2 more US dead in Iraq; 6 NATO soldiers killed in Aghanistan; Afghan refugees double; U.S. wastes $20 B on AC

Two American troops were killed while conducting operations in northern Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. command in Baghdad announced, bringing the monthly death toll in the officially non-combat mission there to 11 - despite the White House declaration that we have "no more combat troops" in Iraq.

In additional news, At least 12 people were wounded when a suicide bomber in a wheelchair blew himself up at a police station in the northern outskirts of Iraq's capital on Sunday.

A suicide attack on a group of policement in the Khan Abad district of Kunduz province on Friday killed six people and wounded two others. At least 35 people were killed, includiung women and children, and another 30 injured on Sunday by a car bomb in Azra, a remote district of Logar province near the border with neighboring Pakistan.

Also in Afghanistan, two Spanish soldiers died, and three more were injured, in Sunday when their vehicle hit an IED. Four Canadian soldiers and a journalist were killed by another IED.

Facing internal conflict, the number of people fleeing their homes in Afghanistan has more than doubled compared to this time last year, says Refugees International, an advocacy group for displaced persons. "In the first five months of 2011, we have more than 91,000 people fleeing their homes. And this is in comparison to last year at the same time period when there was 42,000," asid the report. Refugees International visited tent cities across Afghanistan earlier this year with her colleagues, taking photos of the refugees' living conditions and sharing them publicly The U.S. has escalated the conflict in Afghanistan, under President Obama, and has announced that occupation troops will remain at least through 2014.

The U.S. military forks out a whopping $20.2billion a year on keeping troops in Iraq and Afghanistan cool. An air conditioning unit at a remote Afghanistan outpost takes a gallon of fuel, which soon goes in the searing 125degree heat.
This has to be shipped into Karachi, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to the war-torn country on atrociously bad roads. 'And you've got risks that are associated with moving the fuel almost every mile of the way,' Steven Anderson, a retired brigadier general who served as General David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq, told National Public Radio (NPR).

In Pakistan, a husband and wife team carried out an attack in Kolachi that killed 12 policemen. posted 26 June, 2011

161 casualties in Iraq; Obama pledges to continue war; Drones kill Paks

In Iraq on Thursday, one American was killed, and three Iraqis were injured when a bomb detonated outside the gates of the University of Baghdad's business college. Killed was Stephen Everhart...brought to Iraq by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Also in Baghdad, a series of three bomb blasts killed 23 Iraqis wounded 82 people more. Up to 27 people were killed and another 115 were injured in two bomb blasts outside the provincial governor's residence at Diwaniya in central Iraq on Tuesday.

U.S. president Barack Obama took to American airwaves on Wednesday to pledge to cotinue the war in Afghanistan while withdrawing some troops in 2011. Like Nixon before him, he claims that he doesn't want to withdraw forces, some who have been occupying Afghanistan for 10 years, "too soon" because it might lead to "defeat". At the same time, he and the Pentagon cannot seem to define "victory".

New head of the CIA, Army General David Petraeus, said that Obama’s Afghanistan troop withdrawal decision was “more aggressive” in terms of the timeline than he recommended. Like U.S. Senator McCain, Petraeus still believes that the U.S could have "won in Vietnam" if that war had continued longer.

Canadian soldiers sunbathed at their base in Kandar after that country's government announced that it would will end its combat role in Afghanistan by the end of July, after nearly ten years fighting in Afghanistan. Germany, Australia, the UK and France announced that they would continue to remain in Afghanistan, following U.S. lead - in an effort to shore up U.S. credibility.

Also in Afghanistan, a suicide bomber killed six policemen near a police post in the Qarabagh district of central Ghazni province on Wednesday. An U.S. soldier was killed in an attack by insurgents in southern Afghanistan.

In Pakistan on Monday, U.S. drones fired missiles at a vehicle and a house in the Kurram tribal area , killing 12 people and sparking protests. In the southwest, a car bomb exploded near a women's college in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan province, killing two people and wounding 12 others on Tuesday. posted 23 June, 2011

88 Pakistani casualties; 11 NATO troops killed; $18 billion "lost" in Iraq? Civilians killed by NATO in Libya

A remote control bomb planted on a motorbike in the city of Panjgur in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province killed two children and injured 21 people on Saturday. Meanwhile, Pakistan summoned the Afghan envoy in Islamabad on Friday and lodged a strong protest over a recent incursion of militants into its territory from Afghanistan. The cross-border incursion on June 16 resulted in the killing of five civilians, including three males and two females, and one soldier and three civilian females were injured. U.S. missile strikes killed at least 10 people on Wednesday near Wana.

Dozens of Taliban militants attacked a Pakistani military base on Sunday, triggering clashes and air strikes that left 25 militants and four soldiers dead. Officials say about 50 militants armed with light and heavy weapons launched an attack on an army post in the Mohmand tribal region.

Militants carried out two attacks on NATO supply vehicles in Balochistan province of southwest Pakistan on Sunday, killing a driver and destroying a container truck and an oil tanker. A driver was killed when suspected militants attacked an oil tanker carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan in the Mian Ghundi suburb of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan.

A suicide car bomber struck a German military convoy in northern Afghanistan on Sunday, detonating explosives that killed three Afghan civilians and overturned at least one armored vehicle.

NATO officials said an international service member has been killed in an insurgent attack in Afghanistan on Saturday, making it the eighth person killed in one day. NATO had previously reported three other service members died in fighting on Saturday, at least one French and one British. And the coalition said another four were killed in a vehicle accident. Two more British soldiers were killed on Thursday. The latest death brings the total to 38 NATO service members killed so far this month, and 244 for the year.

Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn. Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Nujaifi said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week. "There is a lot of money missing during the first American administration of Iraqi money in the first year of occupation. "Iraq's development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations - their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure.

Meanwhile in Washington, four former U.S. ambassadors to Iraq urged top congressional leaders to back President Barack Obama's budget request of $5.2 billion for the embassy in Baghdad, the world's largest, as well as the costs of police training and some 5,000 security forces. John Negroponte, Zalmay Khalilzad, Ryan Crocker and Christopher Hill — wrote to House and Senate leaders last month to ask that billions of dollars more be "invested" in U.S. occupation on Iraq. With the possible departure of U.S. forces by Dec. 31, many of the budget requests have shifted from the Defense Department to the State Department. Budget-conscious lawmakers are more likely to target foreign aid spending than military dollars.

In the Obama-led war on Libya, NATO was accused of killing several civilians, two of them children, in an early Sunday morning airstrike in Tripoli. Meanwhile, there was heavy shelling Saturday night and Sunday morning in the port city of Misrata, 125 miles east of the capital. posted 19 June, 2011

Iraq: U.S. Congressman "not wanted"; Peshawar targeted again; Pak Rangers murder civilian; Afghan children killed

The Iraqi government said on Saturday that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and his delegration is "not wanted" in that country after the congressman said that Iraq should pay the U.S. for the costs of the 2003 invasion. Rohrabacher, the chairman of the Oversight and Investigation Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters during a news conference at the embassy in Baghdad that he suggested Iraq repay some of the cost of the war.

Also in Iraq, twin car bombings in Mosul, and separate attacks on the homes of a schoolteacher and a human rights activist left at least 38 people dead and 53 wounded on Saturday. Police in Abu Ghraib found the beheaded body of a human rights activist, Namir Ryhan, inside his home. An anti-government protest scheduled for Friday in Iraq’s capital was quashed after several participants reported being beaten with sticks and clubs by pro-government forces. Two rival Iraqi lawmakers came to blows on Sunday at a time of rising tension between Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shiite bloc and the opposition. The U.S. military said another American soldier was killed on Wednesday, bringing to 4,460 the number of American service members who have died in Iraq since the invasion began in 2003.

Twin bomb blasts minutes apart ripped through a crowded supermarket killing at least 39 people and injuring more than 100 people in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar late Saturday. At least six people were injured in a blast Sunday afternoon in Pakistan's capital Islamabad.

Pakistan on Thursday arrested five soldiers for shooting dead a young man at point blank range in a park after the killing was filmed live and broadcast on television, shocking human rights activists. Five members of the Rangers paramilitary rounded on unarmed 22-year-old Sarfaraz Shah in Karachi's most exclusive neighbourhood of Clifton on Wednesday, claiming he had tried to rob a policeman's family.

Film shows him being dragged by the Rangers and being shot and killed at point blank range. The clean-shaven man, wearing black trousers and a navy shirt, is seen crying and pleading for his life as a soldier cocked his rifle at his neck. A soldier is heard saying: "This is the man" to which the man responds: "I am helpless, my friend." "Please do not fire, please not, please, please," he cried. After being shot in the hand and thigh, as blood seeps onto the ground, the man pleads: "Please take me to the hospital, please take me, please save me, o friend save me."

A string of attacks across Afghanistan, including one carried out by a suicide bomber pushing an ice cream cart, killed at least 21 people Saturday, officials said, while the U.N. released a report showing May to be the deadliest month for Afghan civilians since 2007. The U.N. said insurgents were responsible for 82 percent of those civilian deaths last month, while 12 percent were killed by the international alliance and Afghan forces. Homemade bombs, such as a roadside device that struck a minibus in Kandahar on Saturday, were the leading cause of death, according to the report.

A suicide bomber blew himself up Friday outside a mosque where a remembrance ceremony was being held for a slain Afghan police commander. The blast killed four police officers. Two French soldiers were killed, and another injured, in separate incidents on Friday. posted 12, June, 2011

Afghan wedding party assaulted; 8 US casualties in Iraq, 2 in Afghanistan; Attacks in Pakistan

Gunmen opened fire on a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan, killing nine people, including the groom. The assailants entered a field where the groom and his family had gathered Wednesday night in the remote Dur Baba district and started shooting. On Thursday, villagers laid out the bodies of the dead, covered in white sheets for a funeral service.

After spending more than $1 Trillion dollars and 10 years in Afghanistan, that nation will be left "broke" by the U.S. when it withdraws in 2014, according to a new report to Congress. A two-year congressional study finds that the $320 million in aid given to Afghanistan every month is doing little to prepare the country for the withdrawal of western forces. The 51-page report, released today by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, makes clear that this deluge of American cash is doing more harm than good...with incompetent Pentagon and corrupt Afghan officials in charge. Foreign military aid now makes up 97 percent of the country's gross domestic product creating a wartime economy that is a "huge distortion" of Afghanistan's economic reality.

Leaving-A-Sinking-Ship Secretary of War Robert Gates says that the U.S. should maintain a long-term military presence in Afghanistan as a “tenant” on bases jointly occupied with Afghan forces, rather than on permanent U.S. bases, after its combat mission ends. About 100,000 U.S. troops, and 40,000 from NATO and other partners, now occupy Afghanistan.

The American military suffered the deadliest attack against its forces in Iraq in more than two years Monday when rockets slammed into a joint U.S.-Iraqi base in Baghdad, killing five U.S. troops and wounding three others. The attack occurred around dawn at Camp Loyalty, known to Iraqis as Baladiyat base, when about six rockets struck near the U.S. residential quarters. The rocket strikes were part of a day of violence across Iraq that left at least 17 Iraqis dead.

Three government officials were among four people killed Thursday in separate attacks in Baghdad as clandestine operations work to ensure that the U.S. remains in Iraq. Separately, in the al-Ghadeer neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, an improvised explosive device planted outside a liquor store detonated early Thursday, damaging the store, which had not yet opened.

A U.S. soldier was killed by an IED in southern Afghanistan on Thursday. Also on Thursday, another press release issued here by U.S. military confirmed losing of a U.S. soldier in western Afghanistan on Tuesday.

The State Department is preparing to spend close to $3 billion to hire a security force to "protect diplomats in Iraq" after the U.S. pulls its last troops out of the country by year's end. In testimony Monday before the Commission on Wartime Contracting, Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, said the department plans to hire a 5,100-strong force to protect diplomatic personnel, guard embassy buildings and operate a fleet of aircraft and armored vehicles. Leon Panetta says that Operation False Dawn should continue after December 31, 2011....a date when all U.S. forces are contractually obligated to leave Iraq.

In Pakistan, around 150 militants armed with rockets attacked a security checkpost in Waziristan on Thursday, killing eight Pakistani soldiers. The attack, in which about 12 militants were killed, came on the heels of a flurry of missile strikes by U.S. drone aircraft in the tribal region along the Afghan border. posted 09, June, 2011

Gates leaving war behind;'Copter crash in Afghanistan; Money wasted; More violence in Pakistan; Iraqi mosque, hospital targeted; Bradley Manning protest

U.S. Secretary of War, Roberts Gates, said on Sunday that America should continue Operation Enduring Disaster for another 2-3 years. Gates, however, is jumping ship and going to return to civilian life earning money while young American boys and girls continue to die in the fields and mountains of Aghanistan. Gates said Saturday during his farewell trip to Afghanistan that success of the U.S. mission is paramount and "we don't want to precipitate a rush to the exits," even after 10 years of war and occupation. CIA Director, Leon Panetta, will become the next secretary of war.

Meanwhile, NATO helicopter crashed Sunday in the Sabari district of Khost province, near the Pakistan border, killing two soldiers and injuring three others in the third such fatal incident in the past three weeks. Four U.S. soldiers were killed by an IED in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday and two others were killed in the South on Friday. Another American was pronounced dead from injuries on Thursday. Two British soldiers died, one on Friday and the other on Saturday. One German soldier was killed and five were wounded when their tank hit an IED on Thursday.

Also, a new report warns that billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayers' money may be wasted because of the inability of Iraq and Afghanistan to keep American-financed projects running. "We're seeing sustainment problems ranging from health clinics in Iraq to road building in Afghanistan," commission co-chairman Christopher Shays said. "Unless government officials identify and address sustainment requirements and change or kill doomed programs, an enormous amount of taxpayers' money will turn out to have been wasted." The report released Friday by the Commission on Wartime Contracting does not blame any individuals in the Pentagon for their incompetency and the waste of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds.

A bomb exploded at a bus stand in Matani near Peshawar, Pakistan killed six people and wounded at least 10 others on Sunday.

