Almost 2,000 Dutch troops have been deployed in the Uruzgan region, where the Taliban is active and opium production is high. The final contingent of 250 Dutch soldiers will be withdrawn on Sunday, after strong domestic opposition to participation in the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force. Qari Yusuf Ahmadii, a Taliban spokesman, told the Volksrant newspaper that he looked forward to other countries following the "brave" Dutch example.

"We would like to offer the citizens and government of the Netherlands our heartfelt congratulations for having the courage to take this decision independently," he said. "We hope other countries with soldiers stationed in Afghanistan will follow the Dutch example and withdraw their troops."

AFP/Google News: Dutch troops to leave Afghanistan

In the wake of strong U.S. government statements condemning WikiLeaks’ recent publishing of 77,000 Afghan War documents, the secret-spilling site has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance.” The huge file, posted on the Afghan War page at the WikiLeaks site, is 1.4 GB and is encrypted with AES256. The file’s size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. The file has also been posted on a torrent download site as well. WikiLeaks, on Sunday, posted several files containing the 77,000 Afghan war documents in a single “dump” file and in several other files containing versions of the documents in various searchable formats. Cryptome, a separate secret-spilling site, has speculated that the file may have been posted as insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to the organization’s founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password or passphrase to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it. The Faster Times: CNN Fawns Over Shameless Snitch: Publishes fact -, news-free story fawning over hacker/informant Adrian Lamo, who turned in whistleblower Bradly Manning. Al Jazeera: Blowing the whistle.

July’s Toll Worst for U.S. Troops in Afghanistan. In Kabul on Friday, a crowd of hundreds of Afghans rioted after a sport utility vehicle carrying American Embassy contractors mercenaries struck a car of Afghans, killing at least three of them, the Afghan police said. The riot happened early Friday afternoon on the busy road that connects the American Embassy and military headquarters in Kabul with the city’s airport. The crowd chanted "Death to America" and "Death to foreigners." Four contractors were in the vehicle, the embassy said. An Afghan police officer on the scene said the contractors traded fire with the police, but spokeswomen from their company, DynCorp International, and the United States Embassy said that the contractors did not fire any shots.

With 63 US service members killed, July has become the deadliest month for American forces stationed in war-torn Afghanistan. June's record of 60 US fatalities was surpassed this month after separate bomb blasts killed at least three US soldiers in southern Afghanistan over the past 24 hours. The latest deaths brought to 86 the number of fatalities among foreign troopers in war-ravaged Afghanistan this month. Boston.com: July the deadliest month of Afghan war for US.

US President Barack Obama has signed a spending bill allocating USD 37 billion to the unpopular wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The new funds bring the total cost of the two US-led wars in the region to USD 1 trillion since 2001. The spending bill had been pending in Congress due to a split among the Democrats regarding the Afghan war. The legislation was finally passed after strong support from the Republicans. Obama signed the measure two days after it cleared the House of Representatives. AWIP: US funds billions more for Afghan war. USA Today: Obama signs war spending bill.

Hundreds of Afghans have taken to the streets in the southwestern Helmand province to voice their anger at the killing of a 65-year-old man by US troops. The demonstrators gathered outside the governor's office, carrying his body on Thursday. They called for the prosecution of those responsible for the killing. Another demonstration was held in the southern Oruzgan province over the desecration of Islam's holy book, the Quran. That protest came in response to reports that US-led forces tore up a Quran in an attack on people's homes.

The New York Times continues to downplay the human rights abuses, amounting in some instances to war crimes, documented in classified reports that were released to them by Wikileaks. In contrast to the Guardian and Der Spiegel, the NYT’s failed to highlight the many accounts of atrocities committed by U.S. and coalition troops in the paper’s recent coverage.

The Guardian’s article on the Wikileaks’ document release begins:

A huge cache of secret U.S. military files today provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan, revealing how coalition forces have killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents, Taliban attacks have soared and NATO commanders fear neighboring Pakistan and Iran are fueling the insurgency.

In contrast, the New York Times’ article begins by stating the release, "offers an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal." It is not until the tenth paragraph that it briefly refers to special ops raids that "claim notable successes, but have sometimes gone wrong, killing civilians and stoking Afghan resentment." There is no mention of the revelations of widespread civilian casualties caused by U.S. or coalition forces.

WSWS: A record of war crimes. For its part, the [New York] Times published its story only after urging WikiLeaks to engage in self-censorship and clearing it with the White House. The newspaper’s main conclusion is that the leaked documents demonstrate the need to intensify the war in Afghanistan and spread it more aggressively into Pakistan. It has sought to spin the documents as evidence of a “hamstrung war” in which the US military has been subjected to too many restrictions while denied sufficient resources. The Times advances this line in the face of evidence detailing a staggering degree of brutality in Afghanistan.

That it was left to WikiLeaks, an online organization with a tiny fraction of the Times’ resources, to make these revelations is an indictment of the media as a whole. The Times and other news organizations, with their “embedded” reporters, are no doubt aware of many of the incidents revealed in the leaked documents, but chose not to report them. They, no less than the Pentagon and the political establishment, have conducted a systematic cover-up of the crimes against the Afghan people.

Politico: How the papers got the leaks.

About Wikileaks: There is no doubt that Obama himself, his top aides in the White House and Pentagon and the leading circles in the media were well aware of these atrocities. That makes all the more criminal the president’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan. AWIP: US funds billions more for Afghan war.

You wouldn’t be reading the coverage of the so-called Afghanistan logs—in the New York Times, Der Spiegel, and The Guardian — if Nick Davies, a senior contributor to the British paper, hadn’t tracked down WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in Brussels one month ago. Davies’s interest had been piqued in mid-June when Bradley Manning, a junior army intelligence analyst and the alleged source of several high-profile WikiLeaks disclosures, was quoted in chat transcripts claiming to have leaked a voluminous amount of yet-to-be disclosed diplomatic cables. Whatever Assange had, and whomever its source, Davies knew that WikiLeaks would publish again—and hoped to convince him to let the Guardian look at any future release before WikiLeaks splashed it on its own site.

The release of 91,000 classified military documents relating to Afghanistan by the organization known as WikiLeaks offers the opportunity for a controlled experiment in an analysis of media bias. This was a suggestion by the Nieman Journalism Lab immediately following the documents release. Three mainstream media organizations (The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel) were given the same amount of time to analyze these documents prior to their public release on July 25th and all three published their accounts on the same day. Therefore, any emphasis or de-emphasis in how the material was presented can be used to test hypotheses about the mainstream media through a process known as content analysis. This involves both assessing the meaning of a given text as well as measuring how frequent a word or phrase shows up in a specific context.

The hypothesis I seek to test is that different levels of access to American officials influenced how media outlets framed their respective analyses. A first glance at the material presented in the two English-language sources, The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, reveals dramatically different approaches that each took in reporting on these leaked documents. In The Times, for example, the first headline on their Afghanistan War Logs page reads, "Pakistan Spy Service Aids Insurgents" and three of their four featured reports on July 25th either emphasize the security and military implications of Pakistan's involvement or focus on US military strategy in executing the war. The New York Times provided no article focusing on civilian casualties in the war and mention them only as small points in their summary of individual documents. In contrast, The Guardian offered two prominent articles detailing the thousands of civilians whose deaths were documented in these files--not including those who died at the hands of Task Force 373, the shadowy special forces unit engaged in assassination raids.

Germany joins NATO forces in using Israeli spy drones 27 Jul 2010 Worried by insurgent ambushes on its soldiers in Afghanistan and return fire that sometimes kills civilians or local allies, Germany last year ordered a small fleet of Israeli Heron spy drones designed to provide real-time images above a battlefield. That has brought German jet pilots to coastal Ein Shemer air base for accelerated retraining on the unmanned propeller planes, already daubed with their flag and Iron Cross emblem.

Julian Assange’s recent comment in the Belfast Telegraph about 9/11, however, may be a more tangible source of concern for me. I know Assange isn’t an idiot, so I see three other possibilities:

1. He is profoundly ignorant of the vast body of material that demonstrates that the 9/11 spectacle was a false flag operation.
2. He’s “picking his battles” and not wanting to have to deal with the inevitable conspiracy theory stigma that could threaten his media access
3. He’s running a limited hangout/honeypot

Of these three options, I doubt that it’s number two.

911Blogger.com: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth. AWIP: Wikileaks calls for more leakers to step into its spider's web. The First Post: Shame the leak didn’t come earlier, says Taliban -It ‘proves US brutality in Afghanistan’.

The US Congress has approved an extra multi-billion dollar fund to pay for President Barack Obama's increase in US troop numbers in Afghanistan. The House of Representatives voted 308 to 114 in favor of the $60bn war-funding bill. The Senate had already passed the bill, which will now go to Obama to be signed into law. The package provides roughly $33.5 billion for the additional 30,000 more troops in Afghanistan and nearly $4 billion for other programs in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan. The bill also covers some expenses for military operations in the war-torn Iraq. The new money is in addition to about $130 billion the Congress already approved for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq this year. The US Congress has appropriated over $1 trillion for the two wars since 2001.

