US soldiers 'killed Afghan civilians for sport and collected fingers as trophies'

punditman says...Lovely. Another sure way to win hearts and minds. Now, what were those idiots saying about the great progress being made in Afghanistan?

Chris McGreal in Washington

The Guardian

Soldiers face charges over secret 'kill team' which allegedly murdered at random and collected fingers as trophies of war

Twelve American soldiers face charges over a secret "kill team" that allegedly blew up and shot Afghan civilians at random and collected their fingers as trophies.

Five of the soldiers are charged with murdering three Afghan men who were allegedly killed for sport in separate attacks this year. Seven others are accused of covering up the killings and assaulting a recruit who exposed the murders when he reported other abuses, including members of the unit smoking hashish stolen from civilians.

In one of the most serious accusations of war crimes to emerge from the Afghan conflict, the killings are alleged to have been carried out by members of a Stryker infantry brigade based in Kandahar province in southern Afghanistan.

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The War Drones On

punditman says... 

In past wars, there was some measurable degree of moral outrage  when it came to killing civilians. But nowadays, it seems this little inconvenience is considered by many people to be...well...a little inconvenience—if they notice  at all. Instead, there seems to be more concern about the misdeeds of Lindsay Lohan or the fact that LeBron James decided to play basketball for another city and he announced it by doing an hour-long  TV "tweet" to promote his brand. The shock! The horror! Fans are burning James' jersey while giving a pass to the Pentagon's killer drones that kill 10 civilians for every "bad guy." Has society become this pathetic, shallow and ignorant? Punditman hopes not...

By Robert Koehler

"Complaints about civilian casualties have also stirred concern among human rights advocates."

The problem is that a sentence like this — arguably a dead sentence, with a few quasi-facts entombed in an inert moral sensibility — parades as serious news. I mean, it’s lifted straight from the New York Times: from a story about drones, the CIA hit list and our cool new PlayStation way of killing bad dudes (and everyone else in the vicinity). Someone with an active conscience could come upon a sentence like that, in the middle of a painfully ill-focused story on the endless war, and think she must be going insane.

As an archeological find, it’s worth examining in closer detail, but first let me put it in context. The use of pilotless aircraft in Pakistan and Afghanistan to assassinate Taliban or al-Qaeda leaders and other Islamic, America-hating insurgents — with missiles, no less — seems to have hit a snag of legal controversy lately because of the news that one of the people on the list of targets, Anwar al-Awlaki, was born in New Mexico. He’s an American citizen.

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Protests as US Air Strike Kills Four Civilians in Afghanistan’s Kandahar

punditman says... A glimpse of reality: the sheeple's governments continue to kill and maim innocent people halfway across the world in an ill-fated war and for no damn good reason. But don't worry, sheeple. NATO has once again promised to investigate. You can get back to your fake reality (show) now.

By Jason Ditz

www.antiwar.com

Residents of Kohat Village in Afghanistan’s Kandahar Province marched into Kandahar City with the bodies of four civilians, including three children, to protest their killings in an overnight US Air Strike. The four were relatives, three brothers and an adult cousin.

Witnesses say that a helicopter attacked the four in their sleep. Another brother and the father of the cousin were also wounded in the strike on the family’s compound. The US denied any knowledge of the incident but claimed that four “insurgents” had been killed in the area.

The father of the slain children, who was among the protesters, said two missiles were fired at his home, and asked “what was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban.”

Such incidents have become all too common as the international military effort in Afghanistan has escalated, but this one is particularly embarrassing as it came during the visit of new NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, an advocate of continung the war. NATO has promised to investigate the incident.

Opposing the Troop Surge in Afghanistan

punditman says...Highlights from the speech below include the fact that, unlike the propaganda we constantly hear, most of the Taliban are made up of unemployed young men with no ideological axe to grind; their interests are local. And yes, Western troops are committing atrocities. It's time to get with the program and wake up. Punditman is wondering where the next big antiwar demonstration will be and Peacenik is working on starting up a Pubs for Peace movement. Who is with us?

David Markland is author of a blog on Afghanistan. He spoke at a recent forum held in Vancouver on the U.S. escalation of troops in Afghanistan.|

17:49 minutes (16.32 MB)

Peace Activists Welcome Obama, Will Push Him

by Aaron Glantz

An organization that has made headlines heckling George W. Bush and other prominent politicians for their support of the Iraq war has declared "victory" after Barack Obama's election as president of the United States.

"After almost eight years standing outside the White House with a bullhorn and screaming at someone who wouldn't listen who's totally impervious to popular opinion, I think it's going to be great having someone in there who hopefully will be interested in what we have to say," said Medea Benjamin, co-founder of the group CODEPINK: Women for Peace.

Since the Sep. 11 attacks seven years ago, members of CODEPINK have been a regular presence on Capitol Hill – opposing the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, decrying a proposed American attack on Iran, and pushing for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney for illegally manipulating intelligence reports to justify the Bush administration's attack on Iraq.

Full Article...

punditman says...
If President Obama doesn't get out of Iraq in just over a year, as promised, (all parties in the Iraqi parliament want a short time-line for withdrawal of US forces); if he doesn't do something about all the civilians the US is killing from the air in Afghanistan (namely, stop! -- as requested by the Afghan government); and finally, if he does increase bombing in Pakistan's tribal areas, (as he has hinted), then he will be no better than Bush. And that would be a great disappointment.