On Saturday, a Pakistani intelligence official said Ilyas Kashmiri, an al-Qaida leader sought in the 2008 Mumbai siege and rumored to be a longshot choice to succeed bin Laden was believed killed in an American missile strike along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.

At least 72 people have been killed in three days of intense fighting between Pakistani security forces and hundreds of militants who crossed from Afghanistan into Upper Dir, a remote valley that borders the Afghan province of Konar. At least 27 Pakistanis, including four civilians, were killed in the fighting, as were 45 insurgents, local police officials said. The dead included two women, a child and a prayer leader in the town of Shaltalo. The majority of about 300 fighters retreated back into Afghanistan by Wednesday afternoon.

In Iraq, a bomb attack against the Zubair 1 storage facility, set on tank ablaze on Sunday but the explosion had not affected pumping to Al Fao port, where crude exports are dispatched. On Friday, bombers killed 34 people in attacks on a mosque in central Iraq in Tikrit frequented by provincial officials and later at a hospital where the victims were being treated. At least 75 were also wounded people including two members of Salaheddin provincial council, a senior policeman and a judge. The attacks came a day after a spate of coordinated bombings in Ramadi killed 10 people.

Hundreds of American supporters of Bradley Manning, the soldier who has been accused of leaking classified documents to WikiLeaks, Gathered outside the prison at Leavenworth, Kan., Saturday to rally for the Army private accused of leaking classified documents to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. The event marked the first public rally in support of Manning since he was transferred to Fort Leavenworth in April after being imprisoned for nine months on the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia. While detained at Quantico, Manning was forced to sleep naked in a military jail after a commander of the brig ordered his clothes be taken away. He was also forced to stand naked outside his cell in front of the rest of the clothed inmates until he passed inspection before being given his clothes back. "Our leaders in Washington need to return to American principles of transparent and accountable government. That starts with protecting -- not prosecuting -- whistle-blowers and dropping all charges against Bradley Manning," said one protestor. posted 05, June, 2011

US soldiers massacre Afghan children, women and police; Afghan police chief killed; Americans cheer "sacrifice"

At least 14 civilians, 12 of them said to be children, were massacred in Afghanistan's Helmand Province in a night time air strike by U.S. forces. The relatives of some of the children who were killed actually took the bodies of these children to the provincial capital Lashkar Gah and put them on display outside the governor's compound there so that local officials and the media could see what had happened.

Coalition forces deliberately put their patrol bases close to the population and when firing starts, often the coalition forces and insurgents are in very close proximity to civilians. Afghan president Karzai has delivered a very angry response to what has happened saying that the air strike was unnecessary and that it was a great mistake. He is talking about the murder of Afghan women and children.

The Pentagon blamed the "mistake" on Afghan insurgents who attacked their base which has occupied this part of Afghanistan for nearly 10 years. The commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in southwestern Afghanistan apologized for the deaths, saying troops had unwittingly targeted a home because insurgents were using it as a base. "Unfortunately, the compound the insurgents purposefully occupied was later discovered to house innocent civilians," Major General John Toolan said in a lame statement.

Another U.S. airstike on Sunday in the Nuristan Province fired on a group of people they assumed were insurgents. The people turned out to be a group of 18 civilians and 20 police. The Pentagon is calling this a "friendly fire" incident.

The Pentagon also announced the death of a soldier who died Saturday in Haji Ruf, of wounds suffered when Afghans attacked his patrol. A Canadian soldier was also found dead by his comrades on Friday at a forward operating base in Zangabad.

General Mohammed Daud Daud, 41, a regional police commander and once Afghanistan's most powerful anti-drug czar, was killed when a suicide bomber dressed in an Afghan military uniform blew himself up at a high-level meeting between Afghan and Nato officials at the provincial governor's compound in Taloqan, the capital of northern Takhar province on Sunday. The provincial police chief and two German Nato soldiers were also killed. Nato's top commander for northern Afghanistan, Major General Markus Kneip, as well as the Takhar governor, Abdul Jabar Taqwa, were injured in the blast.

At least eight people were killed Saturday and mor than 10 were wounded when a bomb ripped through a restaurant in the northwestern Pakistani region of Bajur. The Taliban claimed credit for bombing the group of anti-Taliban militias. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wrapped up a brief meeting in Pakistan amidst large protests in that country against the ongoing U.S. war.

In Iraq, a roadside bomb explosion ripped through a car in eastern Mosul Sunday, wounding an Iraqi defense minister candidate - Khalid al-Obaidi - and his driver. In the al-Mashtal neighborhood in southeastern Baghdad, a car bomb exploded, wounding a policeman. Two dead bodies were found in Mosul on Saturday. Iraqi security forces continue to hunt the killers of Iraq's controversial anti-Baath committee chief, Ali al-Lami, who was shot in the head while on his way home in east Baghdad on Friday.

Meanwhile, in the U.S.A., Americans cheers soldiers for their "glorious service" in war and the advance of American aims abroad. The airwaves are full of the "sacrifices" of soldiers while ignoring the millions of people in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya who are being "sacrificed" to the immoral and unintelligible aims of Washington. posted 29 May, 2011

24 US casualties in Afghanistan, 2 in Iraq; 118 Pak casualties; Congress: More money for more war; Iraqis march against occupation; Congress: Soldiers protest at Ft. Hood; 'Welcome to Kandahar' coming soon

Seven U.S. soldiers on patrol in a field were killed in Afghanistan on Thursday when a bomb exploded in a field. At least 5 others were wounded. A helicopter crash also killed another soldiers and wounded 4 others. Four soldiers died, and three others were wounded by a bomb in Kunar province on Monday.

Two U.S. soldiers died on Sunday May 22 from wounds suffered while supporting Operation False Dawn in Iraq.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday voted for the largest military and war budget ever - $690 billion. Lawmakers voted 322-96 in favor of the Pentagon 2012 budget plan which met the DoDs request for $119 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Lawmakers also rejected by 234 votes to 184 a separate measure sponsored calling for a US withdrawal from the nearly decade-old war. By its vote today, Congress - including "liberals" like Lloyd Doggett of Austin - continued to give a blank check to the Pentagon to continue warring around the world.

Six people were killed and 20 others wounded in a suicide attack on a police station in Peshawar, Pakistan, on Wednesday. The Police building was flattened in the attack. A suicide bomber killed 32 and wounded 60 people in Pakistan on Thursday by settin off explosives outside a police station in the northwestern town of Hangu.

On Monday, at least 10 Pakistani security officers died in a gun battle that lasted for hours at the Mehran naval air base in Karachi. Tt appeared that about six commandos walked several kilometers behind the base, dressed in street clothes and black shirts, before breaching the base. Now the government is considering closing, or moving, the base.

In a sign of Pakistan's deepening mistrust of the United States, Islamabad has told the Obama administration to reduce the number of U.S. troops in the country and has moved to close three military intelligence liaison centers.

In Iraq, tens of thousands of militiamen and supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr marched Thursday in Baghdad in a dramatic show of strength, saying to both the U.S. and Iraqi governments: If American troops stay past Dec. 31, there will be violence. Under an agreement between Washington and Baghdad, the 46,000 troops still in Iraq must leave by Dec. 31. “I am asking for the withdrawal of the occupation. I am ready to fight from this moment. I am ready to sacrifice. I am ready for death,” said one of the marchers, 42-year-old Hussein Abu Lika.

The head of Iraq's controversial anti-Baath committee was gunned down while on his way home in Baghdad on Thursday, while nine other policemen and soldiers were killed. Ali Saif Hamad al-Lami, born in Baghdad in 1964, refused to join now executed president Saddam Hussein's Baath party during the dictator's rule, and told AFP in February 2010 that he was detained by the regime several times before it was overthrown in a 2003 US-led invasion. Violence in Iraq's northern oil province of Kirkuk killed five people on Monday.

Veterans opposed to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars stood Thursday atop a two-story guard tower off Fort Hood in a symbolic watch that protested continued combat deployments. The protest, consisting of members of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), from the post's East Gate came hours after Fort Hood sent troops from a 1st Cavalry Division brigade to Afghanistan, the latest in a series of farewells dating to the 2003 Iraq invasion.

In a continuation of a 11-year propaganda push that glories war and the 'service' of foreign soldiers in Afghanistan, a new television show "Combat Hospital: Welcome to Kandar" will premier is set to launch June 21 on ABC and Global. Combat Hospital," formerly called "The Hot Zone," tells stories of doctors and nurses from Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. and stars Elias Koteas ("The Curious Case of Benjamin Button") and Michelle Borth ("Hawaii Five-0"). Set in a hospital inspired by the Role 3 Multinational Medical Unit (MMU) at Kandahar Airfield in Afghanistan, Combat Hospital charts the frantic lives of the hospital’s resident doctors and nurses. Few, or none, of Afghanistan's 30 million citizens are expected to be shown in the series...except a few in the context as local victims being "saved" by occupation troops. posted 26 May, 2011

Troop morale plunges; 5 US dead; US raid kills 4 Afghans and German response to protests kill more; US drone kills 4 in Pakistan; 34 Iraqis dead

As fighting and casualties in Afghanistan's war reached an all-time high, U.S. soldiers and Marines there reported plunging morale and the highest rates of mental health problems in five years according to a new Army report. Only 46.5 percent of soldiers said their morale was medium, high or very high last year, compared with 65.7 percent in 2005. For Marines, it was only 58.6 percent last year compared with 70.4 percent when they were surveyed in 2006 in Iraq.

Some 70 percent to 80 percent of troops surveyed for the report said they had seen a buddy killed, roughly half of soldiers and 56 percent of Marines said they'd killed an enemy fighter, and about two-thirds of troops said that a roadside bomb — the No. 1 weapon of insurgents — had gone off within 55 yards of them. The military says it boosted the mental health staff in the Afghanistan to 1 for every 646 soldiers last year, compared with 1 for every 1,123 in 2009. "I do believe we're making progress," said Lt. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, the Army surgeon general regarding mental health services for soldiers.

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by an IED on Monday in the city of Spin Ghbarga. Another soldier was killed in Kandahar on Wednesday. The number of U.S. troops killed in connection with the Afghanistan war now exceeds 1501. A French soldier died in a blast on Thursday and 2 Hungarian soldiers died and four more were injured when their armoured vehicle overturned on Tuesday.

In Afghanistan on Saturday, a midday explosion caused by a suicide bomber inside the Kabul's main military hospital killed six and wounded 23 more. Insurgents killed at least 35 workers and guards in an attack on a road construction site in a remote area of eastern Afghanistan on Thursday.

At least 12 people were killed and more than 50 others injured on Wednesday in violent Afghan demonstrations over the deaths of four people in a U.S. raid the day before. Germany's military, the Bundeswehr, has released new and explosive details about a violent altercation between demonstrators and German soldiers. In a statement posted on its website Friday morning, the military contradicted its earlier claims and admitted that German soldier had deliberately fired upon the demonstrators. The incident occurred Wednesday morning in front of a German military camp in the northern Afghan city of Taloqan, in Takhar province, as a funeral march was being held for four people, including two women, who had been killed by US troops in a nighttime raid.

Pakistan's Taliban attacked a U.S. consulate convoy on Friday in the volatile northwestern city of Peshawar, the latest in a surge of violence since U.S. forces killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden earlier this month. U.S. embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez said no Americans were killed or seriously wounded in the car bomb attack, which killed one Pakistani and wounded 10 people.

At least 16 people were killed in Pakistan on Saturday after a bomb hit a truck carrying fuel for NATO forces in Afghanistan. Most of the dead were local residents who were siphoning gas from it. Separately, 14 NATO tankers were damaged in a bombing in Torkham, but no one was hurt. A US drone on Friday fired a pair of missiles against the Tappi district of Pakistan’s North Waziristan Agency destroying a car and killing four people.

In Iraq, at least seven people have been killed in separate attacks on Saturday. A roadside bomb targeting an Iraqi army patrol killed two soldiers and wounded two others in the city of Kirkuk. Also in Kirkuk, an off-duty police officer and his brother were killed when gunmen stormed his house. In Mosul, three policemen were killed and eight others wounded. Double bombing killed at least 27 people, almost all of them police officers, and wounded dozens in a parking lot outside the main police offices in Kirkuk on Thursday.

Taking a page from the Bush Administration, President Barack Obama wrote a letter to congressional leaders on Saturday suggesting that the U.S. role in Libya is "limited" he does not need to seek congressional approval, as required by the War Powers Act. posted 21 May, 2011

Longer stay in Iraq?; Pak training school attacked; NATO kills children during raids

Iraq's prime minister has offered his clearest opening yet for the possibility of extending the presence of U.S. troops here past their scheduled Dec. 31 departure date. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's, under pressure from U.S. commanders, said that he will discuss the option with other politicians. In addition to the troop's scheduled leaving, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Subway and Cinnabon are leaving the country, too.

In Iraq on Sunday, three members of the same family and two other people were killed in violence in the capital and northern Iraq. In Baghdad, one person was killed and 12 wounded in nine rocket attacks across Baghdad, including five fired into the heavily-fortified Green Zone that is home to the US embassy and parliament. A roadside bomb near the National Theatre in central Baghdad, meanwhile, wounded three people. Three young boys were killed and another was badly wounded on Sunday when an unexploded cluster bomb detonated in a garden in which they werre playing in the village of Al-Attah. Saturday night, five policement in Tuz township, south of Kirkuk, were injured by an explosive charge. Police found a mass grave with the remains of 20 bodies in southern Fallujah on Saturday.

Two back-to-back suicide bombings at a paramilitary police training centre in north-western Pakistan Friday killed at least 80 people, most of them recruits, and injured more than 100. The twin bombings took place outside the base of the paramilitary Frontier Constabulary (FC) police in Shabqadar area of Charsadda district, as the recruits were preparing to go on leave.

NATO tankers were set ablaze again on Sunday on the road from Jalalabad. Pakistani lawmakers have demanded an end to American missile strikes against Islamist militants on their soil Saturday, and warned that Pakistan may cut NATO's supply line to Afghanistan if the attacks don't stop. At least 4,000 people attended a Sunday demonstration in Lahore. Protesters chanted ”Down with America” and carried a banner that said ”America is the worst enemy of humanity!”

