U.S. War with Self, Southwest Asia

Compiled and edited with comment by Carolyn Bennett
No one escapes casualty or consequences.
War leaves no innocents.
Nothing exists unscathed.

U.S. v.Afghan civilians September 28
Thirteen civilians died and eight suffered wounds last Sunday when NATO forces bombed Afghanistan's northeastern Laghman province. NATO disputed the numbers.

U.S./NATO v.Afghan children September 29
Four children died and three adults suffered wounds when NATO on Wednesday conducted raids into Afghanistan’s eastern Ghazni province.

The chief of Andar district, Sher Khan Yousafzai, reportedly told the local Pajhwok Afghan News that helicopter-borne NATO forces fired on local people in an orchard near one of the district’s towns, also named Andar.

U.S. v. Afghanistan/Pakistan October 1
Unidentified assailants in the Pakistani town of Shikarpur in Sindh province set fire to tankers carrying supplies for NATO troops in Afghanistan.

The incident came a day after Pakistani authorities blocked a supply route for NATO troops. Anger had risen among Pakistanis following the Thursday killings of three Pakistani soldiers in two cross-border strikes as NATO troops were chasing anti-government fighters in Pakistan’s northwestern Kurram region. Most supplies to troops in Afghanistan travel through Pakistan.

U.S. partnering w/ mercenaries October 2
Though the now-U.S. State Department Secretary promised in her bid for the White House to stop awarding military contracts to Blackwater (the felonious private security contractor), Mrs. Clinton’s State Department “has recently awarded the company another lucrative contract.”

On a list of eight firms bundled into the government-contracted Worldwide Protective Services is said to be one of Xe’s [Blackwater became Xe after a string of legal cases had been brought against the company in the U.S. and Iraq] fronts, International Development Solutions LLC (IDS). The total government outlay for the group of eight companies rises to $10 billion.

Blackwater’s U.S. Training Center (formerly known as Blackwater Lodge and Training Center) is part of IDS. Two former Blackwater employees are currently on trial in the U.S. on charges of murdering Afghan civilians and keeping human remains as trophies. The charges stem from a 2009 incident in Kabul. In 2008, five Blackwater guards were charged [though charges were ultimately dismissed] in the deaths of 17 Iraqi civilians, who were shot in Baghdad’s al-Nisoor Square in 2007. Another employee of Triple Canopy (another contractor in the new Worldwide Protective Services contract) was charged with killing at least one Iraqi after he fired into a civilian vehicle for ‘sport.’ Blackwater agreed in August of this year to pay $42 million in fines for weapons export violations.

Afghanis v. mercenaries October 3
Private security companies are reportedly being terminated in Afghanistan based on a plan drawn up by that country in August. Government officials report they are shutting down eight firms and seizing more than 400 weapons. The move is part of a larger plan by President Hamid Karzai to assume all Afghan security responsibilities by 2014.

Forty thousand Afghans, according to Kabul estimates, are employed by private security companies — a common sight on Afghan streets, their heavily armed guards forcing a route through traffic — maintaining parallel security operations and operating beyond government control. Though these private firms have been accused of killings, crimes and scandals, they are rarely punished and many Afghans see them “as operating with impunity.”

U.S. v. Pakistan October 2
Sixteen people died when missiles suspected to have been fired by U.S. drones landed on Pakistan’s North Waziristan province.

The first raid on Saturday reportedly killed nine people after missiles hit a house in the Datta Khel area, close to the Afghan border. Seven other people died in another raid in the same region later on Saturday.

Datta Khel has been the scene of several U.S. raids on Taliban, al-Qaeda fighters, and local supporters accused of targeting NATO and US forces in Afghanistan.

The United States is believed to have launched in the past five weeks at least 22 missile attacks in Pakistani territory. Western officials have said some of the drone attacks have been aimed at disrupting a ‘terror plot’ against European cities.

Public outrage has also risen over recent NATO incursions from across the Afghan border. It hit a peak on Thursday, when two NATO helicopters crossed into Kurram tribal region and killed three Pakistani paramilitary soldiers they believed were firing at them from the ground.

In apparent retaliation for the killings, Pakistan has cut off a key U.S. and NATO supply line on its soil. About 150 trucks on Saturday were waiting for Pakistan to reopen the border crossing at Torkham so they could deliver their supplies to Western troops in Afghanistan.

U.S. v. U. S. civil liberties October 3
Activists from U.S. cities of Minneapolis and Chicago received judicial subpoenas to appear this month before a grand jury investigation. The actions follow September 24 coordinated U.S. police raids.

Though authorities searched and seized activists’ computers, check books, mobile phones, documents and photographs, they laid no charges of crimes against the activists.

U. S. “White Power” v. U.S.  September 29-October 4
“Racially motivated threats against [U. S. President Barack] Obama rose to new heights in the first months of his presidency, Al Jazeera reports. “The United States saw nine high-profile race killings in 2009. Meanwhile white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups claim their membership is growing and that visits to their websites are increasing.”

Al Jazeera’s People and Power program looked at an earlier report that investigated “whether the racial undercurrent that has long structured U.S. politics was reasserting itself.” In the process, reporters “uncovered links between white nationalists and a conservative movement that has since become a force within more mainstream politics.”

