Afghan capital hit by wave of Taliban rockets
With the lead and bulk of the article.
"Karzai calls for release of detainees; Prisoners’ status causing rift with US" by Fisnik Abrashi, Associated Press | August 5, 2009
Of course, Karzai is just playing politics.
Related:
"Legal experts believe a number of cases can’t be prosecuted because conditions were so harsh in Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and secret CIA “black sites’’ elsewhere. The number of cases involved isn’t known publicly since most of the background is still classified"
And the TORTURE CONTINUES as I TYPE!
For more on the abominable atrocity of U.S. torture, go HERE
KABUL, Afghanistan - Incumbent President Hamid Karzai, making a rare campaign appearance yesterday in the heavily Pashtun east to appeal for votes, said that Western forces must release suspected Taliban supporters and fighters held without charge for months and even years.
Where ya been?
Karzai spoke to a crowd of several thousand in Gardez, the capital of Paktia Province, targeting the ethnic group that provides most of the support for the insurgents. The US military holds some 600 prisoners at a detention center at Bagram Air Base outside Kabul as “unlawful enemy combatants’’ denied the right to legal representation.
And we are HARANGUING the IRANIANS????
Btw, BAGRAM is NOTORIOUS for being WORSE than GITMO!!!!
Their status is a growing source of tension between the United States and Karzai, who has been increasingly criticizing American forces for the detentions, along with raids on homes and air strikes that kill civilians.
That is NO WAY to WIN HEARTS and MINDS!!!!
Karzai issued one of his strongest demands yet for the mostly Pashtun detainees’ freedom.
“The Afghan people are happy because you have paved roads, built schools, and the salaries of the government are paid by the international community and United States,’’ he told the crowd in a field before a mosque. “But we want all our prisoners to be released. We need dignity in our houses and dignity for our women.’’
Then TELL THEM to LEAVE!!! What do you mean your life would be at risk?
This guy goes out and makes a once-over? Can you say rigged election?
You think the Afghan people are happy?
"US Kills Five Afghan Cucumber Farmers in Air Strike; Officials Assumed Farmers Were Loading 'Munitions,' Not Cukes
A US military helicopter launched an overnight attack on a group of what it believed were “militants loading munitions into a van,” killing five of them. According to police in the rural district of the Kandahar Province, they weren’t militants, and those weren’t munitions.
Instead, the Apache helicopter launched its attack on a group of farmers who were loading cucumbers they had grown into a van to be sent to a nearby bazaar. Despite police confirming the van it hit was full of cucumbers, NATO maintained that those it killed were militants. The attack is the second disputed incident of civilian killings in Kandahar Province in as many days.
The previous night, another helicopter launched an attack on a family’s compound, killing four people, three of them children. The family insists the four were sleeping at the time of the attack, NATO insists they were carrying “plastic jugs” and that it assumes they were planting roadside bombs. NATO maintains the four were “insurgents” despite the young age of three of them.
The pair of incidents come as the new NATO chief is visiting the nation, and just a week after a UN report cautioned that the escalation of war in Afghanistan is taking a rising toll on the civilian population of the country. With the US trying to convince farmers to switch crops to stem the rising opium exports from the nation, the fact that they can’t distinguish between cucumber and small arms is doubtless to make some farmers think twice."
Outraged southern Afghan villagers said today that a pre-dawn airstrike killed three children and a man in the latest case of civilian deaths at the hands of Western troops.
The U.S. military said it had killed four insurgents on motorcycles in that area and could not confirm any civilian fatalities.
Residents of Kowuk were seen bringing the bodies of three boys and a man to the guesthouse of the Kandahar governor from their village, 12 miles north of the provincial capital, Kandahar city.
Afghan men transport the bodies of four civilians killed in an airstrike
The angry villagers shouted 'Death to America! Death to infidels!' as they displayed the corpses in the back of a pickup truck.
 |
Abdur Rahim, the father of the boys and uncle of the slain man, claimed he heard a pair of helicopters circling over his compound at 1:30 a.m. before they fired two missiles that hit his home. His brother and another son were wounded, he said.
'What was the fault of my innocent children? They were not Taliban,' Rahim said. "Did they come here to build our country or kill our innocent children?
Campaigners have long suspected that the US military has not been entirely candid over the issue and papers have emerged showing that DU munitions were transported to Afghanistan. The use of A10 Warthog aircraft - one of the main users of DU ammunition - remains widespread to this day, although the number of armoured targets is now much diminished. Estimates by Janes Defence in 2003 suggested that the Taliban had at least 100 main battle tanks and 250 armoured fighting vehicles at the beginning of the conflict. It would be unusual if the US Army had chosen not to engage these targets with DU munitions from the air."
That's a f***ing war crime!
Okay, that's enough for now....
Karzai, who has made few campaign appearances, was once highly popular inside and outside Afghanistan but has lost luster in recent years because of endemic government corruption, a huge narcotics industry, and the unyielding violence.
I can see how and why he has lost his luster.
And we know who brought that drug industry with their invasion.
"U.N. drug control officers said the Taliban religious militia has nearly wiped out opium production in Afghanistan -- once the world's largest producer -- since banning poppy cultivation last summer."
Related: Einstein, insanity and the war on drugs
He called for the Taliban to negotiate with the government and participate in the election but said the two sides remained too far apart for talks to be successful.
That's why we never hear anything about those peace talks.
Earlier yesterday, Taliban militants unleashed a wave of rockets at Kabul’s international airport and government buildings in an attempt to shatter the sense of security in the Afghan capital less than three weeks before the presidential elections.
Oh, yeah, almost forgot about those rocket attacks.
Also see: Taliban Want to Talk
Huh?
The rockets missed their targets, lightly wounding a girl and a man with flying glass, but a Taliban spokesman said the group would soon launch more attacks in Kabul, which has been largely spared the violence roiling the south and east of the country.
Now THAT reminds me of the Gaza Rocket Squads!
CUI BONO? Who wants to escalate?
The president condemned a suicide attack yesterday in Zabul Province, where a bomber detonated his explosive vest besides a vehicle carrying Afghan security agents, killing one agent and four civilians. Eighteen people were wounded, police said.
Karzai did not mention the attack on Kabul from a largely unpopulated section of Deh Sabz, an area about 5 miles northeast of the city. A handful of large-scale attacks have hit high-profile targets in the city but it has been mostly spared the regular bombings and gun battles common across much of Afghanistan.
Huh! And WE HARDLY READ ABOUT SUCH THINGS in the Globe!
Afghan officials said at least eight rockets slammed into the capital, one damaging a senior Interior Ministry official’s house near the US Embassy in a heavily guarded section filled with diplomats and international organizations. Another hit in a mostly Afghan residential neighborhood nearby, but police said most landed in residential neighborhoods around the airport, which sits between the launch site and the center of Kabul. The early hour of the attack meant the normally busy streets where the rockets landed were almost empty.
That is really stinking. Waste of missile fire, unless...
A Taliban spokesman said militants fired nine rockets at the airport and two at an Afghan military headquarters near the US Embassy to show that the government cannot ensure security in the capital. “We are in control,’’ Zabiullah Mujahid said by telephone, warning the Taliban would fire more rockets at the capital before the elections.
He lied; Globe hasn't reported any more rockets so there couldn't have been.
And can't they track these guys down? They are scooping up all my calls, so WTF?
--source--"
"The Afghan people do not hate us "because we are free"; they hate us because we are systematically killing their kids, moms, aunts, and uncles, and friends with indiscriminate airstrikes." -- Wake the Flock Up