Antiwar: House Approves More Afghan War Funding: Congressmen Embrace Escalation as Evidence of War's Folly Grows. Though one would have expected that the massive release of some 92,000 classified documents Sunday underscoring just how poorly the war is going would have changed some minds, the Obama Administration has gotten its way once again, with the House of Representatives approving the $59 billion emergency funding bill to keep the war going by a 308-114 vote. House Roll Call Vote on War Funding

[Zionist-infiltrated Congress wants war. Ever more wars for Israel:] Resolution Green-Lighting Israeli Strikes on Iran Introduced by House Republicans (HuffPo)

n 2 August 2007, a US special forces team mounted what they hoped would be an assassination spectacular in the Baghni valley, in the mountains of northern Helmand. They called it Operation Jang Baz. Special operations troops, the war logs report, "tracked and fixed 2 senior Taliban commanders" to the remote spot. The files reveal their names were Mullah Ikhlas, and his deputy, known as Qalandari. Both were listed as "High Value Individuals tier 2", putting them near the top of the US "kill or capture" list. Ikhlas was believed to run the entire Taliban fighting machine in southern Afghanistan. The special forces command claimed that Ikhlas was "conducting a major Shura" – a conference of top Taliban. After dropping six 2,000lb GBU-31 guided bombs on the meeting from a B1 jet, the coalition reported "effectively destroying the primary target location" and killing 50 "Taliban senior commanders, security and fighters". Lt Gen John Mulholland, of the special operations command, later claimed "over 150 Taliban fighters" had been killed. It was later realised that despite "multiple forms of positive identification" Ikhlas had in fact probably never been there at all.

Buried among the 92,000 classified documents released Sunday by WikiLeaks is some intriguing evidence that the U.S. military in Afghanistan has adopted a PR strategy that got it into trouble in Iraq: paying local media outlets to run friendly stories. Several reports from Army psychological operations units and provincial reconstruction teams (also known as PRTs, civilian-military hybrids tasked with rebuilding Afghanistan) show that local Afghan radio stations were under contract to air content produced by the United States. Other reports show U.S. military personnel apparently referring to Afghan reporters as "our journalists" and directing them in how to do their jobs.

Britain’s political elite are attempting to play down the so-called Afghan War Diary—the 92,000 documents published by WikiLeaks, details of which are being serialised in the Guardian newspaper. For nine years Britain’s ruling circles have presented the intervention in Afghanistan as a fight for the “hearts and minds” of the Afghan people. In the face of widespread public opposition to the occupation, both the Labour government and now the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition have insisted that it is morally and politically justifiable. The documents published by WikiLeaks—consisting of battlefield reports written by US army personnel—expose such claims as lies. They lift the lid on just some of the terror and violence routinely meted out against the Afghan people.

Just like Army PFC Bradley Manning, who leaked to Wikileaks and was turned in by one of the group's hacker associates, and now faces decades in jail. These old Chaos Computer Club hackers cut a deal long ago with intelligence and law enforcement rather than be thrown behind bars. Wikileaks is a clever intel community snare but Washington's top investigative journalists see through the trap. In May, PFC Bradley Manning, a former intelligence analyst in Iraq, was arrested on charges of leaking the video and other documents to Wikileaks, after confiding in former hacker Adrian Lamo, who turned him in. While publishing classified documents isn’t a crime in the U.S., press reports indicate the government is concerned that Wikileaks will publish tens of thousands of sensitive State Department cables that Manning purportedly also provided Wikileaks. In chats with Lamo, Manning claimed to have given Wikileaks a database of 260,000 cables; Manning has been formally charged with downloading over 150,000 cables, and leaking more than 50 classified cables. AWIP: Wikileaks obtained and multiple sources are now reporting on a huge cache of documents related to the US war in Afghanistan. The Guardian: Afghanistan war logs: Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation.

NYT: Wikileaks: Pakistan state spy services meet directly with the Taliban to organize networks of militant groups against American soldiers in Afghanistan and assassinate Afghan leaders, all to ensure their US war on terror funding. Antiwar: Assange: WikiLeaks Has 15,000 More Documents ‘Under Review’.

[Editor's Comment:] It is easy to see that all of this Pakistal/Taliban stuff dovetails neatly with the US war campaign in Pakistan. -Is Wikileaks a DoD/CIA black operation? If it is, this would effectively ruin the trust necessary for whistleblowers to come forward. As for the ones that do come forward, the DoD/CIA could take them down, one by one. -Intel is a murky business...

Doubts summed up:

1. Wikileaks is straight & the docs published genuine
2. Wikileaks is straight but some docs are not genuine
3. Wikileaks is not straight and is a spider's web/black op (created by/taken over by the DoD and the CIA)

We would probably have to read a fair number of the 92000 documents to try and find out what the truth of the matter is. Some of the documents clearly are very damaging to both Pakistan and the US.

AWIP/Chris Floyd: Leaky Vessels: Wikileaks "Revelations" Will Comfort Warmongers, Confirm Conventional Wisdom. [T]hese reports are being treated as if they are the "grim truth" behind the shining picture of official propaganda. But what do these stories in the NYT and Guardian actually "reveal"? Let's see:

● That the occupation forces kill lots of civilians at checkpoints and botched raids, then lie about it afterward.
● That these killings make Afghans angry and fuel the insurgency.
● That elements of Pakistani intelligence are involved with some elements of the many resistance groups known collectively (and incorrectly) in the West as the Taliban.
● That the Americans are using more and more robot drones to kill people.
● That the Americans are running death squads in Afghanistan aimed at Taliban leaders.
● That Afghan officials are corrupt, and that Afghan police and military forces are woefully inadequate.

Is there anything in these breathless new recitations that we did not already know?

Kev Boyle: WIKILEAKS/WIKIPEDIA: TRUTH serving LIES (with CIA/MOSSAD oversight)
Again, innocent people get murdered by coalition troops. Evil...embarrassing....but tell us something we didn't know. We know that the powers-that-be are determined to control both sides of every argument. They lead the opposition against themselves. That's why "Stop The War" will not even MENTION 9/11 Truth and exclude from the ranks of their leadership anyone who wants to raise reasonable questions about the events of 9/11. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is 'annoyed' by 9/11 truth. That there IN ITSELF makes him, to any sensible person, a placeman of the security services. This, like the StopTheWar position, is called a 'limited hangout'.

Elvis of Terror: Sightings of Osama bin Laden: Daily Telegraph + Daily Mail + The BBC + The Guardian

AWIP: From the grave: "Bin Laden" warns US of more attacks

Find all the current Wikileaks Mirrors here. Helpful, if the main site - wikileaks.org - is down.

The United States has assured its allies in South Asia that it has no plans to quit the region and will stay engaged with Afghanistan as well. The assurance followed reports in the US media that President Barack Obama’s intention to start withdrawing American troops from Afghanistan from July next year had unsettled the entire region, causing South Asian nations to prepare themselves for a post-withdrawal scenario.

The Canadian military is rejecting a report released by WikiLeaks that suggests four Canadian soldiers who died in September 2006 in Afghanistan were killed by friendly fire from U.S. forces. The military maintains the four soldiers died in combat with the Taliban.

'Scores die' in Afghan village raid. A Nato rocket attack on a village in Afghanistan last week killed 52 civilians, including women and children, the office of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, has said in a statement. Based on reports from the Afghan National Directorate of Security, a house in Regey village in Sangin district of the southern Helmand province was hit with a rocket launched by Nato troops on Friday. Karzai has offered his condolences via telephone to the mourning families and called on Nato troops to "put into practice every possible measure to avoid harming civilians during military operations". The Afghan president has ordered the National Security Council to investigate the incident, Sediq Sediqqi, head of media relations at the presidency, said earlier. Reports surfaced on Saturday that a helicopter gunship fired on villagers who had been told by fighters to leave their homes as a firefight with troops from Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) was imminent. According to witness accounts, men, women and children fled to Regey village and were fired on from helicopter gunships as they took cover. Abdul Ghafar, 45, told AFP, a French press agency, that he lost "two daughters and one son and two sisters" in the attack. He and six other families fled to Regey, about 500 metres from their village of Ishaqzai, after being warned about the imminent battle, he said. PressTV: US-led forces kill 52 civilians.

WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that was to post tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behavior” by governments and corporations. Since it was founded in December 2006, WikiLeaks has exposed internal memos about the dumping of toxic material off the African coast, the membership rolls of a racist British party, and the American military’s manual for operating its prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

Wikileaks: Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010. Summary: 25th July 2010 5:00 PM EST WikiLeaks has released a document set called the Afghan War Diary, an extraordinary compendium of over 91,000 reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The reports, while written by soldiers and intelligence officers, and mainly describing lethal military actions involving the United States military, also include intelligence information, reports of meetings with political figures, and related detail. The document collection is available on a dedicated webpage. The reports cover most units from the US Army with the exception of most US Special Forces' activities. The reports do not generally cover top secret operations or European and other ISAF Forces operations. We have delayed the release of some 15,000 reports from the total archive as part of a harm minimization process demanded by our source. After further review, these reports will be released, with occasional redactions, and eventually in full, as the security situation in Afghanistan permits.

“We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies,” the organization’s Web site says. “All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”

The Guardian: Wikileaks+Guardian.co.uk: Afghanistan: The war logs. Massive leak of secret files exposes truth of occupation. Includes interview with Wikileaks' Julian Assange.

BoingBoing: Wikileaks releases classified Afghanistan war logs: "largest intelligence leak in history". An archive of classified U.S. military logs spanning six years, more than 91,000 documents, and 200,000 pages, was today made available by WikiLeaks. The papers show a picture of the war in Afghanistan that is far more grim, and far less hopeful, than previously portrayed.

