The present-day U.S. military qualifies by any measure as highly professional, much more so than its Cold War predecessor. Yet the purpose of today’s professionals is not to preserve peace but to fight unending wars in distant places. Intoxicated by a post-Cold War belief in its own omnipotence, the United States allowed itself to be drawn into a long series of armed conflicts, almost all of them yielding unintended consequences and imposing greater than anticipated costs. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. forces have destroyed many targets and killed many people. Only rarely, however, have they succeeded in accomplishing their assigned political purposes. . . . [F]rom our present vantage point, it becomes apparent that the “Revolution of ‘89” did not initiate a new era of history. At most, the events of that year fostered various unhelpful illusions that impeded our capacity to recognize and respond to the forces of change that actually matter.

Andrew Bacevich


Friday, November 5, 2010

War News for Friday, November 05, 2010

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldiers from an insurgent attack in an undisclosed area in southern Afghanistan on Friday, October 5th.

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldiers from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in southern Afghanistan on Friday, October 5th.

NATO is reporting the death of an ISAF soldiers from an IED attack in an undisclosed location in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, October 5th.


IEA says Iraq's oil boost plan a fizzle

Afghan hospital struggles to cope amid fighting, forcing people to seek treatment in Pakistan

Army doctors see sharp rise in severe injuries from Afghanistan: - A total of 58 had undergone amputations as a result of injuries sustained in Afghanistan by the end of September, compared with 55 for 2009, according to Defence Analytical Services and Advice statistics. Military doctors are treating rising numbers of double and triple amputees. Blesma (the British Limbless Ex Service Men's Association) estimates that at least 48 people have lost two limbs in Afghanistan.


Reported security incidents

Baghdad:
#1: A Baghdad security source has said on Thursday that the garage of Baghdad’s Governorate found a suspected Improvised Explosive Device (IED) in a car belonging to a police officer working with the Iraqi Interior Ministry. “An explosives unit have headed towards the garage to dismantle an IED attached to the police officer’s car, whilst the street leading to the garage passing by the Iranian Embassy had been closed, and the explosive charge was dismantled,” the security source told Aswat al-Iraq News Agency.


Babel Prv:
#1: U.S. forces seized a rocket and its launching pad after two others had landed on a U.S. base in northern Babel province on Thursday, a local police source said. “Two rockets landed on a U.S. military base in the area of al-Mashrou’, (30 km) north of al-Hilla city. The U.S. soldiers, combing the area near the base later, seized one rocket,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: Policemen on Thursday found the body of a child who had been kidnapped three days ago in Babel, a local security source said.


Mosul:
#1: “The body of a man in his 30s was found shot in the head and chest by policemen in al-Shoura district, (40 km) south of Mosul,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: Three children were wounded when a bomb went off in western Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.


Al Anbar Prv:
#1: “An unknown gunmen detonated a number of bombs near a billiard club in al-Sajar region, north of Falluja, damaging the club and nearby stores,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

#2: “Policemen managed to defuse a bomb, stuck to a vehicle belongs to a Sahwa fighter in al-Sabiehat region, central Karma district, eastern Falluja,” the source added.

#3: Three policemen were wounded in an attack by gunmen who hurled a hand-grenade at a checkpoint in central al-Karma district, eastern Falluja, according to a police source in al-Anbar on Thursday. “Unidentified gunmen attacked a checkpoint in the area of al-Subayhat, central al-Karma, eastern Falluja, with a hand-grenade, leaving three policemen wounded,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.



Afghanistan: "The Forgotten War"
#1: At least 35 people were killed and more than 60 injured Friday in a suicide attack at a mosque in northwest Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, state television PTV said. The blast occurred in Akhurwal area in Darra Adam Khel near Kohat town. “The blast targeted a mosque in a populated area in Sapeena police station precincts when the mid-day prayers were being offered,” said a senior official. The actual number of casualties may be much more as locals are shifting the victims to hospitals in private vehicles as well.

#2: An Australian soldier with the Special Operations Task Group has suffered delayed concussion caused by the blast of an Improvised Explosive Device (IED), which detonated close to him and other soldiers while on operations in Northern Kandahar province, Afghanistan. No other Australian soldiers, civilians, Afghan or Coalition forces were wounded in the blast.

#3: A charter aircraft carrying staff from an Italian oil company crashed minutes after take-off in Pakistan's business hub of Karachi on Friday, killing all 21 people on board. The pilot of the twin engine turboprop operated by Pakistani charter JS Air reported engine trouble then nose dived near a military depot in a Karachi suburb, in an accident that civil aviation blamed on a technical fault. "The plane has been totally gutted and there are no survivors," Lieutenant Colonel Noor Alam told reporters near the crash site in Gulistan-e-Jauhar. The 21 people on board were believed to be mostly Pakistanis, although embassies said they were checking to see whether the dead included foreigners. A company official in Karachi told AFP the plane was chartered by ENI, an Italian oil company, and was carrying its employees.

#4: The bomb exploded on Friday in a busy market in the Khwaja Sabz Posh district in Faryab province, AFP reported the provincial police chief, Abdul Khalil Andarabi, as saying. The attack was intended to kill the chairman of the Faryab Provincial Council, Rahmatullah Turkistani, who was present in the market. The bomb attack has also left 21 other people injured. The leader of the provincial council survived the attack with only injuries.

#5: Earlier, the governor of the Kunduz province was killed in a mosque explosion in the Takhar province in northern Afghanistan. This was followed by the death of the governor of Dur Baba district in southeast of Nangarhar province.

#6: ISAF forces fired a hellfire missile from the air at two people who appeared to be carrying weapons by motorcycle in the Shah Wali Kot district of southern Kandahar province on Thursday, ISAF said in a statement. One was killed and the other wounded.

#7: Four insurgents were killed by a joint Afghan and foreign patrol in southern Helmand province on Thursday, when the forces were attempting to detain a senior Taliban leader in the Kajaki district, ISAF said.

3 comments:

Dancewater said...

Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy

The revelation by WikiLeaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse.

But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi’a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war.

And Gen. David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shi’a and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.

The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shi’a and Kurdish police commandos in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by WikiLeaks show.

That strategy inflamed Sunni fears of Shi’a rule and was a major contributing factor to the rise of al-Qaeda’s influence in the Sunni areas. The escalating Sunni-Shi’a violence it produced led to the massive sectarian warfare of 2006 in Baghdad in which tens of thousands of civilians – mainly Sunnis – were killed.

The strategy of using primarily Shi’a and Kurdish military and police commando units to suppress Sunni insurgents was adopted after a key turning point in the war in April 2004, when Civil Defense Corps units throughout the Sunni region essentially disappeared overnight during an insurgent offensive.

Two months later, the U.S. military command issued “FRAGO [fragmentary order] 242,” which provided that no investigation of detainee abuse by Iraqis was to be conducted unless directed by the headquarters of the command, according to references to the order in the WikiLeaks documents.

The order came immediately after Gen. Petraeus took command of the new Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq (MNSTC-I). It was a clear signal that the U.S. command expected torture of prisoners to be a central feature of Iraqi military and police operations against Sunni insurgents.

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remember when thepiss and other idiots said that the Wolf Brigade was a fine and wonderful thing? Remember when Bush cheered when Iraqis (under Maliki) were slaughtering Iraqis?

If what was done to innocent Iraqis was done to them, it would only be justice. These Americans are not innocents, they are blood suckers who enjoy seeing sadistic violence like they created in Iraq.

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damn them to hell for their evil!

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