Truckloads of dead civilians after Afghan battle
by Sharafuddin Sharafyar via rialator 2009-05-06 00:02:55

HERAT, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Villagers brought truckloads of bodies to the capital of a province in Western Afghanistan on Tuesday to prove that scores of civilians had been killed by U.S. air strikes in a battle with the Taliban.

The governor of Farah Province, Rohul Amin, said about 30 bodies had been trucked to his office, most of them women and children. Other officials said the overall civilian death toll may have been much higher, with scores of people feared killed while huddled in houses that were destroyed by U.S. warplanes.

U.S. forces confirmed that a battle had taken place with air strikes and said they were investigating reports of civilian casualties, but were unable to confirm them.

"There was an insurgent attack on an ANA (Afghan National Army) group and the ANA called for assistance, and some coalition troops joined them to help fight this group," said U.S. military spokesman Colonel Greg Julian. "There was close air support, but I can't give any detail on the type of aircraft."

He said U.S. and Afghan officials would head to the site to investigate the reports of civilian deaths. "Once we get eyes on the ground we will have a better idea of what may have happened."

In Washington, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Wood said a joint investigation would be conducted to determine what happened. "We take all reports of such incidents seriously and investigate them thoroughly," Wood said in a statement.

Ghulan Farooq, a member of parliament from the province, said he had been told by family members in the Bala Boluk district where the fighting took place that as many as 150 people had died. He said U.S. air strikes had destroyed 17 houses. Those figures could not be independently confirmed.

Lieutenant Colonel Khalil Nehmatullah, commander of an Afghan Army battalion in the province, said: "Unfortunately the Taliban took people into some buildings and forced them to stay in there after the security forces started telling them to evacuate."

"Arabs and Pakistanis were among the Taliban fighters who were armed with RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) ... the ANA entered the scene with help from a unit of U.S. Marines, and they were fighting until 11 pm," he told Reuters. He said he did not know the extent of the civilian casualties.

EXECUTIONS

Amin said the battle in Farah province, a vast desert region on Afghanistan's western border, began after Taliban guerrillas moved into a village on Monday and executed three former government officials for cooperating with the state.

Before the reports of large numbers of civilian casualties emerged, the governor said four Afghan security forces members and about 25 insurgents had been killed.

The head of public health and hospitals in Farah province, Abdul Jabar Shayeq, said 11 civilians and three policemen had been admitted to hospital with wounds from the fighting.

Jalil Ahmad, a resident in the district, said earlier that some 100 Taliban fighters had taken up positions in residential areas to fight the Afghan and foreign troops.

"Civilian lives are in danger from both sides and they don't care about it," Ahmad said. "We beg President (Hamid) Karzai to save our lives."

Civilian deaths have become a bitter source of friction between Afghan authorities and U.S. forces. Washington says it is working harder this year to limit civilian deaths and investigate reports of such incidents more rapidly after the number of civilians killed by American forces soared last year.

In the worst incident last year, the Afghan government and the United Nations said a U.S. strike killed 90 civilians. Washington initially denied it, but after three months said it had killed 33 civilians as well as 22 people it called militants.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is in Washington, where he will meet U.S. President Barack Obama for the first time since Obama's inauguration. Obama has declared Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan to be Washington's main military concern.

Last year more than 7,000 people, including 2,000 civilians, died in insurgency-related violence in Afghanistan, the United Nations and aid agencies say.

The United States plans to more than double its forces to fight the Taliban insurgents this year from 32,000 at the start of the year to 68,000 by the year's end. Other countries have around 30,000 troops in Afghanistan.

(Additional reporting by Golnar Motevalli, Hamid Shalizi and Peter Graff in Kabul; Writing by Peter Graff; editing by Ralph Boulton)

© 2009 Thomson Reuters

Somewhat biased but nevertheless useful opinion from McGovern:

VIEWPOINT: McGovern Warns Obama of LBJ Legacy


http://uk.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUKTRE5450HE20090506

US soldier found guilty of rape, murder in Iraq
by staff report AFP via quill 2009-05-07 20:26:16

PADUCAH, Kentucky (AFP) — A US federal jury will determine whether former soldier Steven Dale Green should be executed for raping an Iraqi teenager and executing the girl and her family, court officials said.

It took the jurors less than two days of deliberations to find Green guilty on all 17 criminal counts, which included rape, premeditated murder and obstruction of justice.

