Stephen Lendman

Previous articles discussed:

● NATO's illegal Libya aggression;
● American and Western media in the lead cheerleading it; some reporters, in fact, complicit with NATO forces by supplying target coordinates;
● planning it many months (perhaps years) before fighting began last winter;
● waging it to conquer, colonize, loot, and balkanize Libya, masquerading as humanitarian intervention;
● covertly funding, arming and training mercenary insurgents, including Al Qaeda linked Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) paramilitaries;
● establishing an illegitimate Transitional National Council (TNC) government with CIA/British Intelligence (SIS/MI6) links;
● terror bombing Libya daily since March 19, using depleted uranium weapons, cluster bombs and perhaps other illegal weapons;
● bombing nonmilitary civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, heritage sites, a bus with civilians, a hotel, a restaurant, a food storage facility, commercial sites, a university, civilian neighborhoods, fishermen at sea, Gaddafi's personal compound to kill him and his family, as well as other nonmilitary targets;
● collectively punishing Libyans; in government-controlled areas, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is about 10 to one;
● blocking shipments of food, fuel and medicine; and
● overall laying waste to large areas, what Pentagon-led wars always do, destroying countries to save them, never waging wars for humanitarian reasons or even contemplating the idea.

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Bill Van Auken

Tuesday’s killing of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president’s half brother, represents a serious blow to US strategy in the key southern province of Kandahar.

The powerful Kandahar warlord and longtime asset of the US Central Intelligence Agency was shot in the chest and the head by one of his henchmen, described by associates as one of the most trusted commanders of the militia gunmen loyal to Karzai.

The Taliban took credit for the assassination, claiming that the gunman, Sardar Mohammad, had been recruited a “long time” ago and had finally gotten “the chance today and achieved the objective.” It described the killing as one of its “biggest achievements.” Mohammad was killed by other bodyguards immediately after shooting Karzai.

Mohammad had reportedly worked for Karzai for the last seven years, commanding militiamen who man roadblocks around the family’s village of Karz in the Dand district, south of Kandahar City.

Initially there were suggestions that the killing was the result of a personal dispute. But, while Kandahar’s acting chief of police, General Abdul Raziq, described the assassin as a “good friend” of Karzai, he announced at a press conference in Kandahar City that several suspects had been arrested in connection with the assassination and were undergoing interrogation.

Raziq, who assumed his post after his predecessor was assassinated by a Taliban infiltrator on April 15, said that he could not rule out the involvement of a “foreign hand” in the latest killing and described Karzai’s death as a “big loss.”

A favorite of the US military occupation authorities, Raziq—like Karzai himself—has been linked in published reports to the region’s lucrative opium trade and is charged by critics with carrying out systematic extra-judicial executions of suspected “insurgents.”

Kandahar Governor Tooryalai Wesa went further, calling the assassination “a catastrophe for everyone,” asserting that Karzai had “helped bring peace and stability to the region.”

In reality, Karzai functioned as the province’s de facto governor and more. Described as the “king of Kandahar,” his official title was head of the provincial council. His power, however, flowed from his relationship to his brother’s central government and his control over a string of private security companies that have held a virtual monopoly over security operations for supply convoys and private contractors.

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Fred Branfman

Obama should be held accountable for vastly expanding the military establishment's worldwide license to kill.

Although President's Obama's partial Afghan troop withdrawal announcement has received more attention, his June 29 "National Strategy for Counterterrorism" is of far greater long-term significance. This remarkable document states that the U.S. government intends to "disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al-Qa'ida and its affiliates and adherents," in the following "areas of focus": "The Homeland, South Asia, Arabian Peninsula, East Africa,Europe, Iraq, Maghreb and Sahel, Southeast Asia (and) Central Asia."

This assassination strategy is already operational in six Muslim countries with a combined population of 280 million: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia and Libya, which has become a laboratory experiment for urban drone assassinations. The London Sunday Times reported a year ago that "President Obama has secretly sanctioned a huge increase in the number of US special forces ... with American troops now operating in 75 countries." There are presently 60,000 Special Operations forces worldwide, with 7,000 U.S. assassins unleashed upon Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq. Lt.-Col. John Nagle (ret.), an enthusiastic assassination supporter, has correctly called these operations "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."

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William T. Hathaway

From the Book RADICAL PEACE: People Refusing War by William T. Hathaway. Published by Trine Day 2010.

I was sitting in full lotus, body wrapped in a blanket, mind rapt in deep stillness, breathing lightly, wisps of air curling into the infinite space behind my closed eyes. My mantra had gone beyond sound to become a pulse of light in an emptiness that contained everything.

An electric shock flashed down my spine and through my body. My head snapped back, limbs jerked, a cry burst from my throat. Every muscle in my body contracted ― neck rigid, jaws clenched, forehead tight. Bolts of pain shot through me in all directions, then drew together in my chest. Heart attack! I thought. I managed to lie down, then noticed I wasn't breathing ― maybe I was already dead. I groaned and gulped a huge breath, which stirred a whirl of thoughts and images.

Vietnam again: Rotor wind from a hovering helicopter flails the water of a rice paddy while farmers run frantically for cover. Points of fire spark out from a bamboo grove to become dopplered whines past my ears. A plane dives on the grove to release a bomb which tumbles end over end and bursts into an orange globe of napalm. A man in my arms shakes in spasms as his chest gushes blood.

I held my head and tried to force the images out, but the montage of scenes flowed on, needing release. I could only lie there under a torrent of grief, regret, terror, and guilt. My chest felt like it was caving in under the pressure. I clung to my mantra like a lifeline to sanity. I was breathing in short, shallow gasps, but gradually my breath slowed and deepened, the feelings became less gripping, and I reoriented back into the here and now: my small room in Spain on a Transcendental Meditation teacher training course.

I lay on my narrow bed stunned by this flashback from four years ago when I'd been a Green Beret in Vietnam. I had thought I'd left all that behind, but here it was again.

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