PressTV: Report: Afghan civilian deaths hidden. Newly leaked US military secret documents show how US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. The documents leaked by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks "[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."allege some of the casualties are caused by airstrikes, but a large number is the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists in an effort to protect themselves. The documents disclosed by The New York Times, Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel also detail many other disputed incidents involving civilian deaths that have been omitted from daily military reports. The secret documents also link Pakistan to the militancy in Afghanistan. They detail links between the Taliban and Pakistan's military and spy agency, the ISI.

Foreign Policy: The logs of war: Do the Wikileaks documents really tell us anything new? I've now gone through the reporting and most of the selected documents (though not the larger data dump), and I think there's less here than meets the eye. The story that seems to be getting the most attention, repeating the longstanding allegation that Pakistani intelligence might be aiding the Afghan insurgents, offers a few new details but not much greater clarity. Both the Times and the Guardian are careful to point out that the raw reports in the Wikileaks archive often seem poorly sourced and present implausible information.

"[F]or all their eye-popping details," writes the Guardian's Declan Walsh, "the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity."

Atrocity: US Forces Slaughter 45 Afghan Civilians - "They can see something as small as an insect just four inches on the ground, so how were they not able to see all of those women and children when they bombed them?" International forces in Afghanistan say they are urgently investigating reports as many as 45 civilians died in an air strike in Helmand province on Friday. Nato's initial investigation found no evidence, but a BBC journalist visiting Regey village spoke to several people who said they had seen the incident. At the time, dozens were sheltering in the village from nearby fighting. A significant civilian loss of life would be rare this year as a new policy of restraint has reduced casualties.

Witnesses said the attack had come in daylight as dozens sheltered from fighting in nearby Joshani. Mohammed Khan, a boy aged about 16, said helicopters had circled over the village before the incident. He said that he had warned other children to take cover. But his mother told him not to worry them. He went further away and was shielded by a wall that saved his life when the attack started. "I heard the sound of the rocket land on our house. I rushed in screaming with my father and saw bodies lying in the dust… I found I was even standing on a dead body." One of the bodies was his brother. "He had been lying asleep in the afternoon when they were killed," Mohammed said. After the attack relatives and neighbours came to assist in digging out the dead and taking the injured to hospital.

PressTV: Report: Afghan civilian deaths hidden. Newly leaked US military secret documents show how US-led NATO forces in Afghanistan have killed or wounded hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents. The documents leaked by the whistle-blower website WikiLeaks allege some of the casualties are caused by airstrikes, but a large number is the result of troops shooting unarmed drivers or motorcyclists in an effort to protect themselves. The documents disclosed by The New York Times, Guardian newspaper and the German weekly Der Spiegel also detail many other disputed incidents involving civilian deaths that have been omitted from daily military reports. The secret documents also link Pakistan to the militancy in Afghanistan. They detail links between the Taliban and Pakistan's military and spy agency, the ISI.

The Taliban say one of the two missing American soldiers has been killed and the other, captured alive, is currently held by the militants. A Taliban spokesman said Sunday the group is holding both the body of the dead soldier and the captured one. "One of the two was killed in the exchange of fire and we arrested the second alive," said Zabihullah Mujahid. He said the two servicemen were attacked after they drove into a Taliban-dominated area in eastern Logar province. The group says it has not yet decided on the fate of the captive soldier. WSWS: Afghanistan casualty rate highest of war.

The Taliban say they have captured two US servicemen in Afghanistan, and Nato confirmed they were missing and scrambled helicopters and planes to search for them. The US and Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said the pair had gone missing after leaving their base in the capital in a vehicle on Friday. The only other ISAF service member believed held by the Taliban is Idaho National Guardsman Bowe Bergdahl, whose capture in June last year triggered a massive manhunt. His captors have repeatedly issued videos of him denouncing the war, in what the US military has called illegal propaganda. Last month was the deadliest of the nine-year war in Afghanistan for foreign troops, with more than 100 killed. Five ISAF service members were killed in across the country on Saturday, including four by one roadside bomb. "Two International Security Assistance Force service members departed their compound in Kabul City in a vehicle on Friday afternoon and did not return," ISAF said in a brief statement.

Five American soldiers died Saturday in bombings in southern Afghanistan. Four of the victims died in a single improvised explosive device (IED) blast and a fifth was killed in a separate attack, according to the AP. [CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS] IEDs are the number one cause of NATO solider deaths. The payload and sophistication of the crude home-made bombs is rising as the Taliban insurgents adapt to coalition defenses. The Taliban claim that even with all of its firepower and prowess, the Western military will always be vulnerable to IEDs, sniper fire and small-scale ambushes – the bread and butter of asymmetrical warfare. Military officials attribute the spike in casualties to a nearly completed "surge" that has brought U.S. troop levels to nearly 100,000.

America's wars on Iraq and Afghanistan are taking a toll on US soldiers, as the latest statistics show one out of every nine American soldiers leaves the army on a medical discharge due to a mental disorder. "We have 100,000 troops and a third of them suffer some sort of mental health disease and half of those suffer multiple health disease," Paul Martin from Peace Action told Press TV's correspondent. The army alone saw a 64 percent increase in those forced out due to mental illness between 2005 and 2009, the numbers equal to one in nine of all medical discharges. According to army statistics, last year alone 1,224 soldiers suffering from mental illnesses, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, received a medical discharge. According to Mental health experts there is a growing emotional toll on the US military which has been fighting for seven years in Iraq and nine years in Afghanistan, and there is a clear relationship between multiple deployments and increased symptoms of anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.

An Afghan man prays beside graves of people killed in
a US-led strike in the war-torn country.

A US-led air strike has reputedly left dozens of civilians dead in Afghanistan, raising concerns about the growing number of civilian casualties in the country. The late Friday bombardment took place in the city of Sangin in southern Helmand Province. Locals told Press TV that the attack has also injured seven children in Helmand Province. Those injure were taken to the city's Central Hospital. Foreign forces and Afghan officials have yet to comment on the incident. Civilian casualties are on the rise despite a promise by the new commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. General David Petraeus vowed earlier this month that protecting civilian lives would his top priority. The US-led forces launch attacks on alleged militant hideouts on a regular basis, but the strikes usually result in civilian casualties because of bad intelligence or flaws in the operations. Civilians have been the main victims of violence in Afghanistan, particularly in the country's troubled southern and eastern provinces. The US and NATO downplay the number of civilian casualties.

Depleted Uranium itself is a chemically toxic and radioactive compound, which is used in armour piercing munitions because of its very high density. It is 1.7 times denser than lead, giving DU weapons increased range and penetrative power. They belong to a class of weapons called kinetic energy penetrators. The part of the weapon that is made of DU is called a penetrator: this is a long dart weighing more than four kilograms in the largest examples: it is neither a tip nor a coating. The penetrator is usually an alloy of DU and a small amount of another metal such as titanium and molybdenum. These give it extra strength and resistance to corrosion.

In addition to armour-piercing penetrators, DU is used as armour in US M1A1 and M1A2 battle tanks and in small amounts in some types of landmines (M86 PDM and ADAM), both types contain 0.101g of DU in the resin cases of the individual mines. 432 ADAM antipersonnel landmine howitzer shells were used on the Kuwaiti battlefields during the 1991 Gulf War. Both M86 PDM and ADAM mines remain in U.S. stockpiles. Patents exist for the use of a ‘dense metal’ as ballast in large ‘bunker busting’ bombs; such weapons have been deployed but it is unclear whether they contain DU, tungsten or a third high density substance, as their contents remain classified.

■ Fallujah and the laws of war
■ Horrific scenes from the ashes of Fallujah
■ Nothing depleted about 'depleted uranium'
■ Depleted Uranium: A War Crime Within a War Crime
■ Iraq: U.S. depleted uranium and surge in cancer (Photos)

New Speculative Date Already Being Shrugged Off in Favor of Promises of Eventual Victory. The replacement of the July 2011 drawdown date with a more speculative 2014 date is scarcely completed, and already that date too is being disavowed by NATO Secretary General and Afghan War enthusiast Anders Fogh Rasmussen. According to Rasmussen, NATO troops will remain in the nation and will contiue their nearly nine year war “indefinitely,” pledging that the troops would only leave once it became impossible for the Taliban to take over in Afghanistan. It is perhaps inevitable that those officials with dreams of some ill-defined “victory” in Afghanistan would bristle at any drawdown date at this point, as the repeated escalations of the war have not brought victory any closer and have instead only made matters worse, with record death tolls coming virtually every month. Rasmussen, for his part, has predicted even more casualties in the months ahead, but claims that the large number of NATO troops being killed just proves how desperate the Taliban is getting. Armed with this assumption, he will no doubt continue to have such reasons for optimism as the war continues to worsen.

WSJ: Petraeus Sharpens Afghan Strategy. Gen. David Petraeus plans to ramp up the U.S. military's troop-intensive strategy in Afghanistan, according to some senior military officials, who have concluded that setbacks in the war effort this year weren't the result of the strategy, but of flaws in how it has been implemented. The officials said Gen. Petraeus, who took over as allied commander in Afghanistan this month and is conducting a review of the war, intends to draw on many of the same tactics he implemented to turn around the war in Iraq—and which his predecessor, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, introduced in Afghanistan. But the officials said Gen. McChrystal put too much attention on hunting down Taliban leaders, at the expense of the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy, which focuses on protecting civilians and bolstering popular support for the government. Supporters of Gen. McChrystal dispute that assessment, dismissing any notion there were flaws in how he fought the war.

