitated bodies of a policeman and a soldier were found about an hour after they were abducted by gunmen in the town of Shirqat. Gunmen killed a truck driver and wounded his son in southern Mosul. Two boys were wounded when they were playing with an explosive object in northern Mosul. Gunmen stormed a house and killed a 24-year-old woman in eastern Mosul. Gunmen threw a hand grenade at an Iraqi army patrol wounding two civilians on Wednesday. In Baghdad, Gunmen killed a man in the Shaab district. Two roadside bombs wounded six people near an Iraqi army patrol, including two soldiers, on Wednesday in Baghdad's northern Waziriya district. Gunmen using silencers wounded an official working with the Iraq Human Rights ministry in the Ghazaliya district. Gunmen also detonated a bomb near a house and wounded two civilians in Abu Ghraib.

In Afghanistan, Afghan forces shot dead two would-be suicide bombers who planned to storm an office used by foreigners in the provincial capital of southern Helmand on Wednesday. An unidentified gunman shot dead a senior Afghan provincial official in Ghazni's town late on Tuesday. At least 12 people were killed in a series of explosions in various parts of Afghanistan on Monda.

The NATO military alliance is planning a large-scale offensive in northern Afghanistan this year against Taliban insurgents in Kunduz Province, a senior German general was quoted as saying on Thursday. He declined to give details but said that it would be on a "similar" scale to the offensive currently underway in the southern province of Helmand involving 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops. Operations to push the Taliban out of their iconic Afghan stronghold of Kandahar are also underway, the commander of US and NATO troops in Afghanistan, US General Stanley McChrystal, said Wednesday.

Taliban fighters more than doubled the number of homemade bombs they used against U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan last year, relying on explosives that are often far more primitive than the ones used in Iraq. The embrace of a low-tech approach by Taliban-trained bombmakers -- they are building improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, out of fertilizer and diesel fuel -- has stymied a $17 billion U.S. counteroffensive against the devices in Iraq and Afghanistan, military officials say. Electronic scanners or jammers, which were commonly deployed in Iraq, can detect only bombs with metal parts or circuitry. U.S. military officials said they expected the number of IED attacks to climb further this year as 40,000 U.S. and NATO esclate the war in Afghanistan. posted 18 March, 2010

US prison turned over to Iraqis; USAF drone kills 10; Sahil Saeed released; Obama escalation will be "difficult"; War for TAPI Gas pipeline

The U.S. military handed over a $107 million prison with 2,900 inmates to the Iraqi government on Monday as it prepares to leave Iraq seven years after the initial invasion. The formal transfer of the detention center at Camp Taji, a sprawling U.S. base north of Baghdad, is part of a plan to unwind a U.S. occupation detention program in Iraq that cost $500 million a year at its peak and incarcerated tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens. U.S. officials did not allow reporters to tour the facility. U.S. forces have taken into custody about 90,000 people since the 2003 invasion, in Abu Ghraib, Camp Bucca and other prisons. The last, Camp Cropper located near Baghdad airport, will be turned over to Iraq on July 15.

Violence continued in Iraq on Tuesday. Eight people were killed and 11 wounded when two sticky bombs exploded in separate attacks five minutes apart in the town of Mussayab, 40 miles south of Baghdad. A soldier was killed by a gunman at a checkpoint in western Mosul. In Baghdad, a bomb attached to a car wounded three people. One roadside bomb wounded three policemen in northern Baghdad and another roadside bomb wounded two civilians in Baghdad's central Karrada district.

A US drone missile strike and clashes between gunmen and tribesmen killed at least 20 "militants on" Tuesday in northwest Pakistan near the Afghan border. The five missiles hit a compound near Datta Khel village, 12 miles west of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, killing at least 10 people. More than 830 people have been killed in more than 90 US strikes in Pakistan since August 2008, with a surge in the past year by President Barack Obama as he escalates the war. Elsewhere in the tribal belt, a gunfight between militants and local tribesmen killed at least 10 rebels and wounded another seven in the Kurram district.

