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Iraq is an excellent example of American ‘success,’ knowhow and ‘genius,’ is it not? Afghanistan is proving a better example still! These two screaming, REAL LIFE examples of American incompetence, ineptitude, overt flouting of international law and human rights, just won’t fade into the background. Almost daily the newswires contain more horrid examples of civilian killing by Americans and the MASSIVE DESTABILISATION that ensues. The ‘stability, liberty and democracy’ that America promised Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan AND the WORLD, is proving to be a very bitter experience for the innocent civilians of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Take a quick squiz at the REALITY today and VERIFY the truth for yourself.
Bereft -- General Stanley McChrystal
Remember the world’s most “evil” dictator, Saddam Hussein; possessor of countless fantasy WMDs and chemical ice-cream trucks full of Disney anthrax powder? Yes, that’s him, FOX News told us so; the man responsible for murdering and torturing over 250,000 Iraqi citizens. Well, as we are aware today, America hanged him while it was busy slaughtering over ONE MILLION INNOCENT Iraqi men, women and CHILDREN! Now, whatever you say about Saddam, he DIDN’T LEGALISE TORTURE or kill innocent CHILDREN! However, today we are WITNESSING AMERICAN DEMOCRACY IN ACTION, and what a ‘fine’ picture it makes!
Saddam was demonised and executed as an evil, murdering dictator; what then of those responsible for the American-led Iraqi HOLOCAUST – let’s see some star-spangled/NATO heads roll! If the nature of the crime and sheer numbers mean anything at all then we require REAL JUSTICE and a PUNISHMENT THAT FITS THE CRIME – hang them by the neck until dead, that’s how it goes doesn’t it? Surely, the statutes require it; are WE not expected to conform to the LAW; I am not familiar with the LAW allowing exceptions, are YOU? Where are the AMERICAN CRIMINALS that make Saddam’s heinous record look almost insignificant?
They are FREE and continue to live among us without the slightest concern that they will ever be held to account! I ask, where does the fault really lie, who is responsible for allowing brazen, vile, criminals to go unpunished if not the masses, the billions of people that outnumber, surround and could easily overwhelm these criminals any time they choose?
WE are able at ANY TIME to DEMAND JUSTICE! Indeed, POPULAR DEMAND is the most effective means of social change/reform. A thoroughly inept Australian Prime Minister is today learning that the people are ‘fed up’ and will no longer accept trickery and DECEPTION as forms of government. LIES, it seems, no longer ‘cut it’ with the masses of today. And if no man is an island what then of nations?
The days of BOUGHT puppets, lackeys and LIARS in high office and other places of social responsibility have come to an end. It is the BILLIONS of people on this (OUR) planet that will ensure that heinous LIARS and MASS MURDERERS are punished and that CORRUPT State legal, financial/monetary and other institutions are purged of the filth that currently inhabit them. All this is easily achieved by POPULAR DEMAND, it IS that simple! The REAL determining and directive FORCE of any nation is the masses, not a tiny cabal of psychopaths and criminals.
In conclusion, I/we would like to extend our heartfelt thanks to the avaricious rogues, banksters and financiers for doing all the heavy lifting – we cannot thank you enough for CATALYSING REAL SOCIAL CHANGE (that we can ALL depend on).
[You can no longer support a global economy with toilet-paper money; the Greek bail-out is a ‘fiat’ SHAM, and your stock markets are private casinos -- EVERYBODY KNOWS!]
WASHINGTON - Although Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's plan for wresting the Afghan provinces of Helmand and Kandahar from the Taliban is still in its early stages of implementation, there are already signs that setbacks and obstacles it has encountered have raised serious doubts among top military officials in Washington about whether the plan is going to work.
Scepticism about McChrystal's ambitious aims was implicit in the way the Pentagon report on the war issued Apr. 26 assessed the progress of the campaign in Marja. Now, it has been given even more pointed expression by an unnamed "senior military official" quoted in a column in the Washington Post Sunday by David Ignatius.
The senior military officer criticised McChrystal's announcement in February that he had "a government in a box, ready to roll in" for the Marja campaign, for having created "an expectation of rapidity and efficiency that doesn't exist now", according to Ignatius.