[Editor's Comment:] This war was never meant to be "won". It was neither meant to be won or lost. Whatever we want to call this "war", it fundamentally was meant to be an occupation, an endless one at that. -That is, it was, and still is, meant to last until all the resources have been looted and until the territory has outlived its strategic usefulness to the people who started it. There will be no withdrawal until then. The occupation will undoubtedly outlast us all. There will be no peace in Afghanistan in our lifetime(s). This is the ugly truth.

The international conference on Afghanistan has opened in Kabul amid tight security with the country's security and development at the top of the agenda. The meeting, which was inaugurated Tuesday by the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, is the first-ever international conference on Afghanistan held inside the country. The conference seeks additional support for rebuilding from the international community. Delegates from more than 70 countries and several international bodies, including United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki- moon, are attending the one-day conference. The conference is marking a new phase into deepening and broadening of our international partnership," the corrupt & unelected Karzai said in his inaugural statement. PressTV: Iran outlines solutions to Afghan crisis.

Warlords set to siphon off Afghan aid millions - A LEADING charity has warned plans to boost aid in Afghanistan are "fraught with danger" and says the British government risks repeating mistakes of the past when cash intended for relief and reconstruction ended up in the pockets of corrupt warlords.

Most Afghans view the foreign troops in their country negatively, with three out of four of those polled saying foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions. According to the survey released Friday by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) think-tank, 68 percent of Afghans say NATO forces do not protect them, as 75 percent believe foreigners disrespect their religion and traditions, Reuters reported. According to the poll, many believe foreign troops are in Afghanistan for their own benefit, to destroy or occupy the country, or to destroy Islam. The poll was based on interviews in June with 552 Afghan men in Kandahar and Helmand provinces in southern Afghanistan.

A marine and a soldier were killed in separate explosions, while an airman died in a vehicle accident near Camp Bastion, the main British military base. All three British service members died in Helmand Province, the British Ministry of Defense said. An American soldier was killed in a blast on Saturday while another one was killed a day earlier, NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said. Nearly 380 foreign troopers are estimated to have lost their lives in Afghanistan since the start of 2010. The rising death toll has raised fears that 2010 could become the deadliest year for US-led forces in Afghanistan since the invasion of the country in 2001.

Estimated 2,000 US Troops Wounded Through Early July. With 2010 just scarcely halfway over, the record tolls of the Afghan War are coming fast and furious, pointing to yet another year that will be by far the worst on record for the international invasion force. The current statistic relates to wounded soldiers in Afghanistan, with ABC News reporting an estimated 2,000 American soldiers have been wounded from the beginning of 2010 through July 3. The number is four times as many as were wounded in the same period in 2009 and nearly as many as were wounded in the entire year last year, which was itself the worst of the war. In fact in the depths of winter Gen. Barry McCaffrey predicted that the United States should expect “500 casualties a month” by Summer, and while many people were appalled at this prediction, it seems he aimed a bit low, with June’s casualty figure for Americans running closer to 600 and July shaping up to be at least as bad. PressTV: 2010 to set record for US injuries.

Five more US soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan's volatile south, bringing to 12 the number of US soldiers killed over the past 48 hours. NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) says the soldiers were killed in a Taliban attack on police headquarters on Wednesday. Five Afghan civilians and an Afghan officer were also killed in the attack. The latest casualties brought the total number of American soldiers killed in the war-torn country since Tuesday to 12. Over 350 foreign troops have been killed in the so far this year. Some 140,000 US led troops are currently stationed Afghanistan. A further 10,000 are expected to be deployed there in the coming weeks. NATO's mounting death toll has caused public support to plummet for the Afghan war across Europe and the US.

An Afghan soldier has killed three British troops during a joint patrol in the country's southern province of Helmand, a provincial security official has said. Two more British soldiers were injured in the attack, which took place near Lashkar Gah, the provincial capital of Helmand, where some 9,000 British troops are based as part of the US-led forces, a security source told Reuters on Tuesday. Meanwhile, NATO released a statement saying that three of its soldiers were killed in an attack by militants in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths bring to 36 the number of foreign soldiers killed so far this month in Afghanistan.

This year has been the most violent in Afghanistan since war began in the country in 2001, with civilian deaths rising because of increased insecurity, a local rights group says. "A massive US-led increase in troops has failed to quell the Taliban-led insurgency", Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) was quoted by the AFP as saying. "In terms of insecurity, 2010 has been the worst year since the demise of the Taliban regime in late 2001," it said. ARM underlined the number of security incidents as well as the extent of the insurgency and counter-insurgency-related violence has 'dramatically' increased. At least 1,074 civilians were killed and more than 1,500 injured in war-related incidents in the first six months of 2010, compared with 1,059 killed in the same period last year, ARM said.

Five American troops and at least a dozen civilians were killed Saturday during violent attacks in eastern and southern Afghanistan, according to NATO officials. Three U.S. servicemen died in the east—one was the victim of small-arms fire, the other by a roadside bomb, a third during an insurgent attack in separate incidents. Two other American soldiers died in separate roadside bombings in southern Afghanistan. Their deaths raised the number of American troops killed in the war to 23 this month.

In February of 2005, at a public forum in San Diego, Mattis said that “it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot” Afghans. He continued: “Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot. It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling.” A bit later he spoke of the “emotional … satisfaction you may get from really whacking somebody.” The Independent: It's fun to kill in Afghanistan, says top US commander.

Angry Afghans have taken to the streets of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest against the rising number of civilian casualties at the hands of US-led troops. Hundreds of protesters chanted slogans against foreign forces and Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The demonstration followed the killing of two civilians by US troops on the outskirts of the northern Afghan city on Wednesday. NATO soldiers also killed one Afghan and arrested nine others in Paktia province. The Western military alliance had earlier admitted to killing six other civilians in the same province while accepting responsibility for taking the lives of five Afghan soldiers in Ghazni province. NATO blames the deaths on bad targeting and communication errors.

Six American soldiers have been killed in separate incidents in Afghanistan, as militants step up their attacks against the foreign forces stationed in the country. NATO said in a statement that three of the troops died in the country's east and two more were killed in the south. The US-led military alliance says the soldiers were battling the Taliban but no more details are available. A sixth US serviceman died as a result of an accidental explosion. Over 350 foreign soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan so far this year.

US and British intelligence services are working on a fake video clip aimed at diverting blame for failures in Afghanistan to Iran, an informed US military source says. A source at the US base in Bagram, told Press TV on condition of anonymity that the US and British spies have employed renowned American film editors to produce the video. The video consists of footage doctored in a way to show that Iran is providing weapons and military equipment to "anti-government forces" in the war-torn country. The montage sequence will rely on false satellite imagery and radar images allegedly taken by spy drones. This is while pressure is mounting on the US over its failure in Afghanistan, amid rising causalities among foreign troops in the country.

Five US soldiers have been killed after a convoy carrying supplies for the US-led troops was attacked by the Taliban militants in Afghanistan's Zabul province. The US soldiers were killed Saturday after an improvised explosive device blew up a tanker passing the area near the Pakistani border, Pakistan's The Nation newspaper quoted Taliban sources as saying. Militants frequently attack NATO fuel and supply convoys, which provide the wherewithal for the foreign forces in Afghanistan. Over the past year, approximately 22 attacks were conducted against NATO fuel convoys in Pakistan.

[Editor's Comment:] That's what happens -ignorant and unempathic young men sign up as a hired killers for the waning US empire and sooner or later they return in a coffin. Their shabby deaths are not a great loss to America as such. Yet. -There still are plenty of young fools who will fill the boots of their reckless predecessors. Plus this: These hired killers didn't die for peace, democracy, or for the the women in Afghanistan or anything of the sort. But they did die for war & plunder. Let's face it, Petraeus' men are a pathetic bunch of fools that kill for the thrill, for the money and for the evil empire. -In fact, they're not a great loss to anyone except their grieving families. Their family members are experiencing a living hell right now. And why does it have to be like this? -Why do all these young fools pay more attention to the masters of war than to their own flesh & blood? It's a mystery.

US-led forces in Afghanistan have killed at least three civilians as their new commander General David Petraeus makes his debut in Kabul. The civilians, including a woman, were killed in a NATO operation in the volatile southern province of Kandahar, a Press TV correspondent reported. NATO has confirmed the attack. However, it claims that its soldiers only killed two civilians. The Western military alliance claims that its forces also accidentally injured another person. The foreign troops also killed eight civilians inside their houses during an operation in Kandahar Province last week. NATO claimed the raid targeted militants. The developments come as a big blow to the new commander of the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan. PressTV: US-led forces have killed over 2,500 Afghan civilians last year, according to official figures.

In an article on Thursday entitled “Continuity in foreign affairs but questions remain”, Greg Sheridan foreign editor of Murdoch’s Australian, noted appreciatively that Gillard had, to a considerable extent, been “even more courageous than Rudd in staring down the Left of her own party.” Referring to limited criticism of her attendance at the Australia Israel Leadership Forum in 2008, he wrote: “But she defied it and gave a fine address at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel celebrating not only Australia and Israel’s friendship, but also the common values of the two countries.” Sheridan had nothing but praise for Gillard’s backing of Israel’s murderous war on Gaza in 2008-09. As acting prime minister, she “steadfastly, day by day, defended Israel’s right to self defence against overwhelming commentariat hostility”. [...] There is no doubt that Washington would have known of last week’s coup and had vetted Gillard in advance. It also cannot be ruled out that the US had a more direct hand. Interestingly, President Obama twice cancelled visits to Australia this year.