Three other soldiers were given life sentences in the March 2006 atrocity that was devised over whiskey and a game of cards at a traffic check point in Mahmudiyah, south of Baghdad.

Green, who was named as the ringleader, was tried in civil court after being discharged from the army due to a "personality disorder" before his role in the crime came to light.

While Green confessed to the slayings when army investigators were called to the scene the next day, the involvement of US soldiers did not come to light until stress counselors talked to the squad several months later.

Green's mother, father and brother -- who were not present during the trial at his request -- are scheduled to testify on his behalf during the sentencing phase.

His attorney said the verdict was not a surprise because "we never denied his involvement in this case.

"The goal in this case has always been to save our client's life," Darren Wolff told reporters. "We're going to go to the most important phase, which is the sentencing phase, and we're going to accomplish that goal."

Lead prosecutor Marisa Ford declined to speak to the media after the verdict was read.

She told jurors during closing arguments that the grueling conditions and tragic losses suffered by Green's unit in no way excused his actions.

"The evidence in this case suggests the defendant was acting purposefully and intentionally with full knowledge of what he was doing," Ford said.

She said Green and other soldiers changed their clothes and disguised their appearance to throw suspicion on insurgents.

They also burned the body of the 14-year-old girl, Abeer al-Janabi, and their own clothes to destroy any evidence that might link them to the crime, she said.

"This was a planned, premeditated crime which was carried out in cold blood," Ford told the jurors.

But Green's other defense attorney told the jury that the stresses of war had left the soldier a broken man in a strange world.

"Madness. Madness. That's the only possible word," Scott Wendelsdorf said in closing arguments Wednesday.

Wendelsdorf blamed the crime on the lack of leadership at Traffic Checkpoint 2, where Green served with the other soldiers involved in the crimes at the Janabi home.

"They didn't come there as criminals," he said. "They were made criminals at TCP 2."

He noted that Green had been diagnosed as having Combat Operational Stress Disorder three months before the attack, and contended that former private first class James Barker and former specialist Paul Cortez took advantage of Green's mental condition to carry out the crimes.

Jurors last week heard the stories of Cortez and Barker, both of whom admitted to going to the Janabi family home with Green.

The pair told jurors they raped Abeer, while Green took her six-year-old sister and her mother and father to another room, where he shot them to death.

Cortez testified that Green proceeded to rape Abeer and then placed a pillow over the girl's face and shot her three times with an AK-47.

Private Jesse Spielman also received a life sentence for raping Janabi and participating in the murders while private Bryan Howard was sentenced to 27 months in jail for acting as a lookout.

Spielman, Barker and Cortez will be eligible for parole in ten years under military rules.

© 2009 AFP

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hjp2abOc6tE4KABa8rL5F2YuArow

CIA: Liar Pelosi Was Briefed on Use of 'Waterboarding/TORTURE'
by Paul Kane via reed 2009-05-07 20:34:23

Intelligence officials released documents this evening saying that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was briefed in September 2002 about the use of harsh interrogation tactics against al-Qaeda prisoners, seemingly contradicting her repeated statements over the past 18 months that she was never told that these techniques were actually being used.

In a 10-page memo outlining an almost seven-year history of classified briefings, intelligence officials said that Pelosi and then-Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) were the first two members of Congress ever briefed on the interrogation tactics. Then the ranking member and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, respectively, Pelosi and Goss were briefed Sept. 4, 2002, one week before the first anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The memo, issued by the Director of National Intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency to Capitol Hill, notes the Pelosi-Goss briefing covered "EITs including the use of EITs on Abu Zubaydah." EIT is an acronym for enhanced interrogation technique. Zubaydah was one of the earliest valuable al-Qaeda members captured and the first to have the controversial tactic known as water boarding used against him.

The issue of what Pelosi knew and when she knew it has become a matter of heated debate on Capitol Hill. Republicans have accused her of knowing for many years precisely the techniques CIA agents were using in interrogations, and only protesting the tactics when they became public and liberal antiwar activists protested.

In a carefully worded statement, Pelosi's office said today that she had never been briefed about the use of waterboarding, only that it had been approved by Bush administration lawyers as a legal technique to use in interrogations.

"As this document shows, the Speaker was briefed only once, in September 2002. The briefers described these techniques, said they were legal, but said that waterboarding had not yet been used," said Brendan Daly, Pelosi's spokesman.

Pelosi's statement did not address whether she was informed that other harsh techniques were already in use during the Zubaydah interrogations.