How many (est.) in two-theater

U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

October 3, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 196]

Wounded 31,951-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides [estimated] 18 a day

Latest update on this site September 27, 2010

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

98,171 – 107,153

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,424 U.S., 4,742 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,311 U.S., 2,124 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

Sources and notes


“NATO raid kills ‘Afghan civilians’— Residents fleeing village in Laghman province tell Al Jazeera that Sundays raid killed13,” September 28, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2010/09/2010928123526920458.html


“‘Afghan children’ die in NATO raid — Local official contradicts NATO claim of insurgents being killed, saying four children have died in Ghazni attack,” September 29, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/2010929114014622446.html


“NATO lorries set ablaze in Pakistan—Attack on tankers carrying supplies to troops in Afghanistan follows deaths of Pakistani soldiers in NATO strikes,” October 1, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/10/20101014133433742.html


“‘Blackwater’gets new U.S. contract — Private security firm now known as Xe has a slice of a new $10bn state department contract despite repeated violations,” October 2, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/10/201010117237790858.html


“Afghanistan begins disbanding private security firms” (Sayed Salahuddin, Reuters), October 3, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6920N820101003


“Deaths in Pakistan ‘drone’ attacks — Sixteen people reportedly killed by missiles fired by suspected U.S. drones in North Waziristan,” October 2, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/10/201010274744564994.html


“FBI targets U.S. Palestine activists — Searches, subpoenas, but no charges for anti-war activists ‘providing support to terrorists’ in Colombia and Palestine,” October 3, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/09/201092993840748931.html


“White Power USA — Is the US heading toward a future of racial tolerance or racially-motivated violence?”(Filmmakers Rick Rowley and Jacquie Soohen went inside the white nationalist movement to investigate), People & Power episode airing Wednesday, September 29- Monday October 4, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/01/201015124739316797.html




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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]; Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza: http://www.bhny.com/ [Albany, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]

“Will people die? Nobody you know, just “foreigners”

Re-reporting, editing by Carolyn Bennett
Novelist and former British intelligence officer John Le Carré appeared today on Pacifica’s Democracy Now program from England. He talked about war in the Middle East (S/Central Asia) and foreign heads of state who led it then and continue leading it now.

Question Le Carré said he would have raised had he raised it to George W. Bush’s then-co-commander, now protested big-selling author, Tony Blair, leading into the U.S.-led war on Iraq

Consequences of War

“Have you ever seen what happens when a grenade goes off in a school? Do you really know what you’re doing when you order shock and awe? Are you prepared to kneel beside a dying soldier and tell him why he went to Iraq, or why he went to any war?”

Europe, U.S. views of War

“…If anything has happened to Europe since 1945 that defines Europe, it is collectively Europeans do not believe in war anymore — until it comes as an absolute last resort…. The United States still sees war as a necessary part of its existence.”

U.S. President Barack Obama and War

“I think all decent people wept with pleasure when he was elected. That faith in him will die only slowly. There is a lot of evidence that he has done a lot of things that are amazingly good. … [H]e has advanced on the health front. [H]is opening speeches … for example, from Cairo to the Muslim community… [T]hose early statements of intent were magnificent. The sadness now is that we see them in practice being diminished.

“I certainly haven’t given up hope so I would ask him whether he still hopes.”


Le Carré wrote in a pre-Iraq invasion essay (2003)

“… God has very particular political opinions. God appointed America to save the world in any way that suits America. God appointed Israel to be the nexus of America’s Middle Eastern policy and anyone who wants to mess with that idea is —

(a) Anti-Semitic

(b) Anti-American

(c) With the enemy

(d) A terrorist”

“God also has pretty scary connections. In America, where all men are equal in His sight, if not in one another’s, the Bush family numbers one President, one ex-President, one ex-head of the CIA, the Governor of Florida and the ex-Governor of Texas.…

“To be a member of the team you must also believe in Absolute Good and Absolute Evil, and Bush, with a lot of help from his friends, family and God, is there to tell us which is which. What Bush won’t tell us is the truth about why we’re going to war. What is at stake is not an ‘Axis of Evil’ but oil, money and people’s lives. Saddam’s misfortune is to sit on the second biggest oilfield in the world.…

“What is at stake is not an imminent military or terrorist threat, but the economic imperative of U.S. growth. What is at stake is America’s need to demonstrate its military power to all of us to Europe and Russia and China, and poor mad little North Korea, as well as the Middle East; to show who rules America at home, and who is to be ruled by America abroad….
.”

Will we win, Daddy?
Of course, child; it will all be over while you’re still in bed.

Why?
Because otherwise Mr. Bush’s voters will get terribly impatient and may decide not to vote for him.

But will people be killed, Daddy?
Nobody you know, darling; just foreign people.

Can I watch it on television?
Only if Mr. Bush says you can.

Afterwards, will everything be normal again — nobody will do anything horrid any more?
Hush child and go to sleep

How many (est.) in two-theater U.S.-led

WAR DEAD?

Casualty sites reporting

September 16, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com Casualties in Iraq since March 19, 2003

[U.S. war dead since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 193]

Wounded 31,951-100,000

U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000

Suicides [estimated] 18 a day

Latest update on this site September 19, 2010

http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/

• Iraq Body Count figures

97,994 – 106,