The same military official is also quoted as pointing out that parts of Helmand that were supposed to have been cleared by the offensive in February and March are in fact still under Taliban control and that Afghan government performance in the wake of the offensive had been disappointing, according to Ignatius.
The outlook at the Pentagon and the White House on the nascent Kandahar offensive is also pessimistic, judging from the comment to Ignatius by an unnamed "senior administration official". The official told Ignatius the operation is "still a work in progress", observing that McChrystal's command was still trying to decide how much of the local government the military could "salvage" and how much "you have to rebuild".
That is an obvious reference to the dilemma faced by the U.S. military in Kandahar: the entire government structure is controlled by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the much-despised brother of President Hamid Karzai. The U.S.-supported provincial governor now being counted on to introduce governance reforms, on the other hand, is generally regarded by Kandaharis as powerless, as Jonathan Partlow reported in the Washington Post Apr. 29.
These negative comments on the campaign in Helmand and Kandahar by senior Washington officials pointing to problems with McChrystal's plan suggest that even more serious concerns are being expressed behind the scenes.
The Pentagon report on the war betrays similar doubts about the strategy being carried out by McChrystal, both by what it highlights and what it fails to say. Damning with faint praise, the report says the offensive waged in the Marja region and elsewhere in Helmand achieved only "some success in clearing insurgents from their strongholds".
Paralleling the quote from the "senior military official", the report says progress in "governance and development" in has been "slow". Demonstrating that the Afghan government could provide "governance and development" had been announced as the central aim of the offensive in Marja.
The section of the Pentagon report on the state of the insurgency goes even further toward declaring that the McChrystal plan had failed to achieve a central objective, concluding that the Taliban strategy for countering the offensive "has proven effective in slowing the spread of governance and development".
The key finding is that the Taliban have "reinfiltrated the cleared areas" of Helmand and "dissuaded locals from meeting with the Afghan government" by executing some who had initially collaborated.
The overall negative tone of the analysis of what happened in Helmand appears to reflect a decision by Pentagon officials to withhold its vote of confidence in the McChrystal war plan.
The only feature of McChrystal's strategy which the Pentagon report treats as having proven effective against the insurgents is its most controversial element: the programme of Special Operations Forces (SOF) night raids against suspected Taliban in their homes, which has stirred anger among Afghans everywhere the SOF have operated.
In an indirect expression of doubt about the impact of the McChrystal strategy, the report suggests that the willingness of Taliban insurgent leaders to negotiate will be influenced not by the offensives aimed at separating the population from the Taliban but by the "combined effects" of the high-level arrests of Taliban leaders in Pakistan and targeted raids by special operations forces against "lower level commanders".
In fact, Taliban leaders have already indicated a readiness to negotiate, although not on terms the Barack Obama administration is yet prepared to accept.
McChrystal appears to have responded to the setbacks he has encountered in Helmand and Kandahar by setting aside his most ambitious counterinsurgency aim: the creation of a large zone of control covering both provinces. In late January, an official working for McChrystal at the ISAF told IPS, "The first thing you'll see is an effort to establish a contiguous security zone in Helmand and Kandahar accounting for 85 percent of the economic resources."
McChrystal referred to that same aim in his interview with the Financial Times published Jan. 25. "If we can protect 85 percent of the people and deny access to them from the insurgents, it's pretty hard for them to have a significant effect," he said.
But since the end of the Marja operation, neither McChrystal nor any other ISAF official has said anything about a plan to establish a "contiguous security zone".
McChrystal has to provide a one-year assessment of the progress of his strategy in December 2010, and senior administration officials told the Washington Post in late March that he will have to show that the "overall transition to stability and vastly improved governance" has been completed by that time.
McChrystal was confident in a talk in Kabul in late January excerpted in a NATO video that, by December, he would be able to "show with hard numbers and things, real progress".
But the failure to clear Taliban guerrillas from areas where they have been strongest, along with the inability to break the power of Karzai's brother in Kandahar and the absence of support from the population and tribal elders for military occupation in the province, is likely to make administration officials highly sceptical of such a case.