In Afghanistan, an insurgent attack on U.S. troops on Sunday wounded at least one Marine. A British marine was killed Sunday in a blast in southern Afghanistan. Two NATO service members were killed in southwestern Helmand province by an Afghan policeman on Thursday. A U.S. Marine died in a firefight earlier in the week and several more were wounded.

NATO says its troops and Afghan forces mistakenly killed a young girl and a man who turned out to be a police officer during an overnight raid in eastern Afghanistan on Wednesday. In another raid, on Friday in Narra, U.S. troops once again killed a boy. posted 15 May, 2011

Iraq bombing, prison break; Taliban battle for Kandahar rages; OBL Dead

Violence continues to plague many parts of Iraq as the U.S. occupation and war continues in that country. In Iraq this week asuicide bomber who drove his bomb-filled car into a police station in Hilla, killing 24 policemen and wounded 72 others. Eight Katusha rocket launchers were found in Basra on Saturday during a raid that led to the arrest of 12 persons. A man accused of masterminding an attack on a Baghdad church last year wrestled a gun from a guard at a detention facility on Sunday, freed his comrades and launched an hours-long assault that ended with 17 people dead, including a top counterterrorism officer. An officer and an armed man have been killed and a policeman injured in an armed clash in southwestern Kirkuk on Sunday.

The death of an American soldier last Friday made April the deadliest month for U.S. forces in Iraq since 2009. The soldier's death brought the U.S.' total Iraq death tally in April to 11. Around 45,000 U.S. troops remain stationed in Iraq. A Texas soldier died of "non-combat" injuries in Afghanistan on Saturday. Another soldier was killed earlier in the week.

Afghan security forces clashed with militants in Kandahar for a second day on Sunday after the Taliban unleashed a major assault on government buildings in Afghanistan's second largest city. An estimated 100 Taliban fighters began an assualt on Kandahar on Saturday and briefly took over a government building and the Kandahar Hotel triggering gunbattles that killed two people in what the militants said was part of their "spring offensive".

NATO troops and helicopters could be seen supporting Afghan forces in the clash. Security forces were apparently waiting for the militants to run out of ammunition. The size and scope of the attack, which began at noon Saturday, cast doubt on the effectiveness of a yearlong campaign to secure Afghanistan’s south and Kandahar in particular.

Also in Afghanistan, residents near Jalalabad claimed that U.S. forces killed on civilians and arrested two others on Saturday. Six Afghans were wounded when a bomb hidden in a bag exploded in Jalalabad city late on Wednesday.

Last Sunday, U.S. President Obama announced to the world that notorious terrorist Osama Bin Laden had been executed during a military raid in Pakistan. Much evidence seized during the raid is indicating the level of reach and ambition of OBL's network. The raid has also led to recriminations between Pakistan and the U.S., along with much speculation about how the world's most wanted man could live for years in Pakistan.

On Friday, the U.S. continued its war in Pakistan with a drone strike in the Data Khel region of North Waziristan which killed 12 persons. Last month, 44 people were killed in a drone strike in Pakistan's tribal region and the government of Pakistan formally asked the U.S. government for an apology. posted 8 May, 2011

10 Americans dead in Afghanistan; Obama rearranges deck chairs; Bush bikes

Eight American soldiers and one U.S. contractor were executed today when a veteran Afghan military pilot opened fire at Kabul airport Wednesday. The military trainers were meeting with their Afghan counterparts when an argument broke out. Four Afghans were seriously wounded and the shooter took his own life. The Pentagon also announced that another Marine was killed in Afghanistan on Sunday.

President Obama rearranged the deck chairs on the sinking ship of security and defense. He has selected CIA Director Leon Panetta to become the next Secretary of War, appointed Gen. Petraeus to head the CIA, and Marine Lt. Gen. John Allen will be nominated to replace Army Gen. David Petraeus in Afghanistan. Former U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker is expected to be named Thursday as the new U.S. envoy in Afghanistan, replacing outgoing Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.

Seven US fuel tankers supplying oil to American troops and torched them in Afghanistan's eastern province of Ghazni early Tuesday and another tanker was torched on Wednesday on the Jalabad-Kabul highway.

Three people were killed and 29 injured in four consecutive blasts targeting a security official in northern Iraq on Wednesday. Four bombs went off consecutively late Tuesday in western Kirkuk. Unidentified gunmen also kidnapped the son of Iraqi former deputy prime minister in Kirkuk after storming into the home of Sa'ad Abid Mutlak al- Jubouri.

Former president and war criminal, George W. Bush, biked with 15 American soldiers who lost limbs or suffered serious injuries in Iraq or Afghanistan. Bush said Wednesday that his three days on the desert trails of Big Bend National Park were "real cool, unbelievable." Meanwhile Operation Enduring Disaster continues. posted 27 April, 2011

2 US soldiers killed in Iraq; Taliban downs 'copter; NATO supplies stopped by peace advocates; Manning protest interrupts Obama fundraiser

Two U.S. soldiers were killed Friday during operations in southern Iraq, the U.S. military said Saturday. Although the U.S. combat mission in Iraq "officially" ended last year, around 47,000 troops remain in the country. Also on Saturday, gunmen opened fire from a speeding car and killed a civilian employee of the Ministry of Defense in southern Baghdad's Saidiya district. A 28-year-old Kurdish protester died of gunshot wounds on Saturday, becoming the tenth person killed in more than two months of rallies in Iraq's northern Kurdish region, which have recieved little outside attention.

Gunmen killed Sadiq Shakir, an assistant general manager in the Foreign Ministry, in northern Baghdad late on Friday and Mohammed Qassim, an officer with the National Intelligence Service, in his car in western Baghdad's al-Liqa Square. During the week there were at least 14 more casualties in other incidents in Kirkuk, Ramadi, Samarra, Mosul and Baghdad. Hundreds of followers of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr took to the streets of Baghdad on Saturday, trampling US flags and vowing to escalate military resistance if US troops fail to leave Iraq, as planned at the end of the year.

Former chief UN nuclear inspector Mohamed ElBaradei suggests in a new memoir that Bush administration officials should face international criminal investigation for the "shame of a needless war" in Iraq. Freer to speak now than he was as an international civil servant, the Nobel-winning Egyptian accuses U.S. leaders of "grotesque distortion" in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion, when then-President George W. Bush and his lieutenants claimed Iraq possessed doomsday weapons despite contrary evidence collected by ElBaradei's and other arms inspectors inside the country. The Iraq war taught him that "deliberate deception was not limited to small countries ruled by ruthless dictators," ElBaradei writes in "The Age of Deception," being published Tuesday by Henry Holt and Company.

In Afghanistan, Taliban insurgents shot down a NATO helicopter Saturday in a mountainous area of eastern Afghanistan where fighting has intensified, and one foreign service member on the ground was killed. Militants ambushed an Afghan police vehicle on Saturday, killing two policemen and wounding two others in Dara Nur district of Nangarhar province.

On Friday, a member of Afghan Public Protection Forces was killed by a U.S. airstrike while guarding a road construction project in Spera district of Khost province. Also, a suicide attacker on foot detonated a vest packed with explosives Friday afternoon at the entrance to a building used by education officials in Jayi Maydan district.

An article published Saturday in Metro Magazine claims New Zealand's SAS troops in Afghanistan took prisoners, and may have handed them over to US and Afghan authorities who tortured them. Questions were raised last year about whether the SAS were responsible for sending prisoners to the Afghan National Directorate of Security (NDS), the troubled country's intelligence service. The British military has been banned -- after a High Court ruling -- from handing prisoners to the directorate in Kabul as it is notorious for torture. A British soldier was killed on Wednesday.

Pakistan suspended delivery of supplies Saturday to NATO troops in Afghanistan via its land border for three days as campaigners began a sit-in on the supply route over US drone attacks. Supporters of cricket hero-turned-politician Imran Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice) party gathered on the Peshawar ring road Saturday for the planned two-day sit-in aiming to block the route used by supply trucks. The party called the demonstration to protest over US missile attacks from unmanned aircraft in Pakistan.

The administration in Peshawar said the NATO trucking service had been halted for three days, and the vehicles ordered to park in other cities on the route from Friday. Organisers said they expected more than 20,000 people to gather locally for the protest, and many more to arrive in the caravan accompanying Khan. Banners on Peshawar's main road bore the message "Stop drone attacks on innocent tribal people," and images of crossed-out drone aircraft. A US drone strike in northwest Pakistan killed 25 people including three women and four children on Friday.

US President Barack Obama on Thursday faced a group of protesters over the detention of Bradley Manning, a US soldier held for allegedly passing classified documents to WikiLeaks, while on a fundriasing tour of California. Manning was transferred Wednesday from a military prison at Quantico, Virginia, to another in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, according to the Pentagon. The 23-year-old Welsh-born US Army private, who allegedly provided the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks with a trove of secret military and diplomatic documents, has been imprisoned at Quantico since July 2010. Manning's detention conditions, which have included solitary confinement and being forced to sleep naked, have drawn the attention of Amnesty International, the American Civil Liberties Union and the British government

The US-led war In Lybia is close to reaching a stalemake and in Syria, police killed as many as 88 people and wounded hundreds more on Friday as protests spread throughout that country. posted 23 April, 2011

24 Iraqi casualties: 8 more U.S. dead; Pak, Libyan mess.

During the past three days, there have been more than 24 war casualties in Iraq, including bombs and gunmen who killed six people in Iraq on Sunday, four of them from the same family. The four family members -- parents and two daughters in their 20s -- were all shot in the head overnight by gunmen who spared a third, seven-year-old daughter. Magnetic "sticky bombs" attached to cars killed two civilians and wounded another in Kirkuk.

On Saturday, a roadside bomb exploded near the convoy of Mohammed Abid, an official with Iraq's Higher Education Ministry, in the Karrada district of central Baghdad. A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi army patrol, wounding two people, including a soldier, in the Washash district. Gunmen opened fire at a police patrol and killed one policeman in the southern Baghdad district of Ilaam. A sticky bomb attached to the car of a police lieutenant-colonel cut off part of his legs when it exploded in the town of Khaldiya. A bomb attached to a car killed the driver in central Kirkuk.

A roadside bomb went off at an Iraqi army checkpoint close to a mosque and wounded four people, including two soldiers in Mosul on Friday. A sticky bomb attached to an Iraqi army vehicle seriously wounded an Iraqi officer in southern Kirkuk. Two policemen were wounded in Mosul in seperate attacks.

U.S. House Speaker John Boehner met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday during a surprise visit to Baghdad. Boehner, along with two West Texas congressmen, met at al-Maliki's office to discuss the future of strategic cooperation between the two countries and how U.S. soldiers can remain in Iraq past the end of the year deadline. Afterall, they argued, the U.S. has spent billions of dollars building permanent military bases.

In unrelated news, Houston-based Marthon Oil has discovered a new oil field near Kirkuk. Marathon announced it encountered 400 feet of net oil pay from the Atrush-1 discovery well about 50 miles north of Erbil. The well was drilled to a depth of around 11,000 feet and yielded more than 6,000 bpd during drill stem tests

Three more U.S. servicemen were killed in Afghanistan on Saturday in two separate bomb attacks in the south on the same day that five soldiers were killed in a suicide bombing by a Taliban sleeper agent at a U.S. base in the east. The suicide attack in eastern Laghman province also killed four Afghan soldiers and an interpreter on one of NATO's largest military bases. Afghanistan's Ministry of Defense said it was investigating whether the attacker was an insurgent disguised in a fake uniform, or the latest in a string of "rogue" members of the Afghan security forces who have turned on their colleagues and mentors. On Friday, a suicide bomber in police uniform evaded tight security in police Headquarters in Kandahar city and killed Khan Mohammad Mujahid, provincial police chief of Kandahar.

Pakistani police on Sunday found the bodies of eight unidentified men in a deserted well near Attock city in Punjab province. The dead men were aged between 20 and 30 years. All the dead men had beards and police said they did not appear to be residents of the Attock district.

The U.S.-led overseas wars - Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and now Libya - are political and military messes. However, not a single military strategist in the Pentagon has been fired for their failures and false assumptions of "victory", costs, or the millions of war casualties and families left homeless and in ruin. No members of the U.S. political establishment have been sanctioned or arrest for war crimes. Failure to do so, even as these 21st-century wars continue to escalate, ensures more messes in the future.

Libyan rebels fled Ajdabiya Sunday under artillery attack from Moammar Gadhafi's forces as NATO said its jets were grounded by a sandstorm. On Saturday, rebel Gen. Abdel Fattah Younes had told al-Arabiya television his fighters were in Brega, 40 miles west of Ajdabiya. In the west, rebel-held sections of Misurata came under heavy artillery fire by Gadhafi's troops. At least six people had been killed and nearly 50 others wounded by the government barrage. The U.S. government and other allies are reportedly trying to find an African country willing to give Gadhafi shelter after having started the war a month ago. posted 17 April, 2011

Iraq ultimatum: "Occupation Out"; Iranian exiles killed; 9 US casualties; Drone attacks continue in Pakistan

Iraqi cleric, Moqtada Sadr has called for a full withdrawal of occupying US forces from Iraq no later than agreed date at the end of 2011 or face armed resistance. Sadr’s ultimatum followed a recent report over US planning to boost the number of staff at its embassy in Iraq. The US embassy in Baghdad reportedly the largest of its kind around the world serves as a military intelligence base with enough rooms to host tens of thousands of personnel. The Shia cleric said all US forces including private contractors must leave Iraq before the end of this year or his forces could wage armed resistance against US military presence if the latter somehow decides to prolong its stay.

The United Nations on Thursday confirmed 34 people have been found dead at an Iranian dissident camp in Iraq after Iraqi security forces launched an operation against the camp last week. The group has been based in Iraq since the 1980s when it fled Iran after the Revolution. The PMOI, also known as Mojahedin-e Khalq, was welcomed in the 1980s by then-President Saddam Hussein, who was fighting a war against Iran. He funded and armed the PMOI, which fought alongside Iraqi troops.