WSWS: The Australian Labor Party coup: a warning to the working class. Gillard is an unelected prime minister heading an illegitimate government lacking any public support for the assault on the social position on the working class it is about to undertake. For these very reasons, she is being urged to trigger an early election, possibly for August, thereby short circuiting any debate on how Rudd was ousted and why. Such an election campaign will take the form of yet another conspiracy against the Australian people, with neither the Labor nor Liberal parties discussing the real agenda they are preparing to implement once the election is over.

[Editor's Comment:] Our guess is that this palace coup may have something to do with the coming cataclysmic war against Iran. Nearly all the pieces are in place by now. Israel & the zionist ruled US are planning massive war crimes -exterminations and cruelties almost unheard of in modern times- even worse than the 1.2 million people they've killed in Iraq so far. A nuclear attack on Iran is part & parcel of their criminal minds. For this they need complicit politicians from wherever they can get them. We think maybe the ousted prime minister, Mr. Rudd, for all his pragmatism and pettiness, still had one human quality left that would have made it difficult if not impossible for the zionists & the neocons so "secure [their] realm": decency. -Decency is the one thing the zionists don't have and importantly, this is the one thing that now stands between them and their political goal. Decent politicians have to go. The bootlicking, toady, sycophantic, the arse-licking, unelected and illegitimate new prime minister, Ms. Gillard, appeared to fit the bill.

One more thing: The Zionist top brass in Israel & the US have been salivating over Tasmania in recent years. They have chosen this beautiful, untouched island to be their last refuge when/if everything else goes awry. They have correctly figured out that for this to ever happen, they need to control Australia. What we do know is that they have been infiltrating "Down Under" for a long time already, probably for this purpose in addition to other, more strategic considerations. We'll find out before long. Hell may break loos any day now.

As expected the House of Representatives today voted, after a series of side votes on possible amendments, to provide President Barack Obama with some $33 billion in “emergency” war funding as part of an $80 billion bill. The voting came through a convoluted series of sub votes. A non-military spending vote passed 239-182, while the overall war funding itself narrowly passed 215-210, bolstered by Republican opposition to the pork-laden bill.

● Roll-Call Vote on War Funding Bill
● Roll-Call Vote to Cut All War Funding
● Roll-Call Vote on Withdrawal From Afghanistan

Alan Grayson - The wars have cost us over 3 Trillion dollars - i.e. $10,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. A quarter of a million young soldiers have permanent brain abnormalities. It is time to end the wars.

US soldiers in combat could use an assist from a civilian workforce while trying to rebuild war-torn nations, President Barack Obama said Wednesday. Speaking at a town hall in Racine, Wisconsin, Obama called for sending a "civilian expeditionary force" to Afghanistan and Iraq to help overburdened military troops build infrastructure. "So what I’m trying to say is, don’t put all the burden on the military. Make sure that we’ve got a civilian expeditionary force," said the president, adding that the civilian force would build schools, bridges and roads in regions cleared by the military as safe.

US to blame for Afghan slaughter. US-led forces in Afghanistan have killed many civilians in the southern province of Helmand amid public outrage over rising death tolls in the war-torn county, Afghan sources say. Afghan sources told Press TV that most of the victims of the US-led forces were civilians while a statement by International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said on Thursday that they had killed "a large number" of Taliban militants in the region and captured a Taliban chief of Naw Zad. Villagers in Baghran district of Helmand province reported that children and women were killed by the foreign troops. Afghan officials have launched a probe into the deaths. Thousands of civilians have also lost their lives either in US-led raids or in Taliban-led militancy across the violence-wracked country. According to official figures, more than 2,500 civilians were killed in NATO operations last year, undermining support for the presence of US-led forces in the country.

NATO Insists All Slain Were 'Insurgents' NATO forces issued another of their usual “successful raid” reports last night, saying that a pre-dawn raid on Monday left eight insurgents, including “a Taliban commander” killed in an attack on two compounds in Kandahar City. The deputy provincial police chief, Mohammad Shah Farooqi, tells a far different story, however, saying that NATO forces raided a pair of homes in the major southern city and that there was no evidence at all that any of the eight slain were involved in any “anti-government activities.” The Hindu: Police official says eight Afghan civilians killed in NATO raid. PressTV: US-led forces kill 8 Afghan civilians.

Petraeus received fawning praise from Democratic and Republican senators alike. He was rapidly confirmed by the Armed Services Committee Tuesday afternoon and is expected to be confirmed by the full Senate on Wednesday. In the week since the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by Petraeus, it has become clear that the shift in command is bound up with a decision to significantly step up the killing and wounding of Afghan civilians in an effort to crush the massive popular support for anti-US insurgents.

With Gen. Stanley McChrystal now just a memory and General David Petraeus looking to continue roughly the same strategy in Afghanistan, the upcoming vote on $33 billion in emergency funding for the war has put a renewed focus on the July 2011 drawdown date. For the Obama Administration, it is a date they would just as soon forget, and a promise, though only a few months old, they wish they hadn’t made. The war is going even worse now than it was a year ago, and there is little hope for the immediate or even long-term future, though officials maintain they intend to stay in the nation until some ill-defined victory is achieved.

[Editor's Comment:] Afghanistan is not a country. It is a conglomerate of tribes since time immemorial and will continue to be so, well beyond the foreseeable future. The masters of war probably knew this much even before they attacked this godforsaken territory. We don't think this "war" was meant to be "winnable". Nor is it a problem for the occupying power that it at some point could be considered to be "lost". It was neither meant to be won or lost. Whatever we want to call this "war", it fundamentally was meant to be an occupation, an endless one at that. -That is, it was, and still is, meant to last until all the resources have been looted and until the territory has outlived its strategic usefulness to the people who started it. There will be no withdrawal until then. The occupation will undoubtedly outlast us all. There will be no peace in Afghanistan in our lifetime(s).

US-led forces say two of their soldiers and an Afghan trooper were killed in eastern Afghanistan on Monday, but the Taliban claim they killed 40 US-led soldiers in Kunar province. Another report by Afghan officials said there were 30 militant casualties in two days of fighting in the east of the country. Heavy clashes between US-led foreign forces and the Taliban are continuing. Britain also announced the death of another soldier on Monday, the 309th Briton to die in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001. The overall death toll for foreign troops in June alone is fast approaching the grim milestone of 100. A total of 319 US-led forces have been killed in Afghanistan in the year 2010 to date, which means the casualty rate has risen significantly since 2009, when the death toll for US-led forces was 520 for the entire year. AWIP: Norwegian troops die in Afghanistan.

Showing the Crimes of the Industrial Military Complex and War Machine, Please Do Your Part To Make This Video Viral and then become active in each moment FROM this point onwards to stop this MADNESS!! Disturbing Footage!!

Intensified military operations against the Taliban are behind a surge in troop deaths in Afghanistan, NATO said Sunday, as the alliance announced the 93rd fatality in a record month for casualties. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said three more foreign soldiers had died in Taliban attacks -- two US personnel killed in gunfights on Sunday and one from an unidentified nation in a bomb blast on Saturday. The deaths bring to 313 the total number of soldiers hired killers to have died in Afghanistan this year. The number killed in June alone stands at 93, according to an AFP count, by far the deadliest monthly toll since the war began in late 2001.

Four Norwegian soldiers have been killed in northern Afghanistan, taking the total number of foreign soldiers killed in Afghanistan this month close to the 100 mark. The soldiers were killed inside their vehicle in Faryab province when a roadside bomb exploded on Sunday. The Norwegians' deaths push the Nato death toll in Afghanistan this year to 318 compared to 520 for the whole of 2009, according to the AFP news agency's tally. In a separate attack on Monday, at least eight civilians were killed when a homemade-style bomb struck a minivan in the central province of Ghazni, Afghan police said. Nato blames the rise in casualty numbers on expansion of its military operations and a more aggressive approach to the Taliban in areas where the group had previously been unchallenged. "Norway has been hit hard," Grete Faremo, Norway's defence minister, said reacting to the news of the deaths. "The loss deeply affects us all. It's hard and it reminds us of the risk we're taking."

[Editor's Comment:] That's the way it goes -ignorant and unempathic young men sign up as a hired killers for the waning US empire and sooner or later things like these will happen. Their shabby deaths are not a great loss to Norway. We still have plenty of young fools who will fill the boots of their reckless predecessors. In spite of what the "defence" minister claims, their well-deserved deaths won't affect "Norway" at all, "deeply" or otherwise. This unctuous and hypocritical "defence" minister uses words like 'we' and 'us' but she does not speak for the Norwegian people. She speaks for the political & military establishment.

Mainstream media here have gone into overdrive and people are being inundated with soppy eulogies and heroic tales. These killers' unnecessary deaths now are cynically being converted in to political capital for the local client state elite. They need this, of course, to justify their illegal and criminal presence in Afghanistan. They also need the sentimental propaganda to justify wasting billions of Nowegian Kroner in Afghanistan, ordered by their US masters. This really is what "deeply affects us all", because their war crimes are being financed by the taxpayers' money. They do this for "America", not for us. -So the risk the young killers in fact are taking is definitely not for their own country (which is not under attack, not by any stretch of mind). Nor do they take it for peace, democracy, or for the women in Afghanistan or anything of the sort. But they do take it for war & plunder. They're a pathetic bunch of fools and so are the hypocritical psychophants now ruling Norway for the evil empire.

