Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich twice called on the United States to attack North Korea and Iran Thursday because the United States has only attacked "one out of three" of so-called "Axis of Evil" members by invading Iraq. He also claimed that Muslims are trying to install Sharia law on America and said that the "War on Terror" should have been a war on "radical Islamists" instead. Speaking at an American Enterprise Institute event yesterday, Gingrich compared not following through on President George W. Bush's "Axis of Evil" agenda with not fully engaging the Axis power in World War II.

"If Franklin Roosevelt had done that in '41, either the Japanese or the Germans would have won," Gingrich said, adding that Americans should "over-match the problem."

On the reaction to Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil," Gingrich blamed Democrats because Americans had not followed through on President Bush's words:

I believe he was right but in fact could not operationalize what he said. That is, there was an Axis of Evil, Iran, Iraq, North Korea. Well we're one out of three. And people ought to think about that. If Bush was right in January of 2002 -- and by the way virtually the entire Congress gave him a standing ovation when he said it -- then why is it that the other two parts of the Axis of Evil are still visibly, cheerfully making nuclear weapons? And it's because we've stood at brink, looked over and thought, "Too big a problem."

In an interview with Newsmax, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken seriously "threats to America," and that Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.

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.

In Spain, a judge has re-issued arrest warrants for three US soldiers over the killing of a Spanish TV cameraman who died in US tank fire in Iraq in 2003. Spain's National Court announced Thursday that it has re-issued an the arrest warrants because the soldiers are implicated in an attack on Baghdad's Hotel Palestine, where Jose Couso along with dozens of other journalists were based during the Iraq war, the Time reported. "Now we have to hope that the United States government collaborates with the Spanish justice system in the search and capture in order to sit these murderers in the court," Xinhua News quoted Jose's brother David as saying. Couso was one of two journalists killed. The other one was a Ukrainian journalist, Taras Protsyuk. Three staff members of Reuters news agency were also wounded in the attack.

Late last week, Republicans in the House or Representatives unveiled H.Res.1553, a resolution providing explicit support for an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The measure, introduced by Texas Republican Louie Gohmert and forty-six of his colleagues, endorses Israel's use of "all means necessary" against Iran "including the use of military force".

"We have got to act," Gohmert has said in regard to the measure. "We've got to get this done. We need to show our support for Israel. We need to quit playing games with this critical ally in such a difficult area."

But Gohmert's resolution may be an unprecedented development -- Congress has never endorsed pre-emptive military strikes by a foreign country. What's more, this is the minority party signaling to Israel that they can count on Republican support should the President object to Israeli strikes on Iran -- as did George W. Bush in 2008. The resolution also explicitly endorses "any means necessary", a carte blanche for the use of nuclear bunker-busting bombs.

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 officials believe that the intelligence agency of ally Pakistan has been secretly supporting the Taliban in their conflict with US-led Nato troops in Afghanistan, leaked records say.

Wikileaks, the online whistleblower organisation, published more than 90,000 secret US military documents on Sunday, revealing alleged support for the Taliban.

The unverified files say that Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, the country's spy service, has been holding strategy sessions with Taliban leaders to aid them.

Al Jazeera interviewed one of the men specifically mentioned in the reports - retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul, who has been accused of being actively involved in supporting the Afghan Taliban.

He denied the allegations and said the sources of the "flawed" leaks had ulterior political motives.

An Army private suspected of leaking classified material, including videos and other documents, has been transferred from Kuwait to a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia. Pfc. Bradley Manning, who served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, was charged in June with eight violations of the U.S. Criminal Code and is the military's focus in the investigation into who leaked tens of thousands of documents to the website WikiLeaks. Manning, 22, will remain in confinement as the Army continues an investigation to determine whether he should face the military equivalent of a trial over the charges, according to a statement released by the Army on Thursday. He has not yet entered a plea, since there has not been a decision about whether he should face trial, Army Maj. Bryan Woods said. Military lawyers for Manning referred questions about him to Woods. Daily Telegraph: FBI called in to hunt those responsible.

This 17 part film will be released 9/11 2010, This clip is a sample. I've had to change images and music because of the youtube police.

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.

As part of Washington’s intensifying campaign against Iran, the European Union (EU), Canada and Australia imposed hefty new sanctions this week against Tehran over its nuclear programs. While promoted as means of pressuring Iran, the sanctions are a further escalation of a dangerous confrontation that is setting the stage for war [for Israel].

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.

Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!

At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.

At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:

[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.

What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!

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.