Although the U.S. and Iran consider them a terrorist organization, the U.S. funded its leaders during the past 10 years. Iraqi officials said the army entered Camp Ashraf - in Diyala province north of Baghdad and home to about 3,500 people - last Friday to confront stone-throwers, and said the clashes were limited. But refugess said the raid was a full-scale military assault with armoured vehicles, and said 300 others had been injured

Elsewhere in Iraq, a mass grave holding the remains of over 800 bodies, many believed to be opponents of ousted leader Saddam Hussein, was discovered in the desert of western Anbar province. The graves included remains of Kurds, Shi'ites, men, women and children.

A U.S. soldier died Tuesday in Iraq in a "non-combat" incident. Another soldier was killed when insurgents attacked his patrol with small arms and RPGs in Wardak province last Friday. Several others were wounded in the attack. Another soldier died Monday when his vehicle hit an IED. Another solder was wounded by a sniper's bullet Sunday while on foot patrol in southern Afghanistan. At least 1424 members of the US military have died in Afghanistan as a result of the 2001 U.S. invasion.

A U.S. Marine reservist and a Navy corpsman were killed in a drone airstrike in Afghanistan last week in an apparent case of friendly fire. The two soldiers were killed Wednesday by a Hellfire missile fired from a U.S. Air Force Predator in what appears to be a case of mistaken identity. They were part of a Marine unit moving in to reinforce fellow Marines under heavy fire from enemy forces outside Sangin in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan.

Also in Afghanistan, a suspected Taliban suicide attacker struck in Afghanistan's eastern provinces Thursday, claiming the lives of three police officers at a training center that U.S. and Afghan officials set up in hopes of providing police support to isolated villages. The attack in Paktia province follows by one day a suicide attack in Kunar province that killed 10 government-allied tribal leaders and by one week an assault in Nangarhar province on an airport base for U.S. troops.

US drone aircraft fired four missiles in Pakistan's South Waziristan tribal region on Wednesday, killing six people. The attack came one day after the Pakistani government demanded an end to U.S. drone attacks. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan published a report on Thursday saying that American drones killed 957 civilians in Pakistan in 2010. posted 14 April, 2011

2 soldiers dead in Iraq, 5 in Afghanistan; Libyan attacks anger Africans; Petreaus to lead CIA in shuffle?

Six Americans have already died this week in Obama's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Two soldiers died in Operation False Dawn in Iraq and five more were killed in Operation Enduring Disaster in Afghanistan. Violence in those countries continues.

In Iraq, asuicide bombing and roadside explosions in several locations in Iraq killed at least nine people and wounded 14 on Wednesday. At least nine people were slain in separate attacks in Iraq on Tuesday, including six members of the family of a university professor who died in an attack last year.

Fueling the already enormous anger across Afghanistan over NATO night raids, Governor Rahmati of the Sar-e Pol Province has reported that a raid on Mondayin his province killed six civilians and wounded four others. The US insisted that everyone killed was an “insurgent." British troops killed two Afghan civilians on Wednesday in western Kabul and shot dead a third man when local people tried to prevent the soldiers leaving the scene

The military force unleashed on Libya by the U.S. and its partners upset several African nations despite the international community's widespread concerns over Moammar Gadhafi's use of force against his own people, the top U.S. commander for the continent told Congress on Tuesday. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of the U.S. Africa Command, described the mixed reaction from the African Union to the airstrikes and enforcement of a no-fly zone over Libya, and his imperative to explain the need for swift action to perturbed nations. The U.S.-led war in Libya entered its third week with no end in sight and growing frustration throughout the region.

Not content with letting generals run much of the U.S., president Obama is considering appointing Gen. David Petreaus to head the CIA after he jumps ships in the disastrous overseas wars. Officials reported last week that Petraeus was going to be replaced as commander of the Afghan War over the summer, but did not indicate what position he would take afterward. Lt. Gen. John Allen is said to be replacing him in Afghanistan. The shuffle is coming because two top officials, Joint Chiefs of Staff head Admiral Michael Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are both planning to retire in the summer. Under the reported change, Gen. James Cartwright would replace Admiral Mullen, while current CIA Director Leon Panetta would replace Gates as Defense Secretary. This would free up the position of CIA director for Petraeus.

Gunmen in Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan torched two tankers carrying fuel for US and NATO troops in Afghanistan on Wednesday. posted 6 April, 2011

21 US casualties in Afghanistan; Seven UN workers killed; Violence in Iraq, Pakistan

Even as America ignores the 10 year war and occupation of Afghanistan, there were 21 more casualties this week as Obama's war escalation continues.

Six US soldiers were killed in action and at least 15 others wounded in Afghanistan earlier this week when they came under attack in Kunar province near the Pakistan border. The casualties occured on March 29 when they were fired upon from three sides by Taliban fighters. The heavy firefight lasted hours, with the U.S. soldiers and Afghan forces digging into a muddy hillside. According to the military some 50 Taliban fighters were killed and a Taliban radio headquarters was destroyed. Thirty U.S. service members have died in Afghanistan in March, more than double the number from the month before.

Afghans angry over the burning of a Quran at a small Florida church stormed a U.N. compound in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing seven foreigners. What began as an anti-U.S. protest in Mazar-i-Sharif erupted into a full-scale riot when the U.N. compound was attacked. Among the foreign dead were a Norwegian pilot, a Swede, a Romanian and four Nepalese guards. A Russian was injured. Four Afghan protesters were also killed and scores were injured.

In Iraq, there were clashes today between citizens and the police in Sulaimaniyah, some 173 miles north of Baghdad, during protests against the two main Kurdish parties over corruption. Thirty-five people, most of them policemen, were injured. On Tuesday in Tikrit, insurgents set fire to three slain Salahuddin province councilmen. Tuesday's attack also left 56 victims dead and 98 wounded, including government workers, security forces and bystanders.

A terminal in the town of Landi Kotalnorthwestern Pakistan used by trucks carrying supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan was attacked Friday. Three Pakistani guards were killed. Elsewhere in Darra Adam Khel, a child was killed in an explosion set off by a suicide bomber fleeing from residents who opened fire at him. Residents spotted the bomber suspiciously roaming around a mosque before Friday prayers. They fired shots at him after he ran into a house and then heard a loud explosion. It was unclear if the bomber detonated his explosives himself or if they were triggered by the gunfire. The blast killed a young boy in the house and wounded five other people. posted 1 April, 2011

Kurdish journalists targeted; US kills 9 more Afghan civilians, including 3 children; Racist US preacher sparks outrage

Violence continues in Iraq, eight years after the U.S. began the invasion. One person was killed and 10 others were wounded in separate gunfire and bomb attacks in Baghdad and Iraq's northern city of Mosul on Sunday. Gunmen shot dead a civilian in al-Jamia neighborhood and a gunman hurled a hand grenade on a police patrol. In Baghdad, nine people were wounded when a roadside bomb ripped through a crowded area in al-Eskan neighborhood.

On Saturday, a bomb attached to the car of a university professor killed him and wounded three others, including his wife, when it went off in al-Nisour Square in central Baghdad. Gunmen opened fire at an Iraqi army checkpoint killed one soldier and wounded two people including one civilian in Baghdad's northwestern Hurriya district. In Mosul, gunmen shot dead an off-duty Iraqi army lieutenant near his house.

After having overcome various intimidation tactics, journalists who report on political corruption and social unrest in Iraq’s Kurdish north are now being threatened that their children would be targeted if they do not keep silent, according to Human Rights Watch. A reporter says said journalists who cover demonstrations and political corruption receive such threats through mobile text messages or phone calls by unidentified parties asking them to refrain from reporting on protests taking place in Kurdistan or face death or expose their children to possible attacks.

A U.S. airstrike on Friday in the Now Zad district of southern Afghanistan murdered 7 civilians - two men, two women and three children. Five other people were wounded, including a man, a woman and three more children. This comes after U.S. attack helicopters opened fire on a vehicle on Wednesday, killing two civilians who were walking down the street near the vehicle. The Pentagon said they "continue to make progress" in Afghanistan.

On Sunday, Taliban insurgents abducted around 40 Afghan police recruits in an ambush in a volatile. The men were abducted by militants in the Chapa Dara district of remote northeastern Kunar province after returning from neighboring Nuristan province. The police chief of Nuristan said the men had gone to the provincial capital to try to sign up to join the police.

Controversial American preacher Terry Jones, who oversaw the burning of a Quran by an evangelical preacher in a Florida church, prompted mass protests in Pakistan. Islamabad has also conveyed sharply worded messages to the US over that nation’s feelings of shock and anguish at the recent desecration of the Quran In letters addressed to the US officials and church leaders, the Pakistani embassy in Washington stressed that all governments were responsible for preventing such “reprehensible” and “provocative” acts.

The letters, according to a Pakistani official, have been addressed to the U.S. Department of State, and religious groups including the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, US Commission on International Religious Freedom and the National Council of Churches. Christians in India and Pakistan called Jone's act "pure madness"

On March 20, Jones oversaw the burning of a Quran after a mock trial in Florida. Not content with the needless shocking of the flame, Jones now plans to travel to Dearborn, Michigan - home to many people from the Middle East - to protest against Islamic law outside the Islamic Center of America, a mosque in Dearborn. posted 19 March, 2011

8 years later, U.S. still in Iraq; Afghan children killed; Paks walk out of U.S. war talks

Eight years after the illegal and immoral invasion began, thousands of U.S. troops remain in Iraq. Despite a security agreement requiring a full U.S. military withdrawal by the year's end, hundreds if not thousands of American troops will probably continue to be in Iraq beyond 2011. About 47,000 American troops and 15,000 clandestine operatives remain in Iraq today. As of this week, 4,439 U.S. personnel have been killed and the war has cost taxpayers more than $750 billion. More than 4 million Iraqis have been killed, injured or left homeless as a direct result of the invasion by the George W. Bush Regime and the subsequent occupation by the Barack Obama Administration.

Following the freedom movement in Egypt, thousands of Iraqis have been protesting from one end of the country to the other against corruption by U.S.-backed officials. Hundreds of activists have been arrested, dozens of people have been killed during the past week, Iraqis are facing restrictions on travel and tensions are rising as nonviolent protests become victim of the Maliki security forces. More than 5,000 Iraqis rallied Friday in northern Diyala province to denounce a crackdown on Shiite-led demonstrators in Bahrain, with many volunteering to join the protests in the Gulf kingdom.

Also this week, a car bomb ripped through a crowd outside a hospital in Kirkuk on Wednesday, killing a mother and her newborn baby and wounding 33 other people. Antiwar protests are being held throughout the world today, March 19 as the U.S. plans to begin a possible new war in Libya.

A U.S. air strike killed two Afghan children, on Tuesday and the Pentagon continues to say they are "winning" in that country. War officials said it had targeted suspected insurgents in the raid, which took place near where nine people -- who Afghan officials said were children collecting firewood -- were killed in an air strike earlier this month. "Last night, two children who were irrigating their land were hit by a coalition air strike and both were killed," said Abdul Marjan, the district chief of Sawkai in Kunar.

There are now 97,000 U.S. occupation forces on the ground fighting alongside 45,000 troops from NATO countries. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Afghan civilians had suffered a "dramatic deterioration" in security in the first two months of the year and described the situation as "untenable." A UN report last week revealed that the deaths of Afghan civilians in the war had increased 15 percent to a record high last year.

A U.S. marine was killed on Thursday. Another died on Friday. A U.K. soldier died from wounds earlier in the week.

Pakistan on Friday pulled out of upcoming talks with the U.S. on the war in Afghanistan, in anger over an American drone missile strike that killed a gathering of civilians on the Afghan border on Thursday. Among the 45 reported dead were tribal elders and other civilians. The dispute comes at a particularly sensitive time in U.S.-Pakistan relations, when Pakistanis are seething over the release Wednesday of a CIA contractor charged with murdering two motorcyclists in the eastern city of Lahore in late January. In announcing that Pakistan would not take part in talks with Afghanistan and the U.S. scheduled for Brussels on March 26, Foreign Secretary Salman Bashir told U.S. Ambassador Cameron Munter that such drone strikes "constituted a flagrant violation of humanitarian norms and law," according to a statement by the Foreign Ministry. posted 19 March, 2011

Karzai: "U.S., NATO must stop!"; Paks, India test nuclear-capable missiles; Violence, protests continue across Iraq

An emotional Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday told international troops to "stop their operations in our land", his strongest remarks yet over U.S. killings of Afghan civilians. Karzai's comments came after a week in which a relative of his was killed in a raid by foreign forces and he rejected an apology by the US commander of troops General David Petraeus for the deaths of nine children in a NATO strike.

"I would like to ask NATO and the US with honour and humbleness and not with arrogance to stop their operations in our land," Karzai said in Pashto as he visited the dead children's relatives in Kunar province, eastern Afghanistan. "We are very tolerant people but now our tolerance has run out." The Afghan president wept as he held a young child who he said had her leg amputated following the latter attack.

"The president, on behalf of the Afghan people, renewed his call on NATO to stop operations that bring about unnecessary losses to the Afghan people," said Waheed Omer, Karzai's press secretary. "We have always maintained that the war on terror cannot be fought in the towns and villages of Afghanistan."

An American and a British soldier were killed on Friday in Afghanistan.

Pakistanis gathered around the bodies of victims of a rocket attack in Khairdin village, some 270 miles southeast of Quetta on Saturday. Rockets fired by suspected militants killed six members of a family. Elsewhere, gunmen attacked and torched three oil tankers carrying supplies for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Two U.S. drone attacks in northwestern Pakistan on Friday afternoon killed at least six people and wounding several others.

Pakistan and India each test-fired nuclear-capable short range ballistic missiles on Friday. Pakistan’s missile, the Hataf-2 (Abdali), has a range of 180 kilometers and can carry nuclear as well as conventional warheads with high accuracy. India's 11-metre Dhanush ("archer's bow" in Sanskrit) has a range of 350 kilometres and is a variant of the STS Prithvi missile developed for the Indian navy while the 8.5-metre Prithvi-II missile has a range of 150-350 kilometres and can carry a one-ton payload.