At least 16 Afghan civilians have been killed in two separate incidents in Afghanistan amid growing concerns over persistence of high civilian casualties in the country. Foreign troops killed eight civilians inside their houses during an operation in the Kandahar province, a Press TV correspondent reports. Meanwhile, in the restive Ghazni province, eight more civilians, including women and children died in a bomb blast that went off in a minivan. The police have blamed the attack on Taliban militants. The fresh violence comes amid rising casualties of foreign troops in the country.

TOP TALIBAN MILITANTS RECEIVE MEDICAL CARE AT BAGRAM AIR FORCE BASE. The untold story is the massive complicity of Americans with their private airline, now suspected in yet another war, not Vietnam, not Central America/Iran Contra but Afghanistan, for a third time, of smuggling narcotics. The pattern is impossible to ignore. Read the list of accusations. Note that many of them have been corroborated from 5 or more sources already:

Three more US-led soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan as Taliban militants make a dramatic comeback in the war-ravaged country. NATO said in a statement that the troops were killed in two separate attacks in the country's volatile south on Saturday. The alliance has withheld the name and the nationality of the deceased soldiers. The deaths bring to six the number of foreign forces killed since Friday. The fatalities also push the number of foreign troops killed so far this month to 87. June has been the deadliest month for foreign troops since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. The latest deaths bring the number of NATO troops killed in Afghanistan so far this year to 307. AWIP/Matthew Nasuti: American Military Casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan Now Exceed 500,000 (Part 1 of 2); (Part 2 of 2)

'Courageous Restraint' Policy of McChrystal Said to Be Under Review. In addition to what will likely be the end of the July 2011 drawdown date, Pentagon officials are also saying that Gen. Petraeus is going to review the policy Gen. McChrystal called “courageous restraint,” a euphemism for a collection of orders deigned to reduce the number of civilians killed by US soldiers. Gen. McChrystal had made a number of such changes, including restrictions on air strikes in populated areas and restrictions on raids of civilian homes at night. Antiwar: Obama Disavows July 2011 Afghan Drawdown Date. The Independent: How lessons in the dark arts of special ops led McChrystal to the edge: From watching 'Kill TV' to leading undercover night raids, the two-star general was on a brutal, bleak journey. AWIP/Patrick Martin: Militarism and democracy: the implications of the McChrystal affair.

The latest from CNN: "Defense Secretary Robert Gates backed keeping Gen. Stanley McChrystal on the job because he was vital to the war effort in Afghanistan, but Gates was overruled, a senior Pentagon official told CNN's Barbara Starr."

Gates was initially furious about the article, but said McChrystal had to stay in command because the war is at such a critical point, a second source -- who also asked not to be named on internal administration discussions -- told CNN. But as it became clear the White House didn't feel same way and the issue was not going to fade, Gates shifted his position and agreed that keeping the general would be an untenable distraction.

The U.S government has commissioned via CIA the Xe Company, formerly known as Blackwater, "to guard facilities in Afghanistan". The details of this deal are classified. The official cover of the subversive and terrorist activities set for the Blackwater is a contract between the CIA and the Xe. A leakage to the media says that the price of the contract is allegedly equal to 100 million dollars, a certain source "close to the negotiations" told this to The Washington Post. According to it, Xe will "carry out protective and guard services in the region". The CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano "stopped short of confirming the contract", saying only that Xe personnel would not be involved in operations. Meanwhile, the command of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan warned last May that "CIA agents and mercenaries from Blackwater were infamous task in the long-term US strategy to destabilize the situation in the region. AWIP: CIA gives Blackwater firm new $100 million contract.

Kabul circles say the dismissal of US commander was over leaking information including NATO's connection with the executed leader of the Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi. Head of Press TV's office in Kabul, Mohammad Ruhi, says US commander General Stanley McChrystal was sacked for acknowledging NATO's connection with the executed leader of the Pakistan-based Jundallah terrorist group, Abdolmalek Rigi. He dismissed the official reasons for the firing of McChrystal, saying his growing friendship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and intelligence leaks may have triggered the replacement.

Having unceremoniously dismissed of Gen. Stanley McChrystal just one year after installing him as the commander and public face of the Obama Administration’s favorite war, the President has brought in a “new” general, but all parties involved were quick to assure that the disastrous McChrystal Plan, a strategy to escalate the war in Afghanistan an enormous amount, would remain in place and that the change was essentially a cosmetic one. AWIP: US commander recalled from Afghanistan after mocking Obama. AWIP/Patrick Martin: Militarism and democracy: the implications of the McChrystal affair.

Ray McGovern/Consortium News: Obama's Truman-MacArthur Moment. The Rolling Stone article is also strike two for McChrystal's insubordination. His first strike came last fall when his recommendation for 40,000 additional troops was leaked to the press. He also publicly dismissed a more targeted approach toward attacking al-Qaeda terrorists reportedly advocated by Vice President Joe Biden.

Summer has come earlier this year in Afghanistan, and with it, the typical summer spike in violence. This, coupled with the continued worsening of the security situation and the repeated NATO escalations have conspired to make June already the deadliest month for NATO troops since the 2001 invasion. The current toll based on official announcements is 76 NATO soldiers killed, 46 of them Americans. The toll includes eight soldiers killed today, six yesterday and 10 on Monday. Perhaps the scariest part of the record toll is that it came so early in the summer. In 2009, the deadliest year of the war by far, June had only 38 NATO deaths total. With the number already double that, and another week to go, the reality is that every month in 2010 has been far, far deadlier than its 2009 counterpart. LA Times: In Afghanistan, doubts grow and weariness deepens -McChrystal's dismissal underscores fatigue from a nearly nine-year conflict with no end in sight.

The Central Intelligence Agency has hired Xe Services, the private security firm formerly known as Blackwater Worldwide, to guard its facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere, according to an industry source. The previously undisclosed CIA contract is worth about $100 million, said the industry source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the deal, which is classified. “It’s for protective services … guard services, in multiple regions,” said the source. [They've murdered thousands. With total impunity. They're hired killers.] PressTV: CIA hires notorious Xe in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama says he has accepted the resignation of Gen. Stanley McChrystal with regret, but is certain that it is the right decision for the country's national security and the future of the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Speaking in the Rose Garden, Obama says McChrystal's biting comments about the president and his aides in a magazine article did not meet the standards of conduct for a commanding general. Obama named Gen. David Petraeus to assume McChrystal's role as the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. He says the move will allow the U.S. to maintain leadership and momentum in the war. Obama made the announcement following a private meeting with McChrystal and a separate meeting of his national security staff. Yahoo: Karzai Loses His Only Friend.

Following the appearance of an article in which he and his aides disparaged President Barack Obama and other top civilian officials, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, has been ordered to return to Washington for a White House meeting with the Obama administration’s security team. According to administration and Pentagon sources, McChrystal will be asked to explain his remarks to Obama and other officials during the meeting, which convenes Wednesday in the White House situation room. The controversy has erupted over an article, entitled “Runaway General,” which appears in an issue of Rolling Stone magazine that hits newsstands Friday. PressTV: McChrystal, Obama set for showdown. Daily Mail: 'Angry' Obama set to fire McChrystal after top U.S. general trashes White House in Rolling Stone article. Yahoo: US general in Afghan war to see Obama over remarks. AWIP: The soft media coup: McChrystal talks shit to Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone: The Runaway General: Stanley McChrystal, Obama's top commander in Afghanistan, has seized control of the war by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House. Craig Murray: The War Falls Apart. [-But the occupation does not.]

Chris Floyd: Termination Notice: McChrystal Sideshow Masks Murderous Reality. Some people seem to think that the question of which uniformed goober is in charge of the imperial bloodbath in Afghanistan is a vitally important issue, worthy of endless exegesis. It is not. It is a meaningless sideshow. What does matter, vitally, deeply, urgently, is the imperial bloodbath itself, and the fact that it will go on, and on, no matter what Barack Obama does or doesn't do about Stanley McChrystal.

McChrystal is in trouble for making disparaging remarks about fellow officers and civilian officials -- a military tradition that surely goes back to the armies of Hammurabi (and long before). Yet he faced no reprimand or remonstrance whatsoever for his admission, just a few months ago, that brazen war crimes were being carried out under his command:

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

In another example of the inanity of the U.S. State Department’s work in Afghanistan, it was revealed several days ago that the U.S. State Department has awarded a $120 million contract for security operations to the United States Training Center (USTC) at new U.S. Consulates in Mazar-i-Sharif and Heart. The USTC is a division of Xe, the new name Blackwater USA chose to hide behind after its indictment for murdering dozens of Iraqi civilians in broad daylight on a busy Baghdad square. The $120 million contract, split between the two small consulates means that $6.6 million per month will be spent on each consulate— on security alone! Blackwater security workers earn about $18,000/month. Afghan teachers earn about $50/month. For a fair comparison, figure that $50/month is below a living wage in Kabul. It takes three times that to pay rent, buy food and all the other costs required to raise a family, as a bare minimum— and that means no meat, no car, and making children work, and not go to school. Teachers are guaranteed a life of poverty, and are at much greater risk for attack by Talibs than U.S. diplomats. The huge cost of the U.S. diplomatic infrastructure in Afghanistan is a big thorn in the side of the U.S. and the Afghan people.