Iranian Parliament (Majlis) Speaker Ali Larijani warns over US constant plots against the Islamic Republic, saying the US lacks courage to make any anti-Iran move. “The United States still seeks to break the Iranian nation's will. The more sanctions they issue against us, the stronger the Iranian nation's will becomes,” Larijani said in western Iranian city of Kermanshah on Tuesday. He further added that the Iranian nation still opposes the United States and stressed the importance of maintaining readiness to encounter the US. The Iranian official deplored dual policies of the US government on Iran, saying, “US President Barack Obama cannot stretch his hands to the Iranian nation while the US Congress adopts moves against Iran.” Larijani also stressed that these efforts have no impact on the will of the Iranian nation. PressTV: Iran independent of world powers.

Can we have our Nobel Peace Prize back, please? We got most of our decisions wrong. We should have laid much more emphasis on abolishing the military and outlawing wars, but we didn't. Such is the message about to go out to the more undeserving winners of one of the world's most coveted awards. More than half the Nobel Peace Prizes awarded since 1946 have been awarded illegally, says Fredrik Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and peace activist, because they do not follow the expressed will of the millionaire inventor of dynamite. He says all but one of 10 prizes awarded since 1999 are illegitimate under Norwegian and Swedish law. Mr Heffermehl's verdict, which caused controversy when it was set out in his book Nobels Vilje (Nobel's Will) published in Norwegian in 2008, is likely to stir up passionate discussion next month when Greenwood Press publishes "The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted".

Mr Heffermehl's book emphasises that Nobel's will concentrated on rewarding the struggle to end wars through an international order based on law and abolition of military forces. Few of the recent winners can be seen to have engaged in that struggle. Among those awards he names as illegitimate are: Mother Teresa (1979); Lech Walesa (1983); Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin (1994); Iranian human rights activist Shirin Ebadi (2003); Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai (2004); and Al Gore (2007). The will, dated 27 November 1895, disbursed large sums to various relatives, friends and servants before leaving the bulk of the estate to establishing the awards that bear his name. The relevant sentence setting out the terms of what he called a prize for the "champions of peace" is: "One part to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses."

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

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 United States and South Korea have kicked off a large-scale joint military exercise in the Sea of Japan, officials say. The US and South Korea on Sunday launched the major naval exercise that would involve about 20 ships, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and some 200 fixed-wing aircraft. Some 8,000 service personnel from the two allies haven taken part in the show of force. "The USS George Washington left the southern port of Busan around 7:00am Sunday (2200 GMT Saturday). It's sailing towards the Sea of Japan (East Sea) for the exercise," AFP quoted a US military spokesman as saying. Officials at Seoul's defense ministry said other navy ships had also left from Busan and the nearby port of Jinhae for the drill, with some from the US 7th Fleet set to join them off the peninsula's east coast. South Korea's Defense Ministry announced that the drill has been relocated from the sensitive Yellow Sea in response to China's protests. ABC News: Bronze Kim Jong-il sparks rumours of despot's end.

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.

An American war veteran in the US warfare in Iraq says the United States initiated the hostilities as a pretext to establish its dominion over the country. Speaking in a recent interview with Press TV, Michael Prysner, the US war veteran and peace activist said that the invasion of Iraq in 2003 was "a complete sham" and not meant to liberate the Iraqis as pledged by US authorities. Prysner, a corporal in the US army at the time of invasion, said he intended to help the Iraqi people but later realized every action by the US military only added to the sufferings of the Iraqi people.

World Wide Military Expenditures

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.

Republicans in the US House of Representatives have introduced a measure that would green-light a possible Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. Resolution 1553 provides explicit support for military strikes against Iran, stating that Congress backs Israel's use of 'all means necessary' against Iran, "including the use of military force," BBC Persian reported. The introduction of the measure coincides with a pattern of renewed calls for military strikes that have escalated since President Obama signed Congressional Iran sanctions into law. Neoconservatives who were instrumental in orchestrating the Iraq War, such as Bill Kristol and Reuel Marc Gerecht, have led the stepped up calls for military action. Hawkish former Bush administration official John Bolton recently laid out the game plan to prod Israel into attacking Iran, arguing that outsiders can "create broad support" for a strike by framing it as an issue of Israel's right to self-defense. Supporters for military strikes, Bolton says, should "defend the specific tactic of pre-emptive attacks" against Iran. He said that Congress can 'make it clear' that it supports such strikes and that 'having visible congressional support in place at the outset will reassure' Israel. In spite of support from the neocons, top US military leaders have warned of the many dangers of military strikes against Iran.

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)

Iranian Commerce Minister Mehdi Ghazanfari has warned against any plan for the inspection of the country's cargo ships, saying perpetrators will regret the act. Ghazanfari questioned West's authority to scrutinize Iranian ships and said, "Iran reserves the right to respond to inspections as any such attempts will be a move beyond the sanctions resolution," Mehr news agency reported on Friday. He also slammed the fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran's nuclear program and said the new measure will fail to change the country's stance on its nuclear program. The Iranian official further pointed out that the Islamic Republic will continue to "fully" support its cargo fleet.