McChrystal's staff has made no secret of their hope to convince the U.S. public that his strategy is making such progress in Helmand and Kandahar that it should be extended past mid-2011, when President Obama has said he would begin a U.S. military withdrawal and transition to Afghan responsibility for security.
After interviewing members of McChrystal's team in Kabul, pro-war journalist Robert Kaplan wrote in the April issue of Atlantic magazine, "The very prospect of some success by July 2011 increases the likelihood that U.S. forces will be in Afghanistan in substantial numbers for years."
WASHINGTON, May 6 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's request in February for more money to pay for the war in Afghanistan is still snarled in Congress as lawmakers work on other priorities and deal with scarce budget resources.
Obama has asked for $33 billion more to help fund 30,000 extra U.S. soldiers being sent to Afghanistan this year. He wants another $4.5 billion for beefed-up foreign aid and civilian operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year; about $2 billion of this amount is dedicated to Afghanistan.
Congress is expected to approve the new money but appears to be in no hurry. Following are the costs to U.S. taxpayers so far, as well as some of the future funding needed.
COSTS SO FAR
Congress has approved $345 billion so far for the war in Afghanistan, where the United States invaded to fight al Qaeda and topple the Taliban after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. This figure is from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which says that about $22 billion has gone for Afghan-war-related activities in other countries.
COMPARISON WITH IRAQ
About twice as much money -- $708 billion -- has gone to the war in Iraq so far, CBO says.
But Afghanistan is becoming the more expensive battleground, as the pace of U.S. military operations slows in Iraq and quickens in Afghanistan.
The current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, is the first year that more money has been allocated to Afghanistan ($72.3 billion) than Iraq ($64.5 billion), according to the National Priorities Project, a nonpartisan budget research group that examines congressional appropriations. It has a running tally of the wars' costs on its website.
MONEY FOR AFGHANISTAN'S MILITARY AND POLICE FORCES
Included in the money spent on Afghanistan so far is more than $25 billion for training and equipping the Afghan National Security Forces -- the army and police, according to the Special Instructor General for Afghanistan Reconstruction. Obama wants another $14.2 billion for this purpose for the rest of this year and next; the idea is to leave behind security forces that can take on the responsibility of fighting the Taliban as U.S. forces start to leave.
FUTURE MILITARY COSTS
Future expenses are a question mark, partly because troop levels are uncertain. Obama says he wants to start withdrawing forces from Afghanistan in mid-2011, but that will depend, in part, on conditions on the ground. No departure deadline has been set.
Estimates of the cost per troop per year in Afghanistan vary from $500,000 to $1 million depending on whether expenditures on troop housing and equipment are included along with pay, food and fuel. Medical costs for the injured and veterans' compensation balloon as time goes on.
FOREIGN AID AND CIVILIAN SURGE
Foreign aid, including food and development assistance, to Afghanistan has totaled some $17 billion since 2002, according to Department of State and Congressional Research Service documents.
But future expenses in this area are also a question mark that is expected to linger after the military one. "As President Obama made clear, our civilian engagement in Afghanistan and Pakistan will endure long after our combat troops come home," the State Department said in its justification for its supplemental budget request this year.
That request includes $2 billion in 2010 to help fund a "civilian stabilization strategy" to deliver more economic assistance to Afghanistan, especially in its agricultural sector. Part of the idea is to create jobs that will draw insurgents off the battlefield in Afghanistan.
Germany's cabinet approved the biggest national contribution to a $1 trillion emergency package intended to stabilize the euro, as global markets sobered up after Monday's euphoric rally.
Relief at the European Union's bold move to restore investor confidence gave way on Tuesday to doubts about whether weaker euro zone economies can meet their part of the bargain and deliver drastic debt cuts, driving the euro and stocks lower.
The 16-nation single currency, which surged as high as $1.30 on Monday, hovered around $1.27 as traders weighed debt worries and a perceived blow to the European Central Bank's independence in its weekend U-turn, when it agreed to start buying euro zone government bonds.
