I truly don't mean to be facetious with that question, and I fully recognize that reportedly the Taliban are religious fundamentalists who governed Afghanistan in accordance with their rigid interpretation. But in what way has their tunnel vision directly impacted on the west to the extent that seemingly endless war is necessary? I just don't get it.

Is this attack unalloyed payback for the US of A's slaughter of (another!) Afgan wedding party last week? The Bush Administration will forever paint these incidents as backward Islam versus the forces of progress & freedom. To Afgan villagers, we must increasingly appear like the Russians, only with far more lethal -and indiscriminate - air power.

Chickadee strikes a valid point. Is every Afgan/Pashtun who seeks revenge, needs money or feels he is defending against a brutal occupier a Taliban??

This is what happens when you twice elect someone with an IQ of 95 who has messianic delusions.

Every round of ammo fired is business for the military contracting community.

I just want to remind everyone that these wars exist to feed the American War Machine.

Pashtun tribesmen with their ethnic feuds are not a direct threat to our country.

Neither are Iran's possible future nukes.

Afghanistan is about making money.

Iran is about the Caspian Sea oil.

The threats to national security are in Washington DC. They are the people that keep starting wars to profit from them, and the people who block us from weaning ourselves off fossil fuels. They are the same people that keep voting to take the teeth out of the Constitution.

Just want to be clear about the source of the threat to our country.

Being from a military family, I wish I could believe the myth that our marines are dying to protect our freedoms, but it simply is not true. The last time that was true was WWII. Everything else has been strategic wars, not responses to people trying to take over America.

Unfortunately, our young men and women are dying to protect the people who are trying to take away our freedoms and destroy our way of life. Those people, I re-iterate, live in Washington DC, not in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the press has been transformed into mindless propaganda bleaters.

The result is that intelligent people, who don't believe the lies, end up asking, why are we doing these things?

The answer is: follow the money. And every bullet is a ringout on somebody's cash register.

IHT
By Richard A. Oppel Jr.
Published: July 15, 2008

BAGHDAD: Two suicide bombers posing as army recruits struck an Iraqi base just east of Baquba on Tuesday morning, killing at least 35 Iraqi recruits and wounding 63, according to the Iraqi police and medical officials in Diyala Province.

The attack came as Iraqi troops prepared for what their commanders predict will be a challenging fight to try to reclaim large areas of Diyala that remain sanctuaries for Salafist jihadist fighters and other antigovernment guerrillas.

The bombers, wearing belts packed with explosives, waded into a crowd of more than 200 recruits just after 8 a.m. and detonated about 30 seconds apart in front of the headquarters of an Iraqi brigade where the recruits had gathered. The attack happened at the Saad military base, which is about four miles east of Baquba, the provincial capital.

more

COMMENTARY:
Empire Burlesque

by Chris Floyd
Monday, 14 July 2008
Baltimore Chronicle

"Taliban" has become a catch-all term for all armed resistance to the American-European occupation: both because it is a handy scare-word that sets off connotations with al Qaeda and 9/11, and because it obscures the true, more complex nature of the insurgency.

At first, the Pentagon denied that American planes had slaughtered dozens of Afghan civilians on their way to a wedding in the Nangarhar mountains. "Pure propaganda," said the usual media and blogosphere sycophants. "It's always 'a wedding' being hit, the same old story." The military brass promised the usual investigation, no doubt hoping it would all go away. But then Afghan government officials confirmed the truth, and the BBC's Alastair Leithead was the first outsider to visit the actual site of the massacre:

What began as celebration ended with maybe 52 people dead, most of them women and children, and others badly injured.

The US forces said they targeted insurgents in a strike. But from what I saw with my own eyes and heard from the many mourners, no militants were among the dead....

It appears the wedding group was crossing a narrow pass in the mountains which divides the valleys where the two families live. From nowhere a fast jet flew low and dropped a bomb right on top of the pass near a group of children who had impatiently rushed ahead and were resting, waiting for the women to catch up...

But then [came] the second blast - the bomb had been dropped on top of the women and almost all of them had been killed. Three girls escaped, among them the bride, but as they ran down the hillside a third bomb landed on top of them....

The BBC team I was with were the first outsiders to see where the bombs hit - even the Afghan investigators did not climb up the steep mountainside - and there was much evidence to support the story. The fact we could travel to the area in local cars was proof that Taliban insurgents, al-Qaeda operatives or foreign fighters were not present in the valley.....