After about two and a half years during which the danger of war between the United States and Iran was at a relatively low level, this threat is now rapidly increasing. A pattern of political and diplomatic events, military deployments, and media chatter now indicates that Anglo-American ruling circles, acting through the troubled Obama administration, are currently gearing up for a campaign of bombing against Iran, combined with special forces incursions designed to stir up rebellions among the non-Persian nationalities of the Islamic Republic. Naturally, the probability of a new fake Gulf of Tonkin incident or false flag terror attack staged by the Anglo-American war party and attributed to Iran or its proxies is also growing rapidly.

UK defense secretary says American and British forces used depleted uranium (DU) ammunitions during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. "UK forces used about 1.9 metric tons of depleted uranium ammunition in the Iraq war in 2003," UK Defense Secretary Liam Fox said in a written reply to the House of Commons on Thursday, the Kuwait News Agency reported. The announcement came after a joint study by the environment, health and science ministries in Iraq said there were communities near the cities of Najaf, Basra and Fallujah with increased rates of cancer and birth defects over the past five years. More than 40 sites across Iraq are contaminated with high levels of radiation and dioxins.

■ 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)

WASHINGTON — Can diplomats field their own army? The State Department is laying plans to do precisely that in Iraq, in an unprecedented experiment that U.S. officials and some nervous lawmakers say could be risky. In little more than a year, State Department contractors in Iraq could be driving armored vehicles, flying aircraft, operating surveillance systems, even retrieving casualties if there are violent incidents and disposing of unexploded ordnance. Under the terms of a 2008 status of forces agreement, all U.S. troops must be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, but they'll leave behind a sizable American civilian presence, including the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, the largest in the world, and five consulate-like "Enduring Presence Posts" in the Iraqi hinterlands.

Former Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey, The Washington Post, today, arguing against civilian trials for Guantanamo detainees:

The civilized world has tried over several hundred years to establish rules of warfare so that those who wear uniforms, follow a recognized chain of command, carry their arms openly and do not target civilians are treated as prisoners of war when captured. Those who follow none of these rules are treated as war criminals, not as ordinary defendants accused of ordinary crimes and entitled to far more robust protection than war criminals.

Dana Priest and William Arkin, The Washington Post, today, on the sprawling network of private corporations performing core U.S. military and intelligence functions:

Private contractors working for the CIA have recruited spies in Iraq, paid bribes for information in Afghanistan and protected CIA directors visiting world capitals. Contractors have helped snatch a suspected extremist off the streets of Italy, interrogated detainees once held at secret prisons abroad and watched over defectors holed up in the Washington suburbs. . . . Contractors kill enemy fighters. They spy on foreign governments and eavesdrop on terrorist networks. They help craft war plans. They gather information on local factions in war zones. . . .

A former Israeli lecturer has said the entity depends on wars for its existence, warning that the hostility only invites disaster for Tel Aviv. It is only constant confrontations and standoffs which keep the Israeli society from falling apart, said Ilan Pappe, who used to work as a senior lecturer at the University of Haifa in northern Israel. He also said that the current Israeli government is the result of a colonialist movement. Colonialists, who did not have a country anywhere across the world, were obliged to remain here. The Israeli regime, therefore, is constantly seeking to ignite new wars; against Lebanon and maybe soon against Iran, but future wars would not succeed and would instead lead the entity into disaster, he added, speaking to the German daily junge Welt last month.

junge Welt: Ein Staat des Dialogs. Die israelische Gesellschaft ist alles andere als homogen. [...] In der israelischen Gesellschaft gibt es keine Solidarität. Es herrscht Kapitalismus pur. Für gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt sorgen lediglich die permanenten Konflikte, in denen sich das Land befindet. Deshalb zettelt das Regime ständig neue Kriege an. Gegen den Libanon und vielleicht bald gegen den Iran. Doch die künftigen Kriege werden keine erfolgreichen sein, sondern das Land in die Katastrophe führen.

[...] Aber noch einmal: Die israelische Gesellschaft ist nicht homogen. Im übrigen gibt es bei uns den einen Staat bereits – in Form eines Apartheidstaates. Und es ist wahrscheinlich leichter, einen Regimewechsel in einem Staat durchzuführen, als zwei Staaten zu schaffen. Es wird schwieriger werden als in Südafrika, und es wird auch nicht gleich im ersten Anlauf gelingen. Aber ich glaube nicht, daß das an der Geschlossenheit der israelischen Gesellschaft liegt. Es ist die Vorstellung, sich ständig im Krieg zu befinden, welche die Gesellschaft so geschlossen erscheinen läßt.

