"The controlled media today censors and sanitizes the images and information about the wars and the human suffering the aggression has caused to the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. The public is kept in the dark about the true costs of the illegal wars, both human and financial. Most importantly, the U.S. media keeps powerful images.... off the pages of our newspapers.
--MORE--"
That explains the Boston Globe, doesn't it?
They also censor the suffering of the American people, thus the title of this post.
"Suicide attack kills Conn. native in Afghanistan" by Associated Press | October 5, 2009
A transfer case containing the body of Army Captain Benjamin Sklaver was carried at Dover Air Force Base Saturday. (Jose Luis Magana/ Associated Press)
HARTFORD - Governor M. Jodi Rell ordered Connecticut’s flags lowered to half staff yesterday to honor a Hamden native who was killed fighting in Afghanistan.
US Army Captain Benjamin Sklaver died in Muscheh, Afghanistan, when his unit was ambushed by a suicide attacker Friday, the governor’s office said.
The 32-year-old was a graduate of Hamden High School and Tufts University.
Rell called him a brave soldier and a “brave son who made the ultimate sacrifice to protect our freedom.’’
No, he was over there protecting oil pipelines and the drug trade in a power-projecting occupation.
Read: Local church sign doesn't go far enough
Sklaver also was the director and founder of ClearWater Initiative, an organization based in New Haven dedicated to providing clean water to people affected by natural or manmade humanitarian emergencies. The organization has dug wells for more than 6,500 people since 2007, mostly in northern Uganda, according to its website.
So one of our best and brightest was really lost in this case -- over a pack of damn lies.
The work stemmed from a previous deployment of Sklaver in the Horn of Africa, near the Uganda-Sudan border, his mother, Laura, told the New Haven Register. “He certainly touched a lot of people with his work,’’ his father, Gary, told the Hartford Courant. “He was certainly special to us. Every soldier over there is a hero. And everyone over there has someone back home who grieves for them. All soldiers’ families are worried and all of us have to pray for those who are still over there.’’
Rell said the flags will remain at half staff until Sklaver has been interred. Funeral arrangements were not complete yesterday.
--more--"
Going to be a lot more of those, too, America -- unless you put a stop to it.
KABUL, Afghanistan - Heavily armed Taliban militiamen attacked American and Afghan military outposts on the Pakistan border in a weekend siege that killed eight US soldiers and two Afghan security forces, according to US and Afghan officials.
Latest related: Boston Sunday Globe Censorship: Afghanistan Battlefield
The fighting began Saturday morning and continued early yesterday in a remote region of eastern Afghanistan in Nuristan Province. It was one of the deadliest battles in months for coalition forces. Staging their attack from steep mountainsides that overlook the outposts in the valley below, on a morning when weather made visibility poor, the Taliban fighters attacked the small American and Afghan bases using rifles, machine guns, grenades, and rockets, according to US military officials.
By yesterday morning, when the US military disclosed the attack in a statement, the area was “largely secure but I do think there is still some activity,’’ said Captain Elizabeth Mathias, a military spokeswoman. In addition to the eight soldiers killed, several others were injured, said Rear Admiral Gregory J. Smith, but he did not specify the number.
The American soldiers called in ground reinforcements, along with an attack helicopter, airplanes, and surveillance drones during the fighting. US forces eventually repelled the attack while inflicting “a significant amount of casualties’’ on insurgents, Smith said.
How would he know? They just think we will accept it because they say it, huh?
Because of the “very challenging terrain,’’ the insurgents had “pretty effective firing positions,’’ Smith said. “It was obviously a very, very difficult day.’’
“Virtually everything that could be thrown at it was thrown at it,’’ Smith said of the American response to the attack. The attack took place in a sparsely populated area of forested mountains near the town of Kamdeysh.
The US military said it was not immediately clear how many insurgents were involved in the fighting. The attack involved Taliban fighters and appeared to be led by a local commander of the Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin insurgent group, which is run by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a former mujaheddin leader during the Soviet war in Afghanistan during the 1980s....
Oh, ONE OF OUR CIA ASSETS is RAISING HELL?
"Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the favored warlord of the ISI and CIA. Casey was said to be particularly fond of him as both shared a goal of extending the fighting beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union itself. He was a ruthless fighter, who also led several raids into USSR territory. He was also a major drug trafficker. Almost half of all the covert weapons directed at Afghanistan were sent to his group"
Related: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Taliban Checkbook
The Pinnacle of Propaganda, Part II
Retired General James Jones said that Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling to the Taliban, and he downplayed fears that the insurgency could set up a renewed sanctuary for Al Qaeda....
Out of the loop, General?
The deputy police chief of Nuristan Province, Mohammad Farouq, said the insurgents in the weekend attack intended to seize control of the Kamdeysh area and that hundreds took part in the fighting. He said more than 20 Afghan soldiers and police have been missing since the fighting began and may have been taken hostage.
Or defected.
“Americans always want to fight in Afghanistan,’’ said Zabiullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman, who took credit for the attack by telephone. “If the Americans want to increase their troops, we will increase our fighters as well.’’
They couldn't trace him down? All that spy gear, etc, and they can't locate him when he CALLS IN on a TELEPHONE?
He said the battle began about 6 a.m. Saturday and involved 250 Taliban fighters. He said dozens of American and Afghan soldiers were killed, along with seven Taliban fighters.
In a separate incident Saturday, another US serviceman was killed in eastern Afghanistan in a bombing.
Then WHY DIDN'T I HEAR ABOUT it on SUNDAY, Globe?
American deaths in Afghanistan have risen sharply this year as the Taliban have gained in strength and numbers and more US forces are involved in operations to combat them.
--more--"Time to come home, America, before we have more like those of Captain Sklaver.