In Iraq, off-duty soldiers who had just ended their shifts outside the northern city of Mosul when gunmen ambushed their car Saturday morning, killing seven. On Friday, a car bombing wounded 21 people in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

A roadside bomb attack in east Baghdad killed an Iraqi army general on Wednesday while violence across the capital wounded 13 people, including a US soldier. Brigadier General Taha Ahmed Samir, head of training for Iraq's nascent air force, was killed when a military convoy he was in was hit by the blast in Al-Kanat street. Elsewhere in Baghdad, a blast in the Karradat Mariam neighbourhood on the edge of the heavily-fortified Green Zone, left five people wounded. Another explosion in Baab al-Muadham, central Baghdad, injured four persons, including a U.S. soldier. Two other people were wounded by a bomb on Palestine Street.

A bomb attack in the northern province of Nineveh halted oil flow through the Iraq-Turkey pipeline, which carries a quarter of Iraq's crude exports, on Tuesday night. The pipeline has a capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day and typically pumps 500,000 bpd. The pipeline has a capacity of 1.6 million barrels per day and typically pumps 500,000 bpd.

A massive demonstration was staged on Friday in al-Tahrir square in central Baghdad, calling for improving services and fighting corruption in a "Friday of Truth". Several Iraqis among a crowd of protesters accused security forces of detaining and beating them. There were demonstrations in other major Iraqi cities. The largest rally was in northern Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, with an estimated turnout of 4,000. posted 12 March, 2011

Iraqi "Day of Regret"; Child killers kill children; 5 U.S. dead; War Jokers

Violence continued throughout the length of Iraq this week as the U.S. occupation continued. A roadside bomb killed seven people and wounded 18 Sunday morning in the oil-rich city of Basra. A member of an anti-Qaida paramilitary group, known as Awakening Council, was killed and 13 people were wounded in gunfire and roadside bomb attacks in Iraq on Saturday. At least eight people died when a suicide bomber targeting Iraqi soldiers detonated his explosives outside of a bank in Haditha Thursday.

Hundreds of Iraq protesters took to the streets of central Baghdad on Monday in a "Day of Regret" to mark one year since Iraq's parliamentary polls, railing against what they said were politicians' broken promises. Two opposition parties that led protests in Baghdad said Monday Iraqi security forces ordered their offices closed. Gunmen raided a privately-owned radio station in Iraq's Kurdish region on Sunday, shutting down broadcasts encouraging protests against the Kurdish government. Following the training of the Pentagon, Iraqi security forces have recently begun to crack down on journalists around the country.

Afghans spontaneously protested the arrival of U.S. Secretary of War, Robert Gates, as he made a visit to their country, days after U.S. soldiers killed 9 Afghanistan children in Operation Enduring Disaster. Gates on Monday offered his personal apology to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai for the killings of nine Afghan boys last week, saying the incident "breaks our hearts." (at the Pentagon). Karzai rejected the apolgy.

The children were collecting firewood on Tuesday March 1 under a tree in eastern Kunar province. Four of the nine boys killed were seven years old, three were eight, one was nine years old and one was twelve. One child was also wounded. Suddenly they were attacked by U.S. planes who thought they might be "insurgents". The air raid came in the wake of rocket attacks on a U.S. military forward operating base in Darah-Ye Pech district.

"Zekirullah, a young Afghan friend of mine, is 15 years old. He rises at 2:00 a.m. several mornings each week and rides his donkey for six hours to reach a mountainside where he can collect wood -- scrub, brush and twigs," reported a local man. "He loads the wood onto his donkey and then journeys home where he and his family stack the wood on top of their home. They don’t have appliances to heat the home, and even if they did the villagers only get electricity for two hours a day, generally between 1:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Families rely on their small children to go out and collect fuel for heat during the harsh winters and for cooking year round."

Elsewhere, at least 12 Afghans, including children, were killed by a roadside bomb in Paktika province on Sunday. German prosecutors said Friday a suspected Islamic radical shot dead two US airmen to avenge alleged atrocities in Afghanistan, and that more deaths were only prevented because his gun jammed.

Three U.S. soldiers were killed in Afghanistan last Monday. Two more soldiers were killed over the weekend.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, shared what was meant to be a private joke about Libya when the two met on the tarmac in Kabul today. But the exchange was caught on an open microphone and didn't remain private for long.

PETRAEUS: "Welcome back, sir, flying a little bigger plane than normal ... You gonna launch some attacks on Libya or something?"

GATES:"Yeah [laughter]. Exactly."

So much for Pentagon "leadership". posted 07 March, 2011

Protests throughout Iraq; Afghan war continues; U.S. civilian deaths confirmed; NATO tankers torched

Protests this week left at least dozens dead and scores more injured across Iraq - from Mosula and Sulaimaniyah in the north to Basra in the south. The protestors - coming from all ethnic and religious groups, are demanding an end to corruption, poor basic services and from infringments on basic freedoms. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki gave government ministers 100 days to deliver results and eliminate corruption or be fired, the government announced after an emergency cabinet meeting Sunday. Maliki also said there would be investigations into the deaths to determine who started the violence.

On Saturday, protesters in Samarra defied curfew to attend the funerals of two people killed during protests there, chanting "God is great" and "Down with the government." Demonstrators attacked the city council building and set it on fire in Kubaisa. In several cities, police said security forces fired at crowds of protesters to disperse them. In Tikrit, police said two protesters were killed and 17 others were wounded during the clashes. At least 27 demonstrators were injured Sunday in clashes with security forces in Amara city. Hundreds of people have been detained by the government security forces. Tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers and covert agents remain in Iraq, as well.

In Afghanistan, eleven people, including a 10-year-old child, were killed Sunday in three bomb blasts. Eight civilians and two policemen were killed in two successive bombings at an illegal dog fight in southern province of Kandahar. In a separate incident on Sunday, a 10-year-old boy was killed when a roadside bomb struck a patrolling police vehicle in the western province of Herat.

At least 24 people were wounded in a suicide car bomb explosion in Spin Boldak town on the Pakistan border on Friday. A suicide bomber struck a government administrative center in Kunduz province on Monday, killing 38 people, many of them civilians who were trying to obtain identification cards or other official documents.

An Afghan commission has conclouded that U.S. forces killed 65 civilians in airstrikes in eastern Afghanistan this month. Based on reports from tribal elders and survivors, the government team concluded that NATO had fired on civilians. “Basically, as soon as the villagers heard the shooting and planes roaring overhead, they all struggled to take refuge in an old trench that was used by the mujahedeen during jihad” against the Russians, said Shahzada Massoud, the Afghan leader of the investigation and special adviser for tribal affairs to President Hamid Karzai.

“Those who succeeded in reaching the trenches were killed when the trench collapsed after it was hit by rockets or bombs being fired from coalition helicopters,” said a former member of Parliament, Shuja ul-Mulk, who visited the village. “Those who were on their way to the trench were killed by rockets or bullets. I visited the trench. I saw old, dried blood. I saw women and children’s garments. I saw blood-stained walls of the trench. I saw pieces of blankets and cotton from the quilts the villagers wrapped themselves in because of the cold weather.”

Pentagon officials and pro-war Senators continue to insist they have the "right plan" in Afghanistan.

Unidentified gunmen in Pakistan on Sunday attacked two container trucks carrying supplies to NATO troops in Afghanistan, continuing a series of similar attacks against NATO vehicles. The attack happened near Mangochar in Kalat district of Balochistan Province when truck drivers were approached by gunmen on motorcycles who told them to exit their vehicles before setting them on fire.

Militants also destroyed five government school buildings in Pakistan's lawless tribal region near the northwestern city of Peshawar for promoting "unIslamic teachings." The militants blew up the schools in Darra Adam Khel area late on Saturday.

A U.S. drone killed two people in Dattakhel Mohammedkhel area near Miranshah in North Waziristan on Thursday. posted 27 February, 2011

U.S. troops killing Afghan children and women?; 21+ NATO casualties; Afghan team bailing; Iraq TV station torched; U.S. drones kill Paks

While all eyes are on events in Egypt, Bahrain, Libya and elsewhere, the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan and Iraq continues to take a larger toll. Back in American most military veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq continue to spread falsehoods that they "served" in those countries and helped the people, rather than occupied their villages and provinces.

Like rats leaving a sinking ship, most of Obama's Afghan team is exiting in the coming months. Karl Eikenberry, the ambassador to Kabul, Gen David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, Adm Mike Mullen Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Marc Grossman, a retired diplomat, who just replaced the late Richard Holbrooke as special envoy to the region are all expected to bail as the situation in Afghanistan worsens. Operation Enduring Disaster, already in its 10th year, has become America's longest war and second most expensive.

In Afghanistan's Kunar province, 65 civilians - including 22 women and more than 30 children have been killed by U.S. and NATO troops, during the past four days, according to governor of Kunar province, Fazlullah Wahidi. "According to locals in the area, American helicopters have been constantly bombing the village and have caused tremendous civilian casualties," Wahidi said in an interview. He said he received his information from residents "trapped," in the villages. American commanders went into crisis mode Sunday and launched an investigation into the incident to find out what happened and prevent the episode from damaging relations with the Afghan government.

Such incidents in the past have been a source of major tension between the Afghan government and coalition troops. The loss of civilian life has regularly prompted a stern response from President Hamid Karzai, who spoke out again Sunday, condemning the killings in the "strongest possible terms." Karzai, who put the death toll at 50 civilians, said in a statement that it is his responsibility to protect Afghans' lives and property, and he "will take any steps necessary to prevent and stop civilian casualties in his country."

Also in Afghanistan, two German soldiers were killed and eight others wounded on Friday when a man in Afghan army uniform opened fire at an outpost in Pul-e Khumri. Another German soldier was killed elsewhere. A U.S. soldier died on Thursday in Kunar Province when insurgents attacked his unit with small arms fire. Other soldiers were injured. More than one Australian soldier was killed yesterday. Two French soldiers died and two more were injured when their armored vehicle was attacked on Saturday in the Alasay valley in Kapisa province. A Finnish soldier was killed in an attack on Tuesday near the provincial capital of Aybak.

At least 18 Afghans were killed and another 70 injured when gunmen and suicide bombers dressed as border police attacked a bank in Jalalabad on Saturday.

In Iraq, hundreds of protesters inspired by unrest around the Arab world took to the streets of the northern Iraqi city of Sulaimaniya on Sunday and at least 48 people were injured. Security forces fired in the air when demonstrators chanting against corruption tried to approach the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, where clashes on Thursday killed two people and wounded dozens. Gunmen raided and set fire to a television station in the city, shutting down broadcasts of the protests. The protesters are seeking better public services, the ouster of local officials and other demands. Similar rallies took place in Falluja and other locations.

The Mayor and City Council of Baghdad wants the United States to apologize and pay $1 billion for the damage done to the city not by bombs but by blast walls and Humvees since the U.S.-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein. The city's government issued its demands in a statement on Wednesday that said Baghdad's infrastructure and aesthetics have been seriously damaged by the American military. "The U.S. forces changed this beautiful city to a camp in an ugly and destructive way, which reflected deliberate ignorance and carelessness about the simplest forms of public taste," the statement said. [Note: as someone who visited Baghdad before the invasion, and several times since, I can confirm how much destruction was caused by Pentagon policies. - C] Baghdad's neighborhoods have been sealed off by miles of concrete blast walls, transforming the city into a tangled maze that contributes to massive traffic jams. Despite a sharp reduction in overall violence in recent years only 5 percent of the walls have been removed. The heavy blast walls have damaged sewer and water systems, pavement and parks, said Hakeem Abdul Zahra, the city spokesman.

US drone killed six people overnight in northwest Pakistan. The attack came even as U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Senator John Kerry traveled to Pakistan to push that government to free Raymond Davis. posted 20 February, 2011

Obama proposes more military $; Iraqis Valentine's protest; Standoff continues in Pakistan

President Barack Obama proposed Monday to continue the U.S. military buildup with a defense budget of $670.63 billion for fiscal 2012. core military spending, which does not include funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, increased about $22 billion, or 4% above the 2010 appropriation, to $553 billion. (In contrast, Reagan's DoD budget was $303 billion at the height of the "Cold War").

The Defense Department budget represents about 18% of the $3.7 trillion budget Obama sent to Congress, with a deficit estimated at $1.6 trillion...ensuring that future generations will end up paying for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Department Of Energy also $29.5 Billion For FY 2012 Budget for more nuclear bombs.

Operation Enduring Disaster in Iraq costs U.S. taxpayers $300 million each day, according to the Pentagon. This amount doesn't include the millions more in budget items to replace military equipment, healthcare for returning soldiers, nor future pensions for veterans.

A suicide bomber blew himself up at the entrance of a Kabul shopping and hotel complex Monday, killing two security guards in the second attack in less than a month to hit the heavily secured Afghan capital. A British soldier was killed by an IED on Monday while on an operation in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province. Two British soldiers died in a fire at Camp Bastion.

Four would-be suicide bombers attacked police headquarters in the southern city of Kandahar on Saturday, killing at least 19 people, most of them police officers, in a complex attack involving three car bombs and a battery of rocket-propelled grenades. A suicide bomber in northern Afghanistan killed a district governor and two others on Thursday after walking into the administrator's office to hand over a letter. Five people were also injured in the attack on Abdul Wahid Omerkhail, the governor of Chardara district in the northeastern Kunduz province.

In Iraq, an attack on a bus of Shi'ite pilgrims killed 36 people and wounded 64 more on Saturday. The attack targeted pilgrims returning from a religious ceremony at the al-Askari mosque in the former insurgent stronghold of Samarra, north of Baghdad.

A powerful bomb detonated in Kirkuk, Iraq, on Wednesday Feb. 9, 2011, as security forces and emergency vehicles passed along the main road on their way to attend the scene of another explosion. At least six people were killed and another 35 injured in the explosions.

Iraqi security forces in northern Iraq found a mass grave containing scores of people killed during the height of sectarian violence last decade. At least 153 bodies were discovered in Buhriz, just south of Baqouba in Diyala province.

Iraqis staged a Valentine's Day demonstration against ongoing corruption in their government. The Valentine's Day protest came amid reports of a man in northern Iraq killing himself in an apparent copycat self-immolation – the same dramatic act that galvanized popular discontent in Tunisia. While most protesters here aren't aiming to topple the government – one that Iraqis voted for, despite its imperfections – they continue to complain of chronic corruption and lack of services. "It's time for the government elected by the people to keep its promises and deliver," says Nour al-Qaisi, a journalist and student who held a cloth red rose in her hand as she marched. Most also want the U.S. to vacate their country.