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.

Florida –Organizers today announced the formation of the North American Truth and Accountability Commission for Human Experimentation (NATAC). The Commission, nearly 8 months in the making, was first proposed after a number of people had read the recently published book by H.P. Albarelli Jr., A TERRIBLE MISTAKE: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments. Albarelli’s book details a number of shocking human experiments conducted during the Cold War years. Following a number of meetings in Los Angeles and New York City to discuss both past and on-going human experiments sponsored by the government, it was proposed that a formal commission be formed to further research government-sponsored human experimentation in the United States and Canada and to advocate for the demise of all such programs.

Tony Blair's evidence to the Chilcot Inquiry that toppling Saddam Hussein helped make Britain safe from terrorists was dramatically undermined by the former head of MI5 yesterday. Giving evidence to the same inquiry, Eliza Manningham-Buller revealed that there was such a surge of warnings of home-grown terrorist threats after the invasion of Iraq that MI5 asked for – and got – a 100 per cent increase in its budget. Baroness Manningham-Buller, who was director general of MI5 in 2002-07, told the Chilcot panel that MI5 started receiving a "substantially" higher volume of reports that young British Muslims being drawn to al-Qa'ida. She told the inquiry:

"Our involvement in Iraq radicalised, for want of a better word, a whole generation of young people – a few among a generation – who saw our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan as being an attack on Islam." [She added:] "Arguably we gave Osama bin Laden his Iraqi jihad so that he was able to move into Iraq in a way that he was not before."

Her words are in stark contrast to the claim that Mr Blair made in front of the same inquiry on 29 January. AWIP/Chris Floyd: Blood is His Argument: Tony Blair's Gentle Cuddling at Iraq "Inquiry".

Counterpunch: Blair Strikes Oil in Iraq. "In the 3 years since he stepped down as prime minister, Blair pocketed more than $30 million in oil revenues from secret dealings with a South Korean oil consortium, UI Energy Corporation. Despite his best efforts to keep his connection to UI secret, word is spreading..."

The Independent: Blair warned in 2000 Iraq war was illegal. An invasion of Iraq was discussed within the Government more than two years before military action was taken – with Foreign Office mandarins warning that an invasion would be illegal, that it would claim "considerable casualties" and could lead to the breakdown of Iraq. A policy of "regime overthrow" is proposed, but roundly condemned. In an eerily portentous assessment of the consequences of taking military action, it states:

"Such a policy would command no useful international support. An overt attempt to be successful would require a massive military effort, probably including a land invasion: this would risk considerable casualties and, possibly, extreme last-ditch acts of deterrence or defiance by Saddam."

The landmark visit is considered as a show of US commitment to Seoul and a warning to the communist regime, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported Wednesday. The United States and South Korea are to stage about 10 joint naval military exercises in coming months as a deterrent to North Korea, Seoul's Defense Ministry says. The first drill will start from July 25-28 off the east coast of the Korean peninsula, in the wake of the deadly sinking of Sputh Korean warship Cheonan in March that has been blamed on Pyongyang, Channelnewsasia announced Tuesday.

"Both sides will continue to conduct joint military exercises -- approximately 10 times -- in waters surrounding the peninsula for the next several months," a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman told AFP. The exercise starting Sunday involves about 20 ships including the 97,000-ton aircraft carrier USS George Washington and some 200 fixed-wing aircraft. North Korea has denounced the July 25-28 drill as "very dangerous sabre-rattling" aimed at igniting a nuclear war. BBC: US announces new sanctions against North Korea.

The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

These are some of the findings of a two-year investigation by The Washington Post that discovered what amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight. After nine years of unprecedented spending and growth, the result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe is so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine. The investigation's other findings include:

■ Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

■ An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

■ In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.

■ Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

■ Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Raw Story: Post documents growth of intelligence since 9/11: U.S. intelligence community inefficient, unmanageable.

As the founder of Wikileaks – a website that publishes millions of documents, from military intelligence to internal company memos and has, in four years, exposed more secrets than many newspapers have in a century – Assange has become the pin-up of web-age investigative journalists. The US has wanted him for questioning since March, after he posed a video showing an American helicopter attack that left several Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists dead.

Understandably, he now avoids the US, and keeps his movements secret, though it's thought he operates out of Sweden and is spending time in Iceland, where a change in the law is creating a libel-free haven for journalists. But if the CIA spooks wanted him that badly, couldn't they have turned up, as a hundred adoring student journalists did, to hear him talk at the Centre for Investigative Journalism 10 days ago?