Civilian casualties are not new to Nangarhar province - last year a convoy of US Marines was hit by a bomb attack and in the chaos they opened fire in a bazaar killing 19 people. They were sent home and their officers charged, but a subsequent ruling cleared them of any responsibility for the deaths....

Mirwais Yasini, a local MP and the deputy speaker of Afghanistan's lower house, made the point that civilian casualties widen the gap between the people and the government, and the international forces....

These mistakes are incredibly costly in a counter-insurgency campaign which relies on winning people over, not forcing them against the authorities. I wonder how many enemies have been created in Nangarhar as a result of the latest bloodshed?

Enemies like these, for example (from the NY Times' Carlotta Gall):

Taliban insurgents carried out a bold assault on a remote base near the border with Pakistan on Sunday, NATO reported, and a senior American military official said nine American soldiers were killed.

The attack, the worst against Americans in Afghanistan in three years, illustrated the growing threat of Taliban militants and their associates, who in recent months have made Afghanistan a far deadlier war zone for American-led forces than Iraq...

The militants have since regained strength in the tribal areas of Pakistan, which they have often used as a base for raids into Afghanistan, an increasingly sore point for the American and Afghan governments.

The militants have regained strength precisely because of incidents like the Nangarhar Massacre -- incidents which are inevitable when you are occupying a country by force. People flock back to the Taliban banner because they are seeing their families slaughtered without mercy, and without justice.

much more

There are conflicting reports of civilian casualties in a US-led military operation in west Afghanistan.

Nato forces say two Taleban commanders were killed in Herat province. One of them is a leading tribal elder.

Local tribal elders claim dozens of people, including civilians, also died in the American attack.

Earlier, US forces admitted killing eight civilians in a neighbouring province - the latest in a series of bombing incidents involving civilians.

'Prisoners'

The first reports of the operation in Herat province came from tribal elders who claimed huge numbers of people had been killed or injured in a US-led attack from midnight until mid-morning in Shindand district.

They said a high-profile tribal leader had died and houses had been destroyed.

There were also unconfirmed reports of demonstrations in the Zerkoh valley, a fiercely independent tribal area where US forces have clashed with local fighters before.

But Nato put out a statement saying that the coalition and Afghan security forces had conducted a successful operation against high priority Taleban targets.
More

_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

At least 13 police and civilians are killed in two incidents involving international forces in Afghanistan, officials say.

Four Afghan police and five civilians died in an apparently mistaken air strike by international coalition forces in Farah province.

Separately, the Nato-led Isaf said it had "accidentally" killed at least four civilians in Paktika province.

The incidents are the latest in a series of controversial clashes involving foreign troops.

more at BBC

Iraqi Premier Says US Should Leave Soon

BERLIN (July 19)

AP- Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says U.S. troops should leave Iraq "as soon as possible," according to a magazine report, and he called presidential candidate Barack Obama's suggestion of 16 months "the right timeframe for a withdrawal."

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

they support their original article

22 Jul 2008 17:12:15 GMT
Source: Reuters
(Updates with Kurdish comments, further details)

By Waleed Ibrahim

BAGHDAD, July 22 (Reuters) - Iraq's parliament passed a provincial elections bill on Tuesday, but a walkout by Kurdish lawmakers over how to deal with the disputed oil city of Kirkuk could mean the law will not be ratified by the presidency.

Kurds make up one of three main groups, and their boycott of the vote means the bill could be sent back to parliament.

The law is meant to pave the way for polls seen as vital to reconciling Iraq's Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last provincial elections in 2005, with its other communities.

"Today parliament passed the provincial elections law, in the absence of the Kurdish alliance, which walked out," Hanin Qado, a lawmaker from the ruling Shi'ite alliance, told Reuters.

Deputy Parliamentary Speaker Khalid al-Attiya cast doubt on whether a law passed without the Kurds present would even be ratified by Iraq's presidency council -- which must approve all laws -- headed by President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd.

"We cannot have a vote with an absence of a whole faction. The vote is useless. It will be rejected by the representatives of this bloc and by the presidency council," he said.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki wants the election to take place on Oct. 1, but the Electoral Commission says it will not have time to organise it by then, even with the law in place.

Faraj al-Haidari, head of the commission, told Reuters on Tuesday he could not start implementing the election law until it was approved by the presidency council.

He reiterated a warning that time was running out to hold polls this year, because the commission needed time to prepare.