Kidnappers released 5-year-old Sahil Saeed unharmed Tuesday almost two weeks after abducting him from his grandparents' house in central Pakistan. Saeed was found in a small village in Punjab province, some 20 miles southeast of Jhelum city where armed robbers seized him on March 4. The boy was examined by a doctor, Hafeezur Rehman, who said he looked "healthy and happy." "There was no sign of depression on his face," Rehman told The Associated Press. "He was playing with toys at a government rest house when I examined him."

Gen. David Petraeus says that the Obama Administrations war escalation plans in Afghanistan will result in fighting that is "likely get harder before it gets easier" and predicts 2010 will be a difficult year. Petraeus, who heads the U.S. Central Command, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday. He said he "expects" U.S. forces will be able to reverse the momentum gained by Taliban militants in Afghanistan, but Petraeus also said he envisions "tough fighting and periodic setbacks," in the war already in its 9th year.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has brought most U.S. special-operations forces under his direct control for the first time, out of concern over continued civilian casualties and disorganization among units in the field. "What happens is sometimes at cross-purposes — you got one hand doing one thing and one hand doing the other, both trying to do the right thing but working without a good outcome," McChrystal said. Critics, including Afghan officials, human-rights workers and some field commanders of conventional U.S. forces, say that special-operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules. U.S. Vice Adm. Greg Smith says the move will integrate almost all of the 20,000 U.S. troops serving in eastern Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Disaster into the 90,000-strong NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. Smith said Tuesday that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top NATO and U.S. commander in Afghanistan who leads both forces, wants to bring "unity of command" to the war and avoid having allied elements working at cross-purposes.

Efforts are underway to revive the TAPI gas pipeline project involving India, Pakistan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan during a meeting in Ashkhabad next month. Experts from the four countries will meet in Turkmenistan's capital on April 17-18 to discuss the $4 billion pipeline's route and the volume of gas that Turkmenistan can supply to India and Pakistan. The pipeline is one reason for the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. It will stretch nearly 1,000 miles from Turkmenistan's southeastern Daulatabad gas field to the Indian city of Bikaner and run through Afghanistan's Helmand province and Pakistan's Waziristan province. Several Texas energy companies are expected to participate in the project as well.

Iran and Pakistan signed a deal in Turkey on Tuesday paving the way for construction to start on a much-delayed natural-gas pipeline connecting the two nations in a move that has been opposed by Washington as undermining sanctions efforts against Tehran. Pakistan has argued the pipeline, which will connect Iran's South Pars gas field with Pakistan's Baluchistan and Sindh provinces, is crucial to averting a growing energy crisis that is already causing severe electricity shortages. posted 16 March, 2010

Call to End the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

Texans for Peace actively tried to prevent the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and is now working to bring them to an end and make sure that amends are made. The continuing war in Iraq and Afghanistan exceeds the bounds of decency and diplomacy and those who started this disaster are unlikely to end it ... unless we demand it.

Texans for Peace continues to call attention to this war, send "peace ambassadors" directly to Iraq and Afghanistan, and bring you the latest information on what is really going on over there. We call on you to work with us for peace; "End The Wars - Bring Our Troops Home Now!" Answer the call.

Charlie Jackson, Texans for Peace

Charlie Jackson, founder of Texans for Peace, has made four trips to Iraq already during this war...spending time entirely outside of the "Green Zone" protected areas. (2002-03, 2003, 2005, 2009). Jackson has traveled throughout 17 of Iraq's 18 provinces. During his most recent trip he visited Kurdistan, Erbil and Kirkuk. He also sponsored a trip to Jordan (2007) to visit with Iraqi refugees living there. Jackson reports daily on conditions and issues surrounding the Iraq war as a volunteer peacemaker.

photos from various trips to Iraq