Perhaps it's just as well they didn't, as Assange is not a natural public speaker. He is more at home trawling data or decrypting the codes that mask it. His philosophy is that the more a government wants to keep something secret, the more reason to expose it. No journalist could argue with his essential belief in shining a light on malpractice, but shouldn't governments be entitled to keep some secrets? "Sure," he says when we speak after his talk, "That doesn't mean we and other press organisations should suffer under coercion." Twitter: Real change begins Monday in the WashPost. By the years end, a reformation. Lights on. Rats out. CNN: WikiLeaks founder: Site getting tons of 'high caliber' disclosures.

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.

At least 10 people have lost their lives and several others have been injured in a US drone attack in troubled northwestern Pakistan. A drone reportedly fired three missiles at a house in the Datakhel area of North Waziristan, which was allegedly used by militants. The house has been completely destroyed. Over the past few years, hundreds of people, mostly civilians, have been killed in similar US attacks in the region. Washington claims the strikes target militants. However, Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the attacks, saying they violate Pakistan's sovereignty. The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government repeatedly objecting to the attacks. AWIP: US drone attack kills 6 in NW Pakistan.

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.

Britain and the US did not believe Iraq's weapons programmes posed a ''substantial threat'' before launching the 2003 invasion that overthrew Saddam Hussein, the inquiry into the war has been told. Former UK diplomat Carne Ross claimed that the Government ''intentionally and substantially'' exaggerated its assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in public documents. Mr Ross, who was First Secretary responsible for the Middle East at the UK's mission to the United Nations from 1997 to 2002, alleged that nuanced intelligence was ''massaged'' into ''more robust and terrifying'' statements about Saddam's supposed WMD. He said in a statement to the inquiry: ''It remains my view that the internal Government assessment of Iraq's capabilities was intentionally and substantially exaggerated in public Government documents during 2002 and 2003. ''Throughout my posting in New York, it was the UK and US assessment that while there were many unanswered questions about Iraq's WMD stocks and capabilities, we did not believe that these amounted to a substantial threat. AWIP: EXPOSED: Bush Planned on Invading Iraq Before 9/11-Part 1 (VIDEO) Daily Mirror: Tony Blair 'intentionally talked up WMD', Iraq inquiry told. The Guardian: Iraq war inquiry: Blair government 'massaged' Saddam Hussein WMD threat.

Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad says the US compelled the UN Security Council to impose sanctions against Iran in order to weaken the country and lay the ground for a military attack. "The world is made to believe once again the lie that Israel's existence is being threatened by a nuclear armed Iran," Mohamad said at the opening of the Breaking the Gaza Siege summit in Kuala Lumpur. He went on to add that these sanctions were adopted despite the fact that Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had repeatedly stated that there is no evidence of Iran pursuing military nuclear program. Mohamad said that the US followed the same pattern in its previous war against Iraq, and attacked Baghdad after weakening the country by imposing crippling sanctions against it. The former Malaysian premier added, "It is a matter of time before the war criminals in Israel and the United States launch another war of aggression, once Iran has been weakened by sanctions." The one-day International Conference on Breaking the Gaza Siege is expected to conclude with a clear plan on measures and efforts to be undertaken to challenge the siege and eventually put an end to it.

The IDF is preparing for the forceful interdiction of a Libyan sponsored ship allegedly headed for the Gaza Strip, despite lingering criticism over the handling of the interception of a Gaza-bound flotilla on May 31 in which nine people were killed, military sources told Haaretz yesterday. An internal military probe into the incident released yesterday found only professional mistakes in planning and carrying out the operation against the Mavi Marmara. The Libyan ship could come within range of the Gaza-shore tonight, but at this stage it is still unclear whether its captain will opt to head for the Sinai port of El Arish, where it will instead aim for Gaza. In its official log the ship has El Arish as its destination.

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.

What more can Assad say that he hasn't already? How long must he knock in vain on Israel's locked door? It couldn't have been spelled out more explicitly, clearly and emphatically. Read and judge for yourselves: "Our position is clear: When Israel returns the entire Golan Heights, of course we will sign a peace agreement with it .... What's the point of peace if the embassy is surrounded by security, if there is no trade and tourism between the two countries? That's not peace. That's a permanent cease-fire agreement. This is what I say to whoever comes to us to talk about the Syrian track: We are interested in a comprehensive peace, i.e., normal relations." What more can Assad say that he hasn't already? How many more times does he have to declare his peaceful intentions before someone wakes up here? How long must he knock in vain on Israel's locked door? And if that were not enough, he also called on Turkey to work to calm the crisis with Israel so it can mediate between Israel and Syria. Israel does not want peace with Syria. Period. It prefers the Golan over peace with one of its biggest and most dangerous enemies.