A US-led airstrike has killed 25 people in eastern Afghanistan raising concerns about the growing number of civilian casualties in the war-torn country. NATO said it targeted a militant stronghold in Paktika Province near the border with Pakistan on Monday night. The western military alliance also issued a statement on Tuesday, claiming that the 25 killed were Taliban militants and some foreign fighters. The US-led forces launch attacks on alleged militant hideouts on a regular basis, but the strikes usually result in civilian casualties because of bad intelligence or flaws in the operations. The latest attack comes as NATO has also stepped up its air offensives in neighboring Pakistan. Since 2008, nearly one thousand people have lost their lives in US drone attacks.

If you asked me what publication General McChrystal, the highest ranking US military official in Afghanistan, would chose to meet with for the purpose of discrediting his Commander-in-chief, I probably wouldn’t have said the same magazine that once featured the fabulous Adam Lambert on its cover. An article in this week’s Rolling Stone magazine depicts McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to persuade even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war. Are we talking about the same lone wolf, who admitted to war crimes in March? I can’t imagine why people are refusing to listen to a man who admitted that the US military has “shot an amazing number of people, but to [his] knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” This weird story reminded me of Sy Hersh’s statement last year that the military was “waging a war against the White House.”

“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

“If he gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.”

McChrystal’s, of course, playing innocent now, and he’s apologized to the White House, but it’s hard to believe a man who spends his every waking hour plotting strategy would “accidentally” leak these kinds of whopping gaffs to the press. It should serve as a reminder to everyone that not all military coups are violent overthrows of a democratically elected president. Sometimes, disgruntled generals can perform “soft coups,” a gradual, sneaky undermining of presidential authority and policy. Oops, did I just mentioned we’re killing civilians to the press? Whoops! Did I just discredit the president to Rolling Stone?

The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators. The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and "dramatically undermine" larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said. The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors "winds up" in the hands of warlords and insurgents. [The U.S. military is paying them for the opium/heroin.] PressTV: Taliban funded by US taxes.

Ten NATO troops were killed in militant attacks and a helicopter crash in Afghanistan as foreign forces marked another grim milestone in the war against the Taliban amid signs of cracks in the alliance. Monday's deaths, the second time this month that 10 service members have been killed in a single day, came as commanders press on with a campaign to oust the Taliban from their heartland in the southern province of Kandahar. There was further turmoil for NATO as Britain announced its special envoy to Afghanistan was taking "extended leave," amid reports he had clashed with military officials over strategy.

The US says it will not pull out large numbers of its troops from Afghanistan in July 2011, contradicting a promise made earlier by President Barack Obama. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, US Defense Secretary Robert Gates brushed aside suggestions that Washington would, in accordance with a deadline set by Obama, begin a significant draw-down of its troops in July of 2011. "That absolutely has not been decided," Gates said. He also emphasized that any decision would be made based upon the situation on the ground in Afghanistan. Antiwar: US Officials Dispute, Downplay July 2011 Afghan Pullout Date.

Ten civilians, including at least five women and children, were killed in NATO airstrikes in Khost Province, the provincial police chief said Saturday. Five other civilians were killed, as were two Afghan National Army soldiers and two police officials, in other violence around the country on Saturday.

Britons have paid more than £20 billion for fighting and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan since April 2001, government figures have revealed. The recently released figures -- which indicate that at least £9.24bn was spent on Iraq and £11.1bn on Afghanistan -- do not include troop salaries or care for those wounded. People have begun questioning the government's credibility as it plans to cut more than £6bn in public spending, costing hundreds of thousands of jobs in the public sector, but refuses to make any cuts to defense spending. "It is a disgrace that the coalition government plans to target low-paid public sector workers and those receiving welfare benefits in its emergency budget," said Mark Serwotka, general secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.

According to Barack Obama, our troops in Afghanistan are "just air-raiding villages and killing civilians".

Video Reportedly Shows Farah Air Strike From May 2009. With WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange still in hiding there is growing speculation, fueled by comments from Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir, that the release of Wikileaks’ next classified US military video is imminent. WikiLeaks has been reported to be in possession of the video in question for months, which shows the May 5 2009 US air strike against a village in Farah Province. Afghan investigators concluded that the attack killed upwards of 140 civilians, and that more than half of them were children. The US claimed the villagers deliberately exaggerated the toll to get more compensation from the military. While massive death tolls in air strikes have been pretty common over the course of the Afghan War, the repeated changes in official US stories on the incident (including an initial claim that the whole attack was a myth invented by the Taliban) and the secrecy surrounding the internal probe, the video could deal a massive blow to the claims about the attack.

For years, the military insisted that the Active Denial System — known as the “Holy Grail” of crowd control — was oh-so-close to battlefield deployment. But a host of technical issues hampered the ray gun: everything from overheating to poor performance in the rain. Safety concerns lingered; a test subject had to be airlifted to a burn center after being zapped by the weapon. (He eventually made a full recovery.) And then there were concerns about “the atmospherics” — how the locals might react — when they learned that the United States had turned a people-roaster on ‘em. “Not politically tenable,” the Defense Science Board concluded.

A US-led airstrike has killed at least five people in Afghanistan amid growing discontent over the civilian casualties in the war-torn country. According to Afghan officials, the attack took place on Friday night in the southeastern province of Khost, a Press TV correspondent reported. The provincial police chief says the US warplanes dropped several bombs on a residential area in Musa Khel District. Afghan government officials have confirmed that all five killed in the strike were civilians -- two women and three children. The United States and its allies claim that militant hideouts are being targeted in their military operations. However, most of the attacks have resulted in heavy civilian casualties.

Afghanistan has seen an "alarming" 94 percent increase in incidents involving homemade bombs in a year, a report by the United Nations secretary general said on Saturday. Ban Ki-moon said "security incidents" have risen significantly in Afghanistan as US-led forces make a push in the south and militant activities have grown in southeast and eastern regions. "The rise in incidents involving improvised explosive devices constitutes an alarming trend, with the first four months of 2010 recording a 94 percent increase compared to the same period in 2009," the report to the UN security council said. Improvised bombs have made up one third of reported incidents of violence in Afghanistan this year while suicide attacks are happening at a rate of about three a week, it said.

The founder of whistle-blower website, WikiLeaks, says he will release a secret Pentagon video of a deadly airstrike on children in Afghanistan. Julian Assange, the Australian-born man behind WikiLeaks, said Friday that the video shows how dozens of Afghan children are killed. Assange is in hiding since reports revealed that the Pentagon is set on arresting him, after detaining a US military analyst alleged to have provided Wikileaks with a classified video of an American apache killing civilians in Iraq.

Bradley Manning, the US analyst, is also accused of having uploaded 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments on the website. Civilian death has become a major problem in Afghanistan with hundreds having been killed in Afghanistan in 2010. A report by the UN says over 2,400 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in 2009, the largest number of civilian casualties since the 2001 US-led invasion. Ninety five children were reported to have been among the 150 civilians killed in a US-led strike in the western province of Farah in May 2009. Afghan officials have confirmed the massacre. The invasion of Afghanistan was launched with the official objective of curbing militancy and bringing peace and stability to the country. Nine years on, however, Afghanistan remains unstable and civilians continue to pay the price.

On the return journey, as we crawled back up the passes towards Kabul, we got stuck behind a U.S. military convoy of eight humvees and two armoured personnel carriers in full camouflage, travelling at less than 20 miles per hour. Despite the slow speed, the troops refused to let any Afghan drivers overtake them, for fear of suicide bombers, and they fired warning shots at anyone who attempted to do so. By the time we reached the top of the pass two hours later, there were 300 vehicles behind the convoy — full of Afghans furious at being ordered around in their own country by foreigners. Every day, small incidents of arrogance and insensitivity such as this make the anger grow.

Four NATO service members were killed, and three others were injured, in two separate blasts in Kunduz province Wednesday . Early on Wednesday morning a convoy of NATO forces was hit by a road side bomb and two NATO soldiers were killed, a provincial governor of Kunduz province said. No group, including the Taliban, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The European Court of Human Rights will consider the case of a German citizen who was kidnapped and beaten in connection with the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the Open Society Justice Initiative revealed today. This is the first time an extraordinary rendition case related to the "war on terror" has reached Europe's top court. Macedonian security forces seized Khaled El-Masri at the request of the United States in December 2003 and held him—incommunicado—for 23 days. El-Masri was then handed over to the CIA and flown to a detention center in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was confined in appalling conditions, interrogated, and abused. After several months, El-Masri was finally released and dumped on a roadside in Albania. Despite overwhelming evidence of its collaboration, Macedonia has denied that El-Masri was detained illegally on its territory or handed over to the CIA.

"European governments must be held accountable for participating in torture, abuse, and kidnappings in association with the CIA's rendition program," said James A. Goldston, executive director of the Open Society Justice Initiative, which is litigating the case. "United States courts may have closed their doors on this matter, but we hope that El-Masri will find justice before the European Court."

A bleak Ghazni Province seems to offer little, but a Penta-
gon study says it may have among the world’s largest de-
posits of lithium.

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials. The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe. An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys. The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said. Associated Press: Report: US finds mineral riches in Afghanistan. Times Online: Afghanistan ‘holds $1 trillion in mineral deposits’. Gizmodo: Massive Afghanistan Lithium Deposit (As In Batteries) Could Alter Nation's Economy.