Peace is winning out over the U.S. war model. Iraq has postponed the planned purchase of 18 F-16 fighter planes from the United States this year and diverted the funds to feeding the poor, an official said on Monday, amid growing protests that have been inspired by the uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. "In the new draft budget for 2011 that was presented to us, $900 million was earmarked for the purchase of F-16s, which will be used to finance rations and social benefits," confirmed Mohammed Khalil, a Kurdish MP who is a member of parliament's finance committee.

Pakistani police said Friday that investigators have determined that a detained American Embassy official committed "a clear murder" when he fatally shot two Pakistanis last month, a conclusion that has intensified a diplomatic standoff between the two countries and continued to spur protests in Pakistan. Raymond Davis, 36, has said he killed the two men in self-defense as they tried to rob him at gunpoint at a busy intersection in the eastern city of Lahore on Jan. 27. U.S. officials have repeatedly insisted he qualifies for diplomatic immunity and must be released. posted 14 February, 2011

Malaki announces changes amidst Iraqi protests; 3 US dead in Afghanistan; 7th Gitmo detainee dies

Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki will not run for a third term when his current one expires in 2014, the nation's state television reported Sunday. Al-Maliki is also working to pass legislation that limits his successors to a maximum of two four-year terms in office. Iraq's constitution restricts the country's president from seeking a third term but does not set term limits for the prime minister or members of parliament.

The news comes two days after al-Maliki said he would cut his salary in half amid growing unrest over poor public services and water shortages. Protesters around Iraq have said popular uprisings in both Egypt and Tunisia inspired their weeklong demonstrations for improvements in government services and their quality of life. Thousands have rallied across the country in the past week, railing against rampant poverty, a 45% national unemployment rate and shortages of food, electricity and water, including several hundred in three different parts of Baghdad on Friday.

Elswhere in Iraq, Two explosions wounded at least 16 people Saturday in Salaheddin province. The first explosion involved a car bomb inside a bus station used by Shiite pilgrims in central Samarra. A second incident happened when a roadside bomb struck a bus carrying pilgrims along a highway near Balad. Gunmen wounded four Iraqi soldiers when they opened fire at a security checkpoint in the district of Abu Ghraib in western Baghdad. A roadside bomb targeting a provincial council member wounded two of his guards on Friday in Tuz Khurmato. Four businessmen, including the CEO of investment firm MerchantBridge & Co., were among seven people killed in a plane crash Friday in Sulaimaniyah. Three bombs killed at least six people and wounded 12 more in Ramadi on Thursday.

Two British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan on Friday and two Americans in separate attacks on Saturday. Another Texas soldier was killed Tuesday. Thirty-six members of the occupation coalition have been killed so far in 2011.

At east two pilots were injured their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan's eastern district of Lateh Band near Kabul on Saturday as the combat helicopter was escorting transport helicopters from a French base in the Surobi district of Kabul province back to the capital. US-led forces reportedly killed 4 civilians on Saturday during an airstrike in Badghis province on Saturday.

The widow of a man fatally shot by a U.S. diplomat in Pakistan died Sunday after swallowing pesticide pills, upset over what she saw as a lack of justice in the case. Shumaila Kanwal was rushed to a hospital in her hometown, one hour west of Lahore, after attempting suicide. She died there despite doctors' efforts. Raymond Davis, who works at the U.S. consulate in Lahore, has been jailed since January 27, when authorities say he shot and killed two men on a motorcycle. Davis said the men were trying to rob him and attacked as he drove through a busy neighborhood, according to the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. The case has sparked some protest and fueled anti-American sentiments in Pakistan.

Awal Gul, 48, of Afghanistan, has become the seventh detainee to die at Guantánamo Bay since the U.S. began imprisoning foreign nationals at the military base in January 2002. Gul was held for nine years without being charged or tried for any crime. He reportedly died of a heart attack, though conflicting accounts made it unclear if his death occurred in an exercise yard or in the showers. Gul turned himself in to Northern Alliance commanders in order to demonstrate that he was not involved with the Taliban. Nevertheless, he was handed over to the U.S. authorities and shipped to Guantánamo.
“Awal Gul’s death illustrates too well what Guantánamo has become—a prison where Muslim men are held indefinitely until they die because the president lacks political courage to release or charge them in any forum,” said the Center for Constitutional Rights. posted 06 February, 2011

Iraq refugees not returning; Kabul bomb attack targets Xe, misses; NATO trucks attacked

Gunmen in IRaq fatally shot Abdul-Rahman Jum'a, a senior official in the town hall in al-Abbarah area on Saturday while while Iraqi security forces captured nine suspects across the province. In a separate incident, a civilian was seriously wounded by gunmen who stormed his house in the Sendiyah area in north of Baqouba.

Tony Blair, appearing for the second time before the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war continued to repeat his “I did what I thought was right” mantra and once again using the platform to warn of the “destabilising” and “negative” influence of Iran. Outside, as he prepared to leave, Britishdemonstrators’ chants of: “Tony Blair, to the Hague” were clearly audible. Fewer Iraqis displaced inside and outside the country returned to their homes in 2010 than in the previous year, largely as a result of Iraq's prolonged political deadlock, the UNHCR said on Friday. A total of 26,410 Iraqis, meanwhile, left the country to go into exile last year, including 10,925 to Syria, 6,285 to Iran and 3,480 to Jordan. The UN refugee agency said it estimates there are around 1.3 million internally displaced persons in Iraq, including 500,000 living in "extremely precarious conditions." Several millions refugees still live outside the country, a result of the U.S. 2003 invasion.

A bomb attack on a supermarket in Kabul on Friday killed a prominent Afghan doctor, his rights activist wife and four of their children. Hameeda Barmaki, a professor at Kabul University and child rights activist at the country's Independent Human Rights Commission, was shopping with her husband and children when the blast ripped through the three-story market in downtown Kabul. The Taliban claimed the bombing was targeting the head of Xe (formerly Blackwater). No one from the private security firm was injured in the incident. On Saturday in Afghanistan, a suicide attacker killed Abdul Latif Ashna, the deputy governor of the key province of Kandahar.

Three containers carrying military hardware and goods for ISAF and NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan were attacked by unidentified terrorists in Wadh tehsil of Khuzdar district, some 250 miles southeast of Quetta, Pakistan on Sunday. The containers were heading towards Chaman town from Karachi when some unidentified armed men riding motorcycles opened fire at them. Two of the containers caught fire while the third one overturned and plunged into a ravine as the driver tried to bail out.

Also in Pakistan on Sunday, thousands of Pakistanies rallied in protest against an American official who has been arrested in the shooting deaths of two Pakistanis. The U.S. has said the American acted in self-defense when he shot two armed men who tried to rob him Thursday. The embassy has said he has diplomatic immunity and has accused Pakistan of illegally detaining him. The Pakistani government has refused to release him and says the courts should decide his fate. They say the American will not be handed over to the U.S. Embassy until Pakistani authorities first complete their investigation. posted 30 January, 2011

Afghan war escalation to cost more; Russia plans to enter; 170+ Iraqi casualties; U.S. official kills 2 Pakistanis; Paks forcing out Afghan "illegals"

An Obama administration proposal to escalate the war in Afghanistan would cost the United States as much as an extra $2 billion a year. The plan, under consideration by Afghan, U.S. and NATO officials, would boost troop levels in the Afghan national forces to 378,000 by October 2012 -- from this year's goal of 305,000.

The proposed increase is 17 percent more than the $11.6 billion requested by President Barack Obama for Afghan security training in the fiscal 2011 budget, but it is not likely to encounter big opposition in Congress. The proposed increase is 17 percent more than the $11.6 billion requested by President Barack Obama for Afghan security training in the fiscal 2011 budget, but it is not likely to encounter big opposition in Congress.The decision may come in mid-February, he said, which is when Obama will submit a fiscal 2012 budget plan to Congress.

Russia is making a cautious entry as a security provider in Afghanistan while planning to bring more forces into that country. According to the Afghan Internal Affairs Ministry, the Russian counterpart institution expressed its readiness to train and equip the Afghan police. . Karzai cited the recent US reports about vast deposits of rare metals and other mineral resources in Afghanistan, hypothetically valued at trillions of dollars. The Afghan president called on Russian companies to invest in developing these resources in Afghanistan. Russia does not seek to replace Western forces in Afghanistan, certainly not before their hypothetical withdrawal by 2014. On the contrary, Moscow would prefer these forces to stay in Afghanistan, neither losing nor winning, tying Western resources there while untying Russia’s hands elsewhere.

A massive bombing in Baghdad’s Shi’ite neighborhood of Shula targeted a funeral today, killing around 51people and wounded at least 120 others. The attack is the largest of what has been a growing string of major bombing attacks over the past two weeks. In the wake of the protests angry locals took to the streets, condemning the police for failing to stop the bombing despite the fact that Shula only has one road entrance, and that is a police checkpoint. The police opened fire on the protestestors.

On Wednesday, gunmen using weapons equipped with silencers killed an empolyee at the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Baghdad. Armed men shot dead Jamal Satar, an employee at the Foreign Affairs Ministry, in al-Nisour Square in central Baghdad. A mortar round killed one civilian and wounded another when it landed on their home in southwestern Mosul.

In Pakistan, a U.S. employee in Lahore says he fired when two men approached on a motorcycle, one of them brandishing a pistol. A bystander is killed by another consulate vehicle arriving at the scene. The shooting could spark an anti-U.S. backlash. Not long after the incident, angry crowds burned tires outside the Lahore police station where the consulate employee was being questioned and shouted anti-U.S. slogans.

Pakistan authorities in the Khyber tribal region announced on Wendesday that they demolished 1,400 houses of Afghans living illegally and forceably "repatriated" about 1,000 families to their native country. Akbar Khan, the tehsildar of Landi Kotal town in Khyber Agency, said the millions of Afghans without valid documents would be asked to leave Pakistan. The operation against Afghans living illegally in the region was initiated on the directions of the federal government. posted 27 January, 2011

U.S. drone attacks and protests in Pakistan; Flurry of bombs in Iraq; Afghan political uncertainty; No-bid contracts continue under Obama

A pair of U.S. drone attacks on Sunday killed 6 people in Pakistan's North Waziristan area. In the first drone attack, the aircraft fired two missiles at a vehicle and a house in Doga Mada Khel village, killing four people. Hours later, a drone fired two missiles at a pair of suspected foreign militants riding a motorcycle in the same village, killing them.

The attacks came as more than 2,000 Pakistanis, many of them students, held a protest in Mir Ali and Peshawar, demanding an end to the drone strikes, saying they killed innocent civilians. The people who marched through the streets of North Waziristan on Sunday protesting the strikes shouted "Death to the U.S." and "Death to the CIA." Some 2,000 people held a similar protest in North Waziristan's main town of Miran Shah on Friday.

Elsewhere, in the northwest, gunmen ambushed a vehicle Sunday carrying the former mayor of a town wracked by militancy, killing three people and wounding four others. Former Pakistani intelligence officer has apparently been killed by his Taliban kidnappers, the missing man's family said Sunday. Also Sunday, a roadside bomb exploded as police were examining a bullet-riddled body that had been dumped on the outskirts of the northwestern city of Peshawar. The blast injured three policemen and one civilian.

A flurry of morning bombs killed 10 people and wounded 34 around Baghdad Sunday morning as Iraqis began their work week. The attacks included roadside bombings, suicide bombers and car bombs. Police said at least two car bombs exploded, apparently targeting police patrols, killing two policemen and a bystander, while two other people were killed when the offices of the government sewage department in downtown was bombed.

In the city's northern Kazimiyah suburb, a roadside bomb exploded as a bus of Iranian pilgrims drove by, killing one and injuring nine. Just north of Baghdad, in the town of Taji, a car bomb killed a farmer and his son heading to a nearby market to sell their crops. In the nearby town of Tarmiyah, once an insurgent stronghold, a bomb planted outside a school went off, killing two young boys.

Political uncertainty lingered in Afghanistan on Sunday after a meeting of elected members of the country's parliament ended with a decision to send a proposal back to President Hamid Karzai. The proposed resolution sets parliament's inauguration for Wednesday and also would dissolve the special court established in December to probe hundreds of fraud allegations brought forward by losing candidates. Karzai earlier rejected the proposal to dissolve the special court. Karzai's office on Wednesday announced a one-month inauguration delay, saying that the special court on election fraud needed more time to investigate complaints from losing candidates. The decision drew criticism from the United Nations' mission in Afghanistan, and concern from analysts that it could spark ethnic divisions and more violence. "I am very worried about the postponement of parliament, because it will pave the way for some people to try to create divisions within parliament," said lawmaker Fawzia Kofi. "If president Karzai does not participate in parliament's inauguration there will only be one option for us -- to inaugurate parliament on our own." Daud Sultanzai, a losing candidate in provincial elections in Ghazni, said Saturday that moving the inauguration to Wednesday would be bowing to forces outside the country. "Everyone was putting pressure on Karzai to walk on the face of the people of this country," he said.

The Obama Administration awarded a no-bid, $266 million contract for a lucrative electricity project in southern Afghanistan despite promising last year to seek competitive bids from other companies. The U.S. Agency for International Development quietly made the change despite criticism over how it has managed billions of dollars spent on reconstruction contracts.

In January 2010, USAID said companies would compete for the electricity project, awarded to Black & Veatch Corp. of Overland Park, Kan., a company that the agency earlier had chastised for big cost overruns and busted deadlines on a diesel-fueled power plant in Kabul. But the government let 10 months pass before deciding to award a contract without competitive bids, saying that it couldn't spend more time seeking offers.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama criticized the Bush administration for awarding contracts without competition, a practice he said cost U.S. taxpayers billions of dollars each year. But once in office, Obama didn't prohibit sole-source contracts. Under the latest contract for work in southern Afghanistan, Black & Veatch will upgrade electrical distribution in Kandahar city, install diesel generators, rebuild power substations and install a third hydro-electric turbine generator to the Kajaki Dam in Helmand province.