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 Defense Secretary Robert Gates has named James Mattis, a four-star Marine general known for his blunt speech, as the new head of US Central Command. Mattis is an erudite combat veteran known for quoting poetry and openly expressing his enthusiasm for "killing the enemy," Los Angeles Times reported on Thursday. The nomination that was announced on Thursday brought Secretary Gates under fire for choosing a general who was officially rebuked over his remarks in 2005 regarding the killing of Afghans.

"Actually, it's a lot of fun to fight," the Los Angeles Times quoted Mattis as saying. "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."

The United States has secretly given a "written guarantee" to Israel that obliges Washington to sell Israel nuclear fission materials, Israeli sources say. The materials will be used to "produce electricity," Israeli Army radio, which is an official Israeli news source, reported. Washington has also vowed to "publicly announce" that Israel is a responsible entity and can "contain its capabilities." Haaretz: Obama administration: Israel has right to nuclear capability for deterrence purposes. + Report: Secret document affirms U.S.-Israel nuclear partnership. [In case the report is removed by Ha'aretz, we have also published it here: http://tinyurl.com/32vax68] [Redress News Blog]

The Bilderberg Group is one of the most secretive and exclusive clubs that attracts world's most powerful people. Its meetings are invitation only and take place under tight security, away from the prying eyes of the public and the press. Investigative journalist Daniel Estulin, who has made it his mission to uncover the secrets of the Bilderberg Group, has shared some of his revelations with RT. He claims the group makes decisions on international policy in a way far removed from democracy.

The United States Army on Monday filed charges against Private 1st Class Bradley Manning, accusing the 22-year-old of giving a video of a US military massacre in Baghdad to the WikiLeaks web site, which posted an edited version in April under the title “Collateral Murder.” The video was taken by US Apache helicopters in July of 2007 and showed them firing on mostly unarmed Iraqis in East Baghdad. It was accompanied by voiceover of radio traffic in which American soldiers gloated about gunning down defenseless Iraqis. Among the 12 people acknowledged killed by the US government were a Reuters reporter and his driver. The wounded included two small children. The video showed that after the initial deadly Apache attack, the helicopters returned to gun down unarmed civilians who sought to rescue those wounded in the first assault. The Guardian: US private Bradley Manning charged with leaking Iraq killings video. Antiwar: Bradley Manning, American Patriot: The campaign to smear him is picking up steam.

[Wikileaks: Collateral Murder (VIDEO). This video shows men gathering on a Baghdad street on July 12, 2007, shortly before they were fired upon. View related photos wikileaks.org] A senior U.S. military official said Monday that a gritty war video that shows U.S. forces firing repeatedly on people along a Baghdad street was authentic. However, the Pentagon would not confirm the video's authenticity. The incident on July 12, 2007, happened the same day and in the same area that a Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, and his driver were killed. Two children also were wounded. The senior military official said that the video posted Monday at Wikileaks.org was of a 2007 incident in the New Baghdad District of eastern Baghdad. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the video and a Pentagon investigation have never been released.

Wired’s Threat Level blog reported late Sunday that “an Army intelligence analyst who boasted of giving classified U.S. combat video and hundreds of thousands of classified State Department records to whistleblower site WikiLeaks,” was arrested by the Pentagon. The leaked video, which was filmed in Baghdad in 2007 during an operation that killed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, was published online by WikiLeaks in April. AFP: Soldier arrested in Iraq for alleged intel leaks: army.

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.

Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani has said the Islamic Republic will strike back if Iranian cargo ships come under inspection. "Iran will retaliate if some countries want to use violent ways to inspect Iranian ships which carry goods," Larijani said in an interview with Mehr news agency on Saturday. The UN Security Council passed a US-sponsored anti-Iran resolution on June 9 that imposes restrictions on the Iranian shipping industry in addition to other sectors. Under the new sanctions regime, "countries" have the authority illegitimate power to inspect cargo ships, heading to or from Iran, in their own territorial waters.

The allegations of torture by British soldiers in Iraq bear chilling comparison with America's worst excesses. The inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa is due to report by the end of the year. It will detail how Mousa died in Iraq in September 2003, allegedly brutalised by British soldiers in a "free for all"; and how it was that he and nine other men in the same incident were allegedly hooded, forced into painful stress positions, and deprived of sleep, food and water.

When the UN refused to agree to the severe sanctions that the U.S. wanted, Obama responded with typical Bush flair and went solo. The new U.S. sanctions against Iran — signed into law by Obama on July 1st — are an unmistakable act of war. If fully enforced, Iran’s economy will be potentially destroyed. The New York Times outlines the central parts of the sanctions:

“The law signed by Mr. Obama imposes penalties on foreign entities that sell refined petroleum to Iran or assist Iran with its domestic refining capacity. It also requires that American and foreign businesses that seek contracts with the United States government certify that they do not engage in prohibited business with Iran.” (July 1, 2010).