The law had been held up by a dispute over what to do about voting in multi-ethnic Kirkuk, where a dispute is simmering between Kurds who say the city should belong to the largely autonomous Kurdistan region and Arabs who want it to stay under central government authority.

more

in Salon here

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

NYT - The case of a freelance photographer in Iraq who was barred from covering the Marines after he posted photos on the Internet of several of them dead has underscored what some journalists say is a growing effort by the American military to control graphic images from the war.

Zoriah Miller, the photographer who took images of marines killed in a June 26 suicide attack and posted them on his Web site, was subsequently forbidden to work in Marine Corps-controlled areas of the country. Maj. Gen. John Kelly, the Marine commander in Iraq, is now seeking to have Mr. Miller barred from all United States military facilities throughout the world. Mr. Miller has since left Iraq.
more at link

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

RAW STORY

NYT: Is Afghanistan a Narco-State?

In 2007, a plan to effectively eradicate most of Afghanistan's poppy fields took shape. It involved offering monetary support for farmers who would switch their crops to produce, rewards for poppy-free villages such as schools and roads, a concentrated campaign of aerial poppy spraying, and US military security for the Afghan army's ground-based eradication efforts.

Yet time and time again, claims Thomas Schweich writing for the New York Times, the Department of Defense, not wanting to take up responsibility for a drug war alongside a shooting war, and an Afghan government saturated in narco-corruption from top to bottom with a president who "played us like a fiddle," have impeded the plan's implementation. Ultimately, some basic US efforts to encourage Afghan farmers to move away from opium only made it easier for them to produce and sell.

But Afghanistan's booming opium production was not so much due to the US government's unwitting facilitation of the trade, or its bungling efforts to stomp it out, as the treachary of the country's leader, writes Schweich.

"Karzai appointed a convicted heroin dealer, Izzatulla Wasifi, to head his anticorruption commission," the report claims. "Karzai also appointed several corrupt local police chiefs. There were numerous diplomatic reports that his brother Ahmed Wali, who was running half of Kandahar, was involved in the drug trade."
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_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}

Asia Times

The media battle in Afghanistan between Taliban-led anti-government militants and pro-government forces has claimed a victim, that of credibility. All the same, a new report shows, the Taliban are winning the propaganda battle hands down, with dire ramifications for the embattled government of President Hamid Karzai. - Aunohita Mojumdar (Jul 25, '08)

Taliban Propaganda: Winning the War of Words?
24 July 2008
ICG Reort

The Karzai government and its international supporters must become much better at countering sophisticated Taliban propaganda if they are to defeat an insurgency that is driving a dangerous wedge between them and the Afghan people. The government and its allies must make greater efforts to address sources of alienation exploited in Taliban propaganda. The international community must provide the necessary support and pressure for improved performance, while also examining its own actions. Countries contributing international troops must improve communications with Afghans on the directions and activities of the international engagement, including doing more to avoid civilian casualties.

Amid the violence and chaos of the insurgency in southern Afghanistan a different kind of war is being fought.

It is a conflict without guns or bombs, but with no lack of courage.

Its front lines are private homes scattered throughout Kandahar City where each day women discreetly gather to learn how to read and write. It is a dangerous undertaking in a country where women are treated as second-class citizens and who, under the Taliban, were often barred from even the most basic education.

To make sure the students keep coming to classes, organizers offer an incentive almost impossible for the women and their hungry families to refuse: food. Every two months, they each receive four litres of cooking oil, eight kilograms of lentils, a kilogram of salt and a bag of wheat so big it takes two or three women to lift the 50-kilogram weight.

This is a war against hunger and illiteracy. In a country well-known for its misogyny, it is also a subtle war against sexism.

..... The literacy-for-food program is slowly overcoming local taboos. Families are attracted by the allure of food, but women are discovering the course satisfies an intellectual hunger, too. "Before these classes it was like being blind," said Khadaaja, who guesses her age to be "about 40." She is not being coy. Up until recently she, like 95 per cent of women in Kandahar, couldn't even make sense of a calendar. "Now, we can read the billboards. We can write and we can read."

..... "Research shows that educating women has the greatest sustainable developmental payoffs for both their immediate families and society at large,"
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_{"While not a Playboy reader, she invites a male acquaintance in for a quiet discussion of Chagall, Nietzsche, jazz, sex." - not a Hugh Hefner quote}