A Polish solider and a civilian medic were killed when their vehicle hit an IED Afghanistan on Saturday. A wounded Afghan died at an ISAF medical facility today from wounds received after engaging in a firefight with coalition forces during an operation in Khost province Jan. 21. posted 23 January, 2011

Afghan soldier killed Italian; Hundreds of Iraqi casualties; U.S.-backed TAPI pipeline continues

An Italian soldier who had been reported killed by insurgents in western Afghanistan this week was instead killed by an Afghan soldier, the NATO-led coalition said Thursday. NATO had initially reported that two soldiers, identified by Italian officials as Italians, were killed in an insurgent attack in the Bala Murghab district of Badghis Province on Tuesday. A U.S. soldier from Texarkana, Ark. was killed on Wednesday in Kandahar when insurgents attacked her unit with an IED.

Meanwhile, a makeshift bomb in Afghanistan's Kandahar province Thursday killed three people, including a child, and injured four others.

At least 130 Iraqis were killed in attacks since Monday and hundreds more were injured. In Kerbala, two bombs exploded among crowds of pilgrims, killing at least 50 people. A car bomb leveled the headquarters of a local security force in Iraq's Diyala province, killing as many as 14 people. In a separate attack, a bomber wounded the deputy head of Diyala's provincial council and killed three others on Tuesday. Despite being frisked at the entrance, a man wearing a suicide vest managed to walk up to the recruits and detonate his explosives, killing 65 people.

The U.S.-led war on "terrorism" continues to grow. During 2010 over 10,000were killed in violent incidents across the country in Pakistan...against 7,123 people killed in Afghanistan through the year. The Pentagon continues to claim that they are "winning" in Operation Enduring Disaster.

The U.S., through the Obama Administration, continues to back the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline project, which will run through the lands of farmers in southern Afghanistan and Pakistan. Speaking at Rice University in Houston, Texas, US assistant secretary of state for south and central Asia Robert Blake said the pipeline would also boost connectivity between oil and gas-rich Central Asia and energy deficient South Asia. US backing for the TAPI project is part of the geoglobal strategy of Washington to wean India away from the more than $7 billion 2,300km Iran-Pakistan-India gas (IPI) pipeline.

The Asian Development Bank is the lead partner in the 1,680km TAPI pipeline project expected to involve an investment of $6-7 billion from wealthy global corporations. The pipeline is expected to have a capacity of carrying 90 million standard cu. m per day (mscmd) of gas from Turkmenistan’s Gunorta Yoloten-Osman fields. The hundreds of thousands of Afghan and Pakistan families that have become homeless from war are pawns in this global struggle. The construction of the TAPI pipeline was expected to start in 2012 and it is likely to be commissioned by 2016. posted 20 January, 2011

7 US casualties in Iraq; 10 in Afghanistan; Marine kills Afghan policeman;

An Iraqi soldier killed two U.S. soldiers and injured a third on Saturday in Mosul after opening fire on them at a military training camp. The Iraqi soldier was arrested but military officials say they have no motive yet for the action. Another U.S. soldier was killed in a separate attack in central Iraq, while "conducting operations," according to a military statement.

A soldier from West Texas was killed in a bombing in Iraq on Wednesday, along with another soldier. On Thursday an additional soldier diied of wound suffered during an IED bombing in Ghanzi province.

More than 21,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and another 68,000 people wounded by homemade bombs over the past five years, according to newly released data from the Pentagon. Before the 2003 invasion and the instability caused by war, the number of Iraqis killed by bombs was zero. Despite the imprecision in tallied, the Pentagon believes insurgents killed far more civilians than U.S. and allied forces have in Iraq. However, the military is unable to quantify the claim. The U.S. military has occupied Iraq since the invasion in March 2003.

Vice President Biden, part of Obama's War Cabinet, said this week that the U.S. might stay in Iraq past the 2011 deadline and in Afghanistan well past 2014 in an ongoing commitment to war and occupation. The Pentagon even tried to claim that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have supported today's wars, in an obvious fabrication to assuage the sentiment of Americans who are opposed to the ongoing wars and occupations.

Six U.S. soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Kandahar on Wednesday. A suicide bomber on a motorbike blew himself up next to a minibus carrying intelligence service staff in the Afghan capital on Wednesday, killing at least two people and wounding more than 20. A Texas soldier was killed in Afghanistan's Logar Province on Friday. Another soldier also died and two more were wounded.

At least 20 oil tankers carrying fuel for NATO forces stationed in Afghanistan were set on fire in Naseerabad district of Pakistan on Saturday after gunmen attacked a terminal in Dera Murad Jamali. A driver also was wounded during the Saturday attack. A U.S. military drone went down in the Nejrab district of Kapisa province on Saturday.

A U.S. Marine shot an Afghan Uniformed Police officer to death after a dispute at a patrol base in Sangin, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Saturday. The Afghan police officer made threatening statements and pointed his weapon at the Marine before the U.S. serviceman killed him, according to initial findings of an ongoing investigation into the incident.

In Pakistan, at least 24 people were killed in fighting on Friday and Saturday in Karachi. The biggest single incident of the day took place in the slum of Orangi Town, where a bus was attacked by gunmen. ANP leaders are calling for the military to invade the city and seize all of the weapons, whether held legally or not. posted 15 January, 2011

Al-Sadr insist U.S. troops out by 2012; 5 soldiers dead; Obama escalates in Afghanistan; US drone kills 6 in Pakistan

Moqtada al-Sadr has warned that he would walk out on the Iraqi government if US soldiers were asked to stay past the expiration of the security agreement in December 2011. Al-Sadr has long opposed the U.S. occupation in Iraq and insists that no U.S. troops remain in Iraq into 2012. A significant issue for both sides is who will control the air space over Iraq. At the moment, Iraq has limited control and is considered unlikely to have the capacity to manage all its air space at the time of the scheduled US pullout. Roughly 48,000 service members and another 40,000 paramilitary personnel remain in the country.

Violence continues in Iraq. Gun and bomb attacks in Iraq on Saturday killed four people, including two children, and wounded an Iraqi soldier. Two children, one six and the other 10, were killed by an improvised explosive device (IED) on a chicken farm in Al-Hashamiyat. Early Monday, near Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, a suicide bomber drove a car laden with more than 300 pounds of explosives in an assault on the intelligence headquarters for eastern Iraq.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed earlier in the week in Iraq and two soldiers were killed on Friday in Afghanistan. Another soldier was killed on Wednesday. A French soldier was killed on Saturday and a British soldier died on Friday.

Five Afghans including a child were killed and three others wounded on Sunday during a clash between coalition forces and militants in Helmand province. An Afghani suicide bomber killed 17 people Friday in the southeastern town of Spin Boldak.

President Obama plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending 1,400 additional Marines to Afghanistan to boost its combat forces ahead of the spring fighting season. The United States has about 100,000 troops in the country, and President Barack Obama continues to believe in the Pentagon's plans for "winning" in Afghanistan.

A US drone strike left six suspected militants dead and several others injured in Pakistan's north-western tribal belt bordering Afghanistan on Friday. Friday's drone strike in the town of Miranshah was the fourth of its kind since the start of this year. Nineteen people were reportedly killed in a series of US drone strikes carried out in North Waziristan on January 1.

Demonstrations against Iran broke out in Afghanistan after Iran's ban on fuel trucks entering Afghanistan pushed local prices up over 70 percent and threatened to leave millions of Afghans shivering as winter rolls in. The roughly two-week-old ban has stranded up to 2,500 fuel tankers at the border.

The U.S. official charged with combating corruption in the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Afghanistan has fired two of his senior deputies following congressional criticism over his office's performance. Arnold Fields said Tuesday that he has removed John Brummet, the assistant inspector general for audits, and Raymond DiNunzio, the assistant inspector general for investigations. Fields, the special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction, has been under fire from members of Congress. They say he has failed to aggressively investigate allegations of fraud and waste involving the nearly $56 billion the U.S. has committed to improving schools, roads, electricity and medical facilities in Afghanistan.

Lindsay Graham of South Carolina said this week that the U.S. should have "permanent" military bases in Afghanstan. posted 09 January, 2011

Record troop deaths in 2010; Taliban more in control; Afghan peace council; Iraq casualties coming down

A German soldier and was killed in volatile southern Afghanistan Saturday, becoming the first troop death of the year after the war's highest-ever toll of foreign troops in 2010. An Italian soldier died on Friday. In 2010, a total of 711 international troops were killed in Afghanistan, the highest annual death toll since the war began in 2001. A British soldier died on Thursday while trying to defuse a bomb. Two Australian soldiers were also wounded.

Aat least 1,272 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, and another 4,427 members of the U.S. military had died in the Iraq War since it began in 2003.

Two rockets into Bagram Air Field, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, on Thursday.

Citing evidence that Taliban insurgents have expanded their reach across Afghanistan, aid groups and security analysts in the country are challenging as misleading the Obama administration's recent claim that insurgents now control less territory than they did a year ago.
Insurgent attacks have jumped at least 66 percent this year, according to the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office.

"Absolutely, without any reservation, it is our opinion that the situation is a lot more insecure this year than it was last year," said Nic Lee, the director of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, an independent organization that analyzes security dangers for aid groups. "We don't see COIN has had any impact on the five-year trajectory," he said, referring to the counterinsurgency strategy that U.S. Army Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of coalition forces in Afghanistan, has championed.

A series of U.S. drone attacks in North Waziristan, Pakistan, on Saturday killed 17 persons.

Members of the Afghan High Peace Council will visit Pakistan next week for talks with Pakistani leaders on the country's role in the peace efforts, the Foreign Ministry of Pakistan said Thursday. The council chief Prof. Burhanuddin Rabbani will lead the delegation in its first visit to Pakistan since its announcement in September.

The recently appointed US special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, Frank Ruggiero, is arriving in Islamabad next week on his maiden visit.

Iraqi authorities say December was the least deadly month of the year 2010, now that U.S. troops have mostly retired to their bases. Iraq's official casualty tally, compiled by the interior, health and defense ministries, shows that 151 people were killed in war violence in December. According to the Iraqi government data, obtained by the AP on Saturday, 3,525 people died in insurgent attacks in 2010. The majority of the casualties - 2,505 - were civilians. However, political violence continues to be a problem. Baghdad gunmen killed two policemen and a bomber killed a mayor's wife in Baqouba on Saturday. posted 01 January, 2011

Occupation troops celebrate Xmas in Iraq, Afghanistan; Petreaus visits; More "friendly" fire

It's the fourth time Chief Warrant Officer Archie Morgan is celebrating Christmas in Iraq. Morgan was part of the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003 and was deployed twice in 2006 and 2007. "It's is a very different Christmas the fourth time in Iraq," said Morgan of St. Louis, Missouri, one of the 50,000 occupation troops that will remain in Iraq throughout next year. "It was full battle rattle, my first couple of Christmases," Morgan said. "This (Christmas) is great. I feel like I am at home."

Troops in Afghanistan, church services, traditional dinners and even visits from Santa helped make the Christmas holiday bright for U.S. soldiers serving overseas. At Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, occupation soldiers were treated to a special Christmas concert. And soldiers serving at Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan enjoyed a festive Christmas dinner with all the trimmings.

Colonel Dwight Sones said, "And though our families are not here today, they are back in the States, we have our own family here." Chef Mikell Grant said, "Apple pie, peach cobbler, banana pie, corn, ham, turkey, big steam tub around here, and also this is our turkey right here which took like four hours for us to prepare and to cook today."

However, all was not fun and feasting. A platoon of U.S. soldiers stationed at a small hilltop base known as Combat Outpost Badel in Kunar province, Afghanistan spent Christmas day repelling a fierce attack from Taliban forces that staged an ambush from nearby mountains.

The attack came on the same day that Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, paid a visit to coalition troops across the country. Gen. Petraeus started his visit by traveling in a C-130 cargo plane from the capital, Kabul, to the northern province of Kunduz, telling troops with the U.S. Army's 1-87, 10th Mountain Division that on this day, there was "no place that (he) would rather be than here" where the "focus of our effort" was. Petraeus also visited occupation Marines in Marjah. Efforts to create a civilian government in Marjah have been painfully slow, and U.S. troops struggled against roadside bombs and sniper attacks from an enemy that could blend in with the local population.

Three people died in northern Afghanistan Thursday as a NATO helicopter opened fire on a car, killing a police officer and the brother of a politician. There have been a series of apparently mistaken attacks by coalition forces in recent weeks. These include the deaths of five civilians in a firefight involving coalition troops Tuesday and those of four Afghan soldiers in an accidental airstrike last week. Elsewhere, a suicide bomber killed an Afghan policeman and wounded five civilians in Kunduz.

In Iraq, two houses were blown up on Friday in Qariya al-Asriya, killing five people, including three children, and wounding four other people. Also on Friday, gunmen killed two policemen and burned their vehicle in an ambush in the city of Samarra. After parliament on Tuesday approved Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki for a second term in office and gave its stamp of approval to his national unity cabinet, the premier cited security as one of his top three priorities. But 10 ministries, including those responsible for security and controlled by Maliki in the interim, still only have acting heads.

In Pakistan,sSome 300,000 desperately poor villagers impoverished by fighting in Pakistan's tribal belt are scrambling to feed themselves after a female suicide bomber killed 45 people outside a World Food Program food distribution center, triggering a district wide suspension of the relief project. WFP district coordinator Shahab Khan said on Sunday that all four food relief centers run by the United Nations agency in the Bajur district had been shut indefinitely since Saturday's bombing in the area's main town of Khar. At least 42 people were killed and another 65 wounded in Saturday's suicide bomb attack.

A teacher and three students were injured when a bomb exploded at a private school in the Palosi area in the outskirts of Peshawar on Friday. Unidentified gunmen on motorbikes opened fire and killed the driver of a supply truck for NATO troops in southwest Pakistan on Sunday. Gunmen also Gunmen kidnapped four Turkish road workers and their local driver in Afghanistan's Paktia province.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani Sunday criticized U.S. drone strikes as counterproductive in the fight against terrorism. posted 26 December, 2010

Violence grows in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq; Congress votes for more war; DADT repealed

A barrage of US missiles targeted Pakistan's Khyber district on Friday for a second consecutive day, killing at least 25 Afghans as the U.S.-led war in the region continues in its 10th year. Missiles slammed into compounds in different villages of Tirah, the same valley where a US drone attack on Thursday killed seven militants in either the first or second such strike in Khyber. The first strike destroyed a home in Sipah. Another drone fired two missiles into another compound in the Malakdin Khel area. Pakistani officials later reported a drone strike in Sandana village in Khyber, which straddles NATO's main land supply line through Pakistan to its estimated 140,000 troops in Afghanistan.