Iran must import the majority of its oil from foreign corporations and nations, since it does not have the technology needed to refine the fuel that it pumps from its soil. By cutting this refined oil off, the U.S. will be causing massive, irreparable damage to the Iranian economy — equaling an act of war. Antiwar: Outgoing UN Nuclear Inspector Pushed Dubious Iran Nuclear Weapons Intel. PrisonPlanet: Israel Suspected in Bogus Claim Iran Developing Nuclear Trigger.

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.

Embargo 'Not a Good Way to Settle Differences'. Speaking today at an economic forum Christophe de Margarie, the CEO of French oil giant Total S.A., condemned the recent series of international sanctions targeting Iran’s petroleum industry as a mistake. “The embargo affects the population, too many things are politicized, de Margarie insisted, adding that “we do not think an embargo on the delivery of petrol products is a good way to settle differences of a political nature.” The unilateral US sanctions against Iran, which were signed by President Obama this week, have ordered every energy company in the world to stop delivering refined petroleum to Iran, nominally to punish it for its civilian nuclear program. Total announced on Monday that they would be suspending all deliveries to Iran to avoid US punishment. Though Iran is one of the world’s largest producers of crude oil, they have comparatively little refining capacity and have had to rely on imports from international companies like Total for civilian needs like gasoline. Since the sanctions Iran has pledged it will increase its refining capacity and become self sufficient. Antiwar: Outgoing UN Nuclear Inspector Pushed Dubious Iran Nuclear Weapons Intel.

As some of you know, Falluja is a forbidden city. It was subjected to intense bombardments in 2004, with DU bombs and White phosphorus, and since it has become a no go zone - meaning that both the Iraqi puppet authorities and the U.S invading/occupying forces do not allow anyone to conduct any real study in Falluja. Falluja is basically under siege. Obviously both the Americans and the Iraqis know something and are hiding it from the public. And this is where Prof. C.Busby comes in the picture. He was/is adamant to get to the bottom of what took place in Falluja in 2004.

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).

Around 950 people have been killed in more than 100 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan since August 2008. Missiles fired by a US drone have killed at least six people in Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt where pro-Taliban militants mujahideens are believed to be holed up. CIA-operated drones on Tuesday struck a compound in Karikot village which allegedly belonged to a militant commander, AFP quoted a senior Pakistani security official as saying on condition of anonymity. The missiles landed about 10 kilometers (six miles) southwest of Wana, the main town in the troubled South Waziristan district. "Six militants have died in the attack and at least two were wounded," the official said, adding that the attack had destroyed the building believed to be owned by militant leader Maulana Halimullah. Officials in Wana also confirmed the attack, but said the death toll might rise. 27 Jun 2010 : AWIP: US drone strike kills 6 in Pakistan

PressTV: US drone strike leaves 6 dead US drones have shelled a house allegedly owned by militants in North Waziristan, killing six in the latest attack on Pakistan's tribal areas. The attack took place in Khel village, some 25 kilometers west of Miranshah, the main town in North Waziristan, AFP quoted Pakistani officials as saying. The officials said "suspected" Afghan warlord Hafiz Gul Bahadur, who is believed to have led up to 2,000 fighters in attacks against US-led forces over the border in Afghanistan, had allegedly rented the compound. "Two US drones fired four missiles, we have reports that six militants civilians have been killed," a senior security official collaborator in Peshawar said.

[April 24, 2010:] AWIP: US drone kills seven PEOPLE in NW Pakistan: security officials:

A US drone fired three missiles into a militant compound in Pakistan's tribal area near the Afghan border on Saturday, killing seven militants people, security officials said. The strike took place at 9:00 pm (1600 GMT) in Marsikhel area, 20 kilometres (12 miles) east of Miranshah, the main town of North Waziristan, which is known as a hub for Taliban and Al-Qaeda linked militants [Justification post factum for state terrorism.] The nationalities of the seven dead were not immediately clear, a senior Pakistani security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