Chris Floyd: Trillion-Dollar Bash: Mineral Find Means More Blood Money in Afghan War. Unfortunately, given the realities of our world, [this mineral find] also guarantees many more years of American military occupation (in one guise or another); there is absolutely no chance that our Beltway banditti (and their corporate cronies) are simply going to walk away from a stash like this, not when they've already got "boots on the ground" -- and billions of dollars in war pork invested in the place. It's payback time, baby! (Or rather, double-dip time, as most these "investments" are just pass-throughs of public money to private profiteers). And hey, finder's keepers and all that, right?

[Editor's Comment:] The US has known about this since before September 2001. This is one of the main reasons the US attacked & occupied Afghanistan in the first place. (Usama bin Laden did not have anything to do with it and 9/11 was nothing but a pretext for what in reality was and still is old-fashioned imperial conquest.) Pipelines are a pipe dream for the foreseeable future because they cannot be sufficiently protected from tribal sabotage. Driving a wedge between China and Iran (China is dependent on Iranian oil.) was another main reason for the occupation. The war itself was never meant to be "won". Being there (i.e. the occupation) is in itself the main point. Now this military presence can be used to isolate China and plunder the resources of Afghanistan. This is the ugly truth.

“The president did not show any interest in the evidence — none — he treated it like a piece of dirt,” said Amrullah Saleh, then the director of the Afghan intelligence service. Mr. Saleh declined to discuss Mr. Karzai’s reasoning in more detail. But a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Karzai suggested in the meeting that it might have been the Americans who carried it out. Minutes after the exchange, Mr. Saleh and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar, resigned — the most dramatic defection from Mr. Karzai’s government since he came to power nine years ago. Mr. Saleh and Mr. Atmar said they quit because Mr. Karzai made clear that he no longer considered them loyal. But underlying the tensions, according to Mr. Saleh and Afghan and Western officials, was something more profound: That Mr. Karzai had lost faith in the Americans and NATO to prevail in Afghanistan.

Reports circulating in the Kremlin today state that Prime Minister Putin has ordered Russian military forces to prepare to confront American military forces in Afghanistan over what Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov warns is the “greatest threat to International peace and security”, Afghanistan’s thriving drug trade supported by the US and NATO. Not being reported to the American people about the Afghanistan war is that it has nothing to do with their being protected from terrorists, but rather it involves the billions of dollars gained for many of the West’s top intelligence agencies (mainly the CIA) from the heroin produced in this region (90% of World’s total) that by 2001 the Taliban had virtually eliminated. Immediately after the US invasion of Afghanistan in October, 2001, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) installed one of their main Afghan operatives, Hamid Karzai, as President, who then put into power his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai, who since then has increased heroin production to levels unseen in modern times and resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Russian citizens.

The British Broadcasting Corporation is showering Afghan cable networks with lucrative deals to cut broadcastings of Iran's English-language news channel, Press TV. The Press TV bureau in Kabul was informed on Wednesday that "a number of BBC employees have recently contacted the cable networks' union in Herat to persuade them into breaking contract with Press TV and blocking all satellite transmission of its programs." "The BBC reportedly offered to triple the union's pay once it agrees to strip Press TV of its broadcasting rights in Herat," the bureau added. Last year, US military forces confiscated technical equipment of Press TV's Afghanistan bureau, only days before Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made a visit to the country. Local reports revealed that Press TV has started to emerge as a popular news source among the people and even journalists in Afghanistan.

NATO says a helicopter has gone down in southern Afghanistan and there is no immediate word on casualties. Spokesman Sgt. Kevin Bell said the aircraft went down Wednesday in Helmand province but that few other details were available. A spokesman for the provincial government, Dawood Ahmadi, said the aircraft went down in Sangin district after taking ground fire. Al Jazeera: Nato convoy attacked in Pakistan. Missoulian: Copter shot down in Afghanistan; 4 Americans dead.

As Washington expands its drone strikes in Pakistan, the number of civilians killed in the attacks keeps rising. Hundreds of people have died since 2004 and critics say the program only helps fuel the conflict and creates new militants rather than eliminating them.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ten NATO troops, including seven U.S. soldiers, were killed in Afghanistan on Monday in the deadliest day for coalition forces this year. In addition, two Australian soldiers were killed by an improvised explosive device in southern Afghanistan, acting Australian Defense Force Chief Lt. Gen. David Hurley said Tuesday. Five of the U.S. service members were killed in a roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan, according to U.S. military officials. Two other U.S. soldiers died in the country's volatile south, one in a bombing and the other by small-arms fire. AWIP: [5] 10 NATO troops killed in 1 day in Afghanistan. PressTV: Three more US-led soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan.

El País: El arma más temible en poder de los talibanes. A principios de mayo, una patrulla del Ejército noruego fue atacada en el distrito de Ghormach. Ocho soldados de la OTAN resultaron heridos en el ataque, en el que los agresores emplearon armas ligeras y granadas. Lo peor, sin embargo, es que en su huida la patrulla noruega abandonó tres vehículos cargados con armas. En uno de ellos había dos rifles de precisión y largo alcance. Los Barret M82A1, que emplea el Ejército noruego, se encuentran entre los más efectivos del mundo. Son capaces de acertar un blanco a 1,8 kilómetros de distancia. "Es un salto cualitativo", señala un experto, "porque hasta ahora, además de los IED [artefactos explosivos improvisados], ellos contaban con el conocimiento del terreno y el factor sorpresa. Es decir, elegían cuándo y dónde atacar. Nuestra ventaja era la potencia de nuestras armas. Podíamos alcanzarlos antes de que nosotros estuviéramos a su alcance. Esa situación puede cambiar". [Google Translate.]

NATO says that five international troops have been killed in one day in separate incidents in Afghanistan. The alliance says three members of its force were killed Sunday in a vehicle accident in southern Afghanistan. Another service member died the same day when a makeshift bomb exploded in southern Afghanistan. And a fifth NATO service member was killed Sunday in an insurgent attack in eastern Afghanistan. U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Joseph T. Breasseale said the three troops who died in the vehicle accident were American, as was the one killed in an attack in the east. The nationality of the fifth death was not immediately available. Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan: Three British terrorist troops killed, two hurt in Helmand. + 9 NATO invaders killed in Kandahar. + Mujahideen kill four American terrorists in Ningarhar. BBC: Nato loses 10 troops in deadly Afghanistan day. PressTV: 10 NATO troops killed in Afghanistan.

The dramatic expansion in the use of special forces [assassins], which in their global span go far beyond the covert missions authorised by George W. Bush, reflects how aggressively the President is pursuing "al-Qaeda" behind his public rhetoric of global engagement and diplomacy. When Mr Obama took office US special forces were operating in fewer than 60 countries. In the past 18 months he has ordered a big expansion in Yemen and the Horn of Africa — known areas of strong al-Qaeda activity — and elsewhere in the Middle East, central Asia and Africa. According to The Washington Post, Mr Obama has also approved pre-emptive special forces strikes to "disrupt terror plots" [to hatch themm & carry them out], and has given the units powers and "authority" [Obama has no authority whatsoever to give.] that was not granted by Mr Bush when he occupied the White House.

[Taking time off for a fair number of killing sprees...] all around Afghanistan, from Kandahar Airfield to the Bagram jail, the U.S. military is on a building spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on wartime encampments. By one count, America and its allies now have 700 bases in Afghanistan. But most of the construction — and most of the extra troops “surging” into the country — are going to the violent south and the dangerous east. Until recently, northern Afghanistan was considered quiet. Regional hub Mazar-e-Sharif was the first major city in Afghanistan to be taken from the Taliban. But, especially in nearby Kunduz province, violence is bubbling up once again. Chris Floyd: War on the World: Obama's Surge in State Terror.

■ These Are Healthy Young People Who Are Dying In Their Sleep Because Some Physician Prescribed A Combination Of Medications That Killed Them ■ The Spate Of Deaths Fuels Criticism That The Military Medical Community Puts Too Much Emphasis On Pharmaceutical Products ■ Many Of Those Drugs Have A Similar Fundamental Effect On The Body, Slowing The Central Nervous System And Increasing The Risk That A Patient’s Heart Or Breathing Will Stop During Sleep ■ The Safest And Most Effective Treatment Includes Various Forms Of Talk Therapy In Which Troops Forge Personal Relationships With Counselors

Letters of reprimand for the guilty parties. The US military has admitted killing 23 civilians and has reprimanded six operators of a pilot-less drone that attacked a convoy of civilians. An investigation found that warnings that the convoy was not an attacking force were ignored and that the ground-force commander was not sure who was in the vehicles. Women and children were among the dead. A Nato statement after the attack in February said the convoy was thought to contain Taliban fighters. The investigation said the order to attack was based on flawed information and flawed analysis. The US troop commander, General Stanley McChrystal, said letters of reprimand have been sent to six officers.

GHAZNI, Jun. 01 - About 7 American soldiers were killed Sunday (May 30) in two straight powerful mine blasts throwing away the parts of their bodies across the area in Sangin district of Helmand. In another news from Helmand, a mortar round hit a military base of the coalition invaders, killing a foreign soldier and wounding two. IEA: 12 enemy soldiers killed in Zabul.

Mujahideen of the Islamic Emirate during the major countrywide operation al-Fath shot down a US helicopter in Kandahar's Zhari district on Saturday noon (May 30). According to the report, the helicopter was set on fire right after it was shot and fell on the ground moments later, killing about 7 US soldiers and crew members aboard, Mujahideen official said. Similarly, a US helicopter got shot down in Helmad's Nad Ali district, while the enemy described the cause of the helicopter crash as quick landing.