Bill Van Auken

Image: Father and children killed by US Nato, Khogyani, Afghanistan, February 23, 2011 - the father was an Afghistan policeman. Nine children have been killed in a US NATO attack on their home, attacks on homes by US NATO are killing and injuring women men and children. (RAWA.org)

The political reverberations continue to grow from last Sunday’s US massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, the majority of them children, in Kandahar province. Thursday saw the Taliban breaking off talks with Washington and President Hamid Karzai demanding that US-NATO forces withdraw to their main bases. Together, these actions threaten to leave key elements of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy in tatters.

Popular anger over the killings spilled into the streets again Thursday, with thousands marching in the city of Qalat in Zabul province, near Kandahar, where the massacre took place. The demonstrators carried white flags and chanted slogans against the US-led occupation and demanding that the US soldier accused of slaughtering the Afghan civilians be brought before an Afghan court for trial. Even larger demonstrations are anticipated Friday, a day that has traditionally seen Afghans stage mass protests after leaving mosques after prayers on the Muslim holy day.

The Pentagon has already quietly spirited the 38-year-old staff sergeant, who is said to have confessed to the killings, out of the country. Military sources said that he had been taken to Kuwait, on the pretext that Afghanistan lacks appropriate pre-trial detention facilities. Military officials have refused until now to release publicly the name of the accused killer.[*]

Under a status of forces agreement dictated by Washington to the regime in Kabul, US troops are given “a status equivalent to that accorded to the administrative and technical staff” of the US Embassy under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and are deemed immune from any prosecution under Afghan law. Washington is not about to waive this agreement and allow the massacre’s perpetrator to be tried anywhere outside of a US military court.

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Stephen Lendman

Afghanistan men inspect the damage after a NATO missile
attacked a mud-built home in Nangarhar provinced, in Kho-
gyani district in Nangarhar province on February 21, 2011.

■ US imperial wars treat civilians like combatants. To facilitate killing, soldiers are taught to dehumanize enemies, especially darker-skinned ones and Muslims. ■ Training involves instilling Groupthink hate. Individuality and free thought are erased. Recruits are intimidated to go along. When America goes to war, scoundrel journalism hardens support. ■ So do politicians, academics, religious and other leaders. They euphemize killing to justify lawlessness. At issue is conditioning public opinion to accept imperial policy like military trainers brainwash young recruits. ■ Massacring 16 Afghans, including nine children, reflects state-sponsored murder.

On March 11, eleven family members were shot at home. Their bodies were then set ablaze. Away at the time, only the father and one child survived. Multiple gunmen continued rampaging.

They killed another five civilians and wounded unknown numbers of others. Media scoundrels won't say. Neither will Pentagon commanders and political Washington.

Enraged over 10 + years of war, occupation, death squad and drone killings, appalling depravation levels, and repeated Koran desecration incidents, Afghans want those responsible punished and Americans out of their country.

On March 14, thousands rallied in Jalalabad. Displaying banners denouncing imperial occupation, they chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Obama."

Afghan senators walked out of session in protest. They began chanting anti-American slogans. Senate speaker Fazel Hadi Moslemyar said:

“We do not need foreign forces in Afghanistan. All the problems which we are facing are created by them. If they leave, the neighboring countries will leave us alone, and we can settle our country’s problems on our own.”

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Philip Giraldi

One of these men wants to start a war against the other one's country for reasons that can't be talked about. This man has a nuclear bomb. He may in fact have more than 300 of them. He & his friends therefore have skewed the narrative so that instead of focusing on accountability and compliance with an international inspection regime, the world talks incessantly about another country, one that is not known to possess a single nuclear weapon at all. This lunatic badly wants a war to redraw the map of the entire Middle East. He's not concerned with the human cost. He thinks he can "win" and that he can get away with it. The President and all of the politicians grovel, grovel, bow and scrape: they kowtow, crawl and lick his boots. - He's paid them well. They know what he wants. The mainstream media knows so too. They have known it for a very long time, but still they're all lying through their teeth as we slide towards yet another devastating war. - Editor

There has been considerable discussion of the meaning, or lack thereof, of the apparent difference of opinion between the United States and Israel over both the desirability and the possible timing of going to war with Iran. Those Americans who still revere the Constitution and the advice of the Founding Fathers should rightly be appalled that a war is even being considered on behalf of a small client state with which the United States has no treaty obliging such intervention.

War with Iran would undoubtedly follow the usual pattern, being authorized by the White House without the constitutionally mandated declaration of war by Congress and likely developing out of an evolving situation in which Israel is being given a free pass to initiate the conflict.

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Stephen Lendman

What America's Eighth Amendment and international law prohibit, US federal, state and local prisons permit.

Solitary Watch reports "news from a nation in lockdown" to bring America's widespread use of barbaric "solitary confinement and other forms of torture in U.S. prisons out of the shadows and into the light of the public square."

It calls the practice "one of the most pressing (unaddressed) domestic human rights issues in America today - and also one of the most invisible."

Many thousands are affected. More on that below. Supposedly solely for the "worst of the worst," it's used abusively as punishment without cause, despite no legitimate penological purpose.

"Today, inmates can be placed in complete isolation for months or years not only for violent acts but for possessing contraband, using drugs, ignoring orders, or using profanity."

Thousands are isolated for whatever reasons authorities choose. Some were for being gang members "based on information from other inmates who are rewarded for 'snitching,' " whether or not what they said was true.

Mentally ill inmates are punished. So are children needing “protection,” gays, lesbians, and transsexuals, Muslim for praying to the wrong God, others for their political beliefs, or those reporting rape by prison officials and/or guards. "In Virginia, a dozen Rastafarian men have been in solitary for ten years because they refuse to cut their hair on religious grounds."

Long-term effects are profound. They include severe anxiety, panic, rage, loss of control, emotional breakdown, hallucinations, profound despair and hopelessness, regressive behavior, paranoia, self-mutiliation, suicidal thoughts, and other self-destructive behavior.

Over time, everyone's vulnerable to emotional breakdown and uncontrolled behavior. Long-term confinement in windowless cells 23 hour a day causes madness. Even the strongest-willed break.

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