In December 2007 the Washington Post reported that leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees had been briefed in the fall of 2002 about waterboarding -- which simulates drowning -- and other techniques, and that no congressional leaders protested its use. At the time Pelosi said she was not told that waterboarding was being used, a position she stood by repeatedly last month when the Bush-era Justice Department legal documents justifying the interrogation tactics were released by Attorney General Eric Holder.

The new memo shows that intelligence officials were willing to share the information about waterboarding with only a sharply closed group of people. Three years after the initial Pelosi-Goss briefing, Bush officials still limited interrogation technique briefings to just the chairman and ranking member of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the so-called Gang of Four in the intelligence world.

In October 2005, CIA officials began briefing other congressional leaders with oversight of the intelligence community, including top appropriators who provided the agency its annual funding. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a prisoner-of-war in Vietnam and an opponent of torture techniques, was also read into the program at that time even though he did not hold a special committee position overseeing the intelligence community.

A bipartisan collection of lawmakers have criticized the practice of limiting information to just the "Gang of Four", who were expressly forbidden from talking about the information from other colleagues, including fellow members of the intelligence committees. Pelosi and others are considering reforms that would assure a more open process for all committee members.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitol-briefing/2009/05/cia_says_pelosi_was_briefed_on.html

A giant US military [Occupation] base emerges in Afghanistan
by staff report AFP via quill 2009-05-07 22:56:02

CAMP LEATHERNECK, Afghanistan (AFP) — In the forbidding Afghan desert, US engineers are carving out a sprawling military camp as part of a dramatic American troop build-up designed to confront Taliban insurgents.

The desolate plain in southern Helmand province that Afghans call the "desert of death" has turned into a hive of frenetic activity, underscoring President Barack Obama's decision to expand the US military commitment to the war.

Defence Secretary Robert Gates flew into Camp Leatherneck on Thursday to get a first-hand look as dozens of bulldozers kicked up clouds of dust and soldiers swung hammers in searing heat.

Some of the newly arrived soldiers at the camp told Gates they were still waiting for radios and other equipment to arrive.

Gates promised to look into the problem and said later at a news conference in Kabul that moving such a large number of troops and so much equipment was a "logistical challenge" in a country with a shortage of airports and major roads.

Every day military planes ferry in more marines and soldiers to the camp that has emerged out of the desert seemingly overnight, protected by miles of sand walls topped with barbed wire along with rows of barrier walls.

"It's been real busy," said Captain Jeff Boroway from the 25th Naval Construction regiment.

"This place was desert at the end of January. I mean nothing. And now you've got a 443-acre (179-hectare) secure facility," he told reporters.

Boroway said engineering units were rushing to finish work on the camp to accommodate the deployment of thousands of additional troops, including most of an 8,000-strong brigade of US Marines.

The escalation of the war against the Taliban has raised concerns among some in Obama's own party that the administration could be drawn into an open-ended mission.

But US commanders and officials say their aim is to train Afghan forces to eventually take over security duties.

The camp, which is being built next to a smaller outpost dubbed "Bastion" that has served British troops, will include a vast airfield that eventually will be home to 55 helicopters and other aircraft, said Lieutenant Colonel David Jones.

The airfield, which he called a huge "parking space" for choppers, will be 4,860 feet (1,481 metres) long and is the largest such project in the world in a combat setting, said Jones, who leads a marine squadron in charge of the effort.

The labour-intensive work requires levelling off the runway area and setting down sheets of metal alloy that are then anchored into a mat.

The runway project began about a month ago and has to be finished by the end of June, officers said.

The temporary metal mat, which will later be replaced with asphalt, "provides a secure place for any aircraft to land, park and take off," Boroway said, and is "a lot safer and better than dirt."

He said his troops and contractors have moved mountains of sand in their efforts to boost defences.

They are also expanding another US base in the southern city of Kandahar.

All the digging and bulldozing in the desert has put a premium on water, especially for the runway construction.

As a result, troops were collecting water from the base's kitchens and showers to compact dirt at building sites, the Navy officer said.

The base is needed quickly with the US military presence in Afghanistan due to double by the autumn, when the Obama administration says up to 68,000 troops will be in place.

Boroway said his team was working 12-hour days in searing heat to finish. "They know the importance of this," he added.

© 2009 AFP

[We can't wait to see the size of the future base in Sri Lanka. The identity of the world's most militaristic, invasive, murdering, criminal Terrorist State is clear! Ed.]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iQsdQAuKzZl3hMgVzG60jVJVgRiQ