A mortar attack killed nine people, including women and children, in northwest Pakistan on Friday as Shiite Muslims marked Ashura. Mortars slammed into two houses in Hangu, a town that has been a flashpoint for sectarian clashes between Pakistan's Shiite and Sunni Muslim communities. In southern Pakistan, police said they opened fire on a suicide bomber who tried to get into a Shiite rally in Sindh province's Shikarpur district.

In addition to the growing violence in Pakistan, violence is at its worst across Afghanistan since the Islamist Taliban were ousted by U.S.-backed Afghan forces in late 2001, with civilian and military deaths at record highs despite the presence of about 150,000 foreign troops. The number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan in 2010 neared 700 with two more U.S. deaths confirmed on Saturday, by far the deadliest year of the war. Obviously the U.S. military stragegy isn't working, despite claims to the contrary from Obama, Biden, Clinton and other Washington officials.

Vice President on Sunday claimed that the U.S. would be out of Afghanistan by 2014 "come hell or high water", perhaps forgetting that his term of office ends in 2012. Congress, even many of the most "liberal" also approved even more funding for the military and war budgets. Since 2000 the U.S. has spent more than $3 Trillion on "defense" and "security".

In Afghanistan on Sunday, two insurgents strapped with explosives ambushed a bus carrying Afghan army officers to work during the rush hour outside of Kabul. Five people were killed and nine wounded. One civilian was killed Sunday morning and four children were wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb in Panjwayi district.

On Saturday, insurgents attacked an army recruitment center in northern Afghanistan. At least 13 people were killed in the ensuing battle and day-long siege.

War violence continues in Iraq as well. Iraqi army forces found the bodies of 11 badly decomposed bodies, believed to be men, in a mass grave in eastern Mosul on Sunday. Three policemen and three Iraqi soldiers were wounded when two roadside bombs exploded in succession in Baghdad's western Ghazaliya district. Gunmen stabbed a policeman to death as he was leaving his home in Baghdad's southern Saidiya district. Gunmen killed a neighbourhood security guard on Saturday night as he was doing his shift in the Abu Ghraib area. Four people were wounded on Saturday by a roadside bomb in central Baghdad.

In the U.S., Congress repealted the 17-year-old "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy Saturday which will allow gays and lesbians to openly serve in the military. In doing so, the U.S. has joined with more than 30 other nations around the world - from Russia to New Zealand - who already allow gays soldiers to serve. posted 19 December, 2010

11 U.S. casualties on Sunday; 128 Iraqi, 36 Iranian casualties; blood for TAPI oil and gas;

Six U.S. service members were killed and another five were wonded Sunday in an insurgent attack in southern Afghanistan. Also Sunday, NATO said a joint NATO-Afghan force killed a Taliban leader and captured a key member of another militant group in the east. In a separate raid in eastern Khost province Saturday night, NATO and Afghan troops captured a leader for the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Taliban faction closely tied to al-Qaeda.

A roadside bomb planted killed 15 civilians in remote southern Afghanistan. The roadside bomb struck Friday afternoon as a pickup truck carrying villagers to a nearby bazaar rolled over the bomb in the Khan Neshin district of Helmand province. In Paktia on Saturday, about 500 people gathered and shouted "Death to Americans!" amid local reports that a U.S. operation killed seven members of a private security company. Also Saturday, a car bomb exploded outside a police headquarters in Kandahar, wounding at least six people and blowing out the windows of buildings up to a mile away. In Chahar Dara district, a suicide bomber blew up a stolen police car that had been packed with explosives, injuring five Afghan soldiers and nine Afghan civilians.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai met with regional leaders Saturday to sign an agreement for a massive energy project that could eventually net his country billions of dollars in revenue: a 1,000-mile natural gas pipeline whose proposed route cuts through the heartland of the Taliban insurgency. The TAPI project is expected to run through farmlands of Helmand and Kandahar provinces, once again demonstrating that western soldiers have been dying all along in a "blood for oil and gas" scheme put forth by global energy companies with the aid of corrupt governments. The government plan will steal hundreds of thousands of acres of lands from poor farmers and villagers in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The United States strongly supports the proposed pipeline because it could draw Central Asia's significant energy resources to Pakistan and India an bypass Iran.

Suicide attacks targeting a police checkpoint and a Shiite Muslim procession in western and central Iraq killed up to 14 people on Sunday. In the western city of Ramadi, a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near Anbar provincial government offices, killing 11 people, including six policemen. The blast occurred at a police checkpoint in the centre of the city and left 41 people wounded. In Baqoub, capital of Diyala province to Baghdad's north, three people were initally killed as a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vest near a Shiite procession. As emergency services rushed to the scene, a second roadside bomb detonated, wounding seven people, including four policemen.

A series of explosions, two of them targeting Iranian pilgrims, killed a total of 13 - including 6 Iranian citizens - in Iraq on Saturday and wounded more than 80. A car bomb in a southwest Baghdad market in the mainly Shi'ite district of Bayaa took the heaviest toll, killing six people and wounding 41 others. In northern areas of the city, two car bombs hit Iranian pilgrims visiting Baghdad for tours of Shi'ite religious sites. In Baghdad's northern Shula district, a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying Iranians, killing two people and wounding 28.

In Pakistan, police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Saturday seized a pick-up truck packed with a ton of explosives, averting an attack that they said could have caused mass destruction.

Richard Holbrooke, the 69-year-old special U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, is in critical condition at George Washington University Hospital after undergoing surgery on Saturday for a torn aorta. posted 12 December, 2010

Local human rights protests; Suicide bomber targets Pak hospital; US drones kill 4; Blair recalled for answers

Local human rights groups in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan took to the streets today to protest ongoing war and violence against civilians in recognition of International Human Rights Day.

In Baghdad, Hundreds of Iraqi Christians and Muslim supporters held a mass on the 40th day since the attack on Our Lady Salvation Church and also held a protest against government responses to a November hostage taking. In Kabul, Several hundred Afghan demonstrators, some holding photographs of victims of three decades of war, shouted for justice and peace. "In 32 years of war, many people have lost their lives or migrated to other countries," said Ajab Khan Tanha, who works at the association and helped organize the rally. "These demonstrators want warlords, who are still in power, to be removed from their positions. They want to see a museum created for the victims to keep their memory alive." In Islamabad, hundreds of people took to the streets of the capital to condemn the unauthorized US drone attacks and the widening war on their country.

Violence continued even during these protests. In Iraq, a drive-by attack on a security checkpoint that killed two guards in Tikrit. In Baghdad, a roadside bomb exploded near a bus, killing two people and wounding seven.

At least nine people were killed and 28 wounded in a suicide bombing at al-Zuhra hospital and maternity center hospital in Pass Kalay, Pakistan Friday. The blast also damaged an adjoining Shiite mosque, two houses and two vehicles. At least two children were killed. A U.S. drone strike killed four Pakistanis in the village of Khadar Khelregion Friday.

Eighteen Afghans working for a demining charity were kidnapped at gunpoint by men on motorcycles in eastern Afghanistan near the border with Pakistan on Thursday. Today in Kabul, a suicide bomber blew himself up, killing two people. A U.S. soldier was also killed by an IED on Friday.

Former British Prime Minster, Tony Blair is to be recalled before the Iraq Inquiry to answer questions over whether he pressured his Attorney General to change his advice on the legality of the war. The former prime minister will face a second session before the Chilcot inquiry in the new year – a year after he refused to express regrets over leading Britain to war in 2003. His statement provoked fury in the hearing, with members of the audience calling him a "liar" and a "murderer". Protests continue to dog former U.S. President George W. Bush wherever he visits to sign his new memoir. posted 10 December, 2010

150+ Pakistani casualties; NATO troops begin Afghan Xmas; 9 U.S. casualties; U.S. to pull back in from remote areas; U.S. jets pound Iraq

At least 50 people were killed and more than 100 wounded in twin bomb attacks in Pakistan on Monday. Two suicide bombers wearing police uniforms and jackets packed with explosives and bullets blew themselves up at a gathering of tribesmen to discuss the formation of an anti-Taliban militia at the main government compound in Mohmand.

"There was a deafening sound and it caused a cloud of dust and smoke and a subsequent hue and cry," said 45-year-old Qalandar Khan, lying in a hospital bed in his blood-soaked clothes. "There were dozens on the ground like me, bleeding and crying. I saw body parts scattered in the compound." The dead and wounded included tribal elders, police, political officials and other civilians. Two of the dead were local TV journalists who were at the compound reporting.

Also Monday, a U.S. drone killed seven people in Khushali village in North Waziristan, near the border with Afghanistan. A suicide bomber attacked a convoy carrying the top official in Pakistan's restive Baluchistan province Tuesday, wounding nine people but leaving Chief Minister Nawab Muhammad Aslam Khan Raisani unscathed.

Western soldiers have already begun Christmas celebrations throughout Afghanistan - oblivious to the local sensitivities even after nearly 10 years of occupation. Santas riding armored vehicles, Christmas trees, food and gifts from home and holiday parties stand in stark contrast to the crushing poverty of ordinary Afghan civilians. There is little "peace on earth" with the military in charge.

Two U.S. soldiers were killed and another 6 wounded by a suicide bomber in a bazaar outside a NATO base in Gardez district of Paktia on Sunday. Two Afghans were killed and another 14 were wounded. Violence in Afghanistan is at its worst since the Taliban were overthrown more than nine years ago with record casualties on all sides of the conflict, despite the presence of almost 150,000 foreign troops. Another Texas soldier died by an IED in the south of the country.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates flew into Kabul on Tuesday to visit troops and hold talks with President Karzai and General Petraeus. Defense spokesman Geoff Morrell said that Gates arrived "feeling very good about the progress that has been made in the past year" and said the visit would help shape a war strategy review under way in the White House. At the same time, the Pentagon says that it "can't fight in every single valley" and plans to withdraw troops from many remote areas of Afghanistan and concentrate forces nearer major towns and villages. Several outposts have already been closed by it is unclear how many bases would be abandoned out of the roughly 140 currently in operation in the east, where US-led troops struggled to cut off insurgent supply lines from sanctuaries across the border in Pakistan.

In Iraq, attackers gunned down an elderly Christian couple late Sunday inside their Baghdad. Two young children were killed and two of their siblings were hurt in eastern Iraq Monday when a bomb went off near the home their family had just reclaimed after fleeing it years ago.

An Iraqi government employee was killed and eleven people wounded in bomb and gunfire attacks across Baghdad on Tuesday morning. Gunmen shot dead Sameer Esmail Qahraman, director general in Baghdad mayoralty, and wounded his driver in the district of Amriyah. In a separate incident, a roadside bomb struck a car carrying three agents of Interior Ministry's internal affairs office, wounding all of them. Also in the day, a roadside bomb went off near a police patrol in al-Saiydia district in southern Baghdad, damaging a police vehicle and wounding three policemen. Four more civilians were wounded in another roadside bomb explosion near the Oqba Bin Nafie intersection in Baghdad central district of Karrada. A liquor store was also bombed.

Iraqi security sources said that on Monday, US warplanes pounded a region lying north of the provincial capital of Hilla. “A number of US jets pounded this afternoon al-Buhayrat region, al-Askandariya district," said a security official, noting that Iraqi authorities had not been informed about the operation. posted 07 December, 2010

Wikileaks: Bribery, Corruption in Afghanistan; Obama photo-op; String of bombings hit Baghdad

The latest round of U.S. State Department cables from Wikileaks focuses on Afghanistan, and the news is just as dire and grim as you imagine...despite claims to the contrary from Washington. "Predatory corruption, fueled by a booming illicit narcotics industry, is rampant at every level of Afghan society." "Karzai's half-brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, accused of graft and involvement in the drug trade, is called the 'kingpin of Kandahar." "contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young 'dancing boys' to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try and 'quash' the story." "the US is still in Afghanistan at this late date mainly to shore up the central government of President Hamid Karzai. ... The problem with Karzai is not that he is weak. Rather it is that he is corrupt and believes in conspiracy theories, and the combination of the two causes him to act high-handedly and improperly."

Western governments are now attacking Wikileaks and threatening Julian Assange for dislosing truth about Operation Enduring Disaster. They are also trying to intimidate U.S. soldiers and state department workers into not reading the Wikileaks.

The flow of money in and out of the country also was revealed to be a serious concern for the U.S. Zakhilwal, the finance minister, said last summer that about $4.2 billion in cash had been transferred through the airport during the past three and a half years. He said that while it was not illegal to transfer cash out of Afghanistan, officials were concerned about the amount being moved.

U.S. Presidents Obama scheduled a brief photo-op in Afghanistan on Friday, even as it was announced two more U.S. soldiers were killed there. Much of the media coming out of Afghanistan has been restricted during the past few days.

President Hamid Karzai ordered an investigation Thursday into the killing by NATO forces of a former governor in southern Afghanistan. According to Karzai's office, troops broke into the house of Haji Ibrahim, a former district governor in the southern province of Helmand, earlier this week, killing him and arresting six members of his family. Three people were killed and one seriously wounded in two separate IED blasts in Zharay district on Friday.

In Iraq, a string of seven bomb attacks, two of them aimed at Iranian pilgrims, rippled through Iraq’s capital on Saturday morning. At least 14 people were killed and another 32 were wounded in the attacks. Iraq said on Thursday its security forces had arrested 39 al Qaeda militants, including the group's leadership in Anbar province and one of its top officers in Iraq, in raids over the last five weeks.

Meanwhile in America, holiday television advertisements, events and speeches are rife with images of soldiers and thier "service and sacrifice" in wartime as the militarism of the U.S. continues. posted 04 December, 2010

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