The emergency plan -- the biggest since G20 leaders threw money at the global economy following the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008 -- wowed markets with its sheer size and sparked a spectacular rally in world stocks and the euro.
"The intention is to get again control of the unorderly markets, and I think this is a goal that has been achieved remarkably in an effective way," ECB governing council member Ewald Nowotny of Austria told Reuters Insider television.
But he said the main task of stabilizing the euro remained with member states. His ECB colleague from the Netherlands, Nout Wellink, said the debt problems must be solved because the safety net had only "a temporary nature."
Stock and bond markets turned cautious when they reopened for business in Asia and Europe on Tuesday, with investors concerned that the plan was not a long-term solution to problems plaguing the 11-year old single currency area. The FTSEurofirst 300 index of leading European stocks was down 1.3 percent at 1440 GMT after gaining 7 percent on Monday.
EU Economic and Monetary Affairs Commissioner Olli Rehn said Portugal and Spain, next in the market firing line after Greece, must take more deficit cutting measures this year and next.
He also raised pressure on Italy, which has the euro zone's highest debt after Greece as a proportion of national output, and France, with a heavy structural budget deficit, to do more to improve their public finances quickly. [nLDE64A04N]
Wasting no time after being accused of procrastinating for months, German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured cabinet backing for Berlin's 123 billion euro share in loan guarantees, which a government source said could be exceeded by up to 20 percent if parliament's budget committee approves. An official spokesman said the plan could clear parliament by June 4.
"EUROPE'S FOOLS"
Conservative newspapers and the Social Democratic opposition articulated public anger and fear over the latest bailout, warning that Berlin could not trust its euro zone partners and may end up having to foot the entire bill.
"What happens if other countries that get aid from the package drop out? Will the German share increase then?" SPD parliamentary whip Thomas Oppermann asked on ARD television.
The mass-circulation Bild daily complained in a front-page headline: "We are Europe's fools again."
The conservative daily Die Welt said the fundamental problem was that the other euro zone countries did not share Germany's culture of financial stability.
"The euro zone is dominated by countries for whom currency stability is not so important," commentator Joerg Eigendorf wrote. "Nothing symbolises that more strongly than the loss of the central bank's independence."
Greek government officials said Athens would submit a formal request for its first tranche of euro zone/IMF aid on Tuesday, seeking 14.5 billion euros in three-year loans ahead of a May 19 repayment deadline for a 8.5 billion euro bond.
In a sobering note, the International Monetary Fund said that, even though Greece's public debt was sustainable over the medium term, the country whose debt woes spurred the unprecedented euro zone action faced plenty of risks.
Many economists doubt that Greece will be able to implement the full austerity programme due to social unrest, and believe it will have to restructure its debt, despite vehement denials.
A group of 160 mostly European economists, led by Philip Arestis of Cambridge and Gustav Horn of Germany's IMK research institute, said the rescue package would only work if accompanied by growth measures including wage rises in Germany.
Spending cuts imposed on Greece "will only depress incomes, output and employment further, even as interest rates are driven up to crippling levels," the group said. This was "profoundly the wrong course for Europe as a whole."
PROBLEMS POSTPONED
Nagayuki Yamagishi, a strategist at Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities, said that "even though one of the worst scenarios, a Greek default, has been avoided for now, in many ways solving the bigger problems has simply been postponed, and new issues could emerge in places such as Portugal and Spain."
U.S. Treasury bonds, a traditional safe haven, stabilized in Asian trade after Monday's plunge. Another haven, gold, rose toward $1,210 an ounce in Europe.
With many nations saddled with record deficits after pumping trillions of dollars into their economies during the global crisis, officials from Washington to Beijing applauded Europe's efforts to keep the crisis contained within its bounds.
In Japan, the world's most indebted industrialized nation, government officials warned that Tokyo could no longer take investors' willingness to bankroll its spending for granted.
(Additional reporting by Rika Otsuka in Tokyo, George Matlock, Jan Harvey, Jo Winterbottom and Neal Armstrong in London, Andreas Rinke, Sarah Marsh, Madeline Chambers and Christopher Lawton in Berlin; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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