STATE TERROR: US drone attack kills 5 PEOPLE in Pakistan: At least five people have been killed in a US drone attack in the troubled North Waziristan tribal region of Pakistan on the Afghan border. Several more people were injured when two missiles hit a nearby compound in Boya village, located about 20 kilometers (12 miles) west of Miranshah. Since last year, the US has carried out many such attacks on Pakistan's tribal areas. Washington claims its airstrikes target militants. Most of the attacks, however, have killed civilians. AWIP: 11th Drone Strike of 2010: Latest US Attack Kills Six in North Waziristan: AFP: 11 killed in US missile strikes in NW Pakistan: officials. AntiWar: US Drone Fired Missile Into a Crowd of "Suspects," Killing 13 Afghans. TANSW: Pakistan Taliban deny US drone strike killed top leader. [This comes on top of this] Nobel Peace Prize winner Kills at Least 15 in North Waziristan [and this] Civilians Slain as Latest US Drone Strike on North Waziristan, Kills Five [and this] US Drones Kill 12 in North Waziristan: Third TERROR Strike in 24 Hours in Tribal Area [and this] U.S. Drones Kill 15 People Near Border in Pakistan [and summing up all of 2009, this:] 44 US drone hits in Pakistan killed 700 civilians in 2009. + AWIP: No assent given to US drone attacks: Pakistan. The Guardian: The 'Obama doctrine': kill, don't detain -George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys, assassinate by drone. PressTV: Suspected US drone strikes kill eight in north-west Pakistan. PressTV: In Pakistan, death toll from US drone attack hits 8 Yahoo: US drone kills seven PEOPLE in NW Pakistan: security officials.

As we first reported last week, in an article that was met with much original skepticism, the Pentagon has now confirmed that a fleet of 12 warships has passed the Suez Canal, and is now likely awaiting orders to support the escalation in the Persian Gulf. The attached image from Stratfor shows the latest positioning of US aircraft carrier groups as of June 23: the USS Harry Truman (CVN-75) is now right next to USS Eisenhower (CVN 69), both of which are waiting patiently just off Iran. As for the catalyst the two carriers may be anticipating, we provide the following update from the Gulf Daily News where we read that Israel may be on the verge of an attack of Iran, with an incursion originating from military bases in Azerbaijan and Georgia. Gulf Daily News: ISRAEL 'PLOTS TEHRAN RAID'.

Iran literally is surrounded by American troops, notes an oil market analyst, Energy and Capital editor Christian A. DeHaemer. There is no evidence of an imminent attack, but he connects a number of recent events and the presence of American soldiers to warn that oil prices might soar -- with or without a pre-emptive strike aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear power ambitions. Iran is bordered on the east by Pakistan and Afghanistan, where U.S. troops have been waging a costly war, in terms of money and lives. The Persian Gulf is on Iran’s southern border, and last week’s report, confirmed by the Pentagon, that 11 warships had sailed through the Suez Canal, raised alarm bells that the U.S. is ready to fight to keep the Persian Gulf open to destroy Iran for Israel. Raw Story: Report: US warships stationed off Iranian coast.

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!!

Iran on Monday accused the US Central Intelligence Agency of waging psychological warfare against it through "fake reports," saying the CIA knows Tehran's nuclear programme has no military aims. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast dismissed CIA director Leon Panetta's comments that Iran could have nuclear weapons ready to use by as early as 2012. "Such remarks fall within the framework of psychological warfare aimed at creating a negative perception about Iran's peaceful nuclear activities," Mehmanparast told state news agency IRNA. [CIA's Panetta: Iran has enough uranium for 2 bombs]

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.

As unconfirmed reports of an imminent Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities pick up steam in the Middle Eastern media, a US-based strategic intelligence company has released a chart showing US naval carriers massing near Iranian waters. The chart, published by Stratfor and obtained by the Zero Hedge financial blog, shows that over the last few weeks a naval carrier -- the USS Harry S Truman -- has been positioned in the north Indian Ocean, not far from the Strait of Hormuz, which leads into the Persian Gulf. The carrier joins the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, which was already located in the area. The chart is dated June 23, 2010. Reports of mass movements of Israeli and US naval warships have been circulating through the media for weeks. On June 19, the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported that 12 US and Israeli warships were seen moving through the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea. Gulf Daily News: ISRAEL 'PLOTS TEHRAN RAID'.

Another deadly US drone attack has killed at least six people and injured several others in the troubled northwestern Pakistan, officials say. The pilot-less aircraft fired two missiles in the northwestern tribal areas in North Waziristan. A local administration official confirmed the attack and said the death toll is expected to rise. The figure shows an increase in US drone attacks over the past few months. The attacks were initiated under former US President George W. Bush and have escalated under President Barack Obama. Washington claims its airstrikes target militant hideouts though most of the attacks have killed civilians. Since August 2008, such strikes have killed nearly a thousand people in tribal areas. The Long War Journal, a US website tracking the strikes also insisted in January that the assaults have killed mostly civilians and have failed to target top militant leaders. Islamabad has repeatedly condemned the strikes as violations of Pakistan's sovereignty. The issue of civilian casualties has strained relations between Islamabad and Washington with the Pakistani government objecting to the attacks. A United Nations report says the US-operated drone strikes in Pakistan pose a growing challenge to the international rule of law. AWIP: [06/21/10:] Suspected U.S. missile strike kills 13 people in Pakistan. + [06/05/10:] US to go ahead with "essential" drone attacks in Pakistan despite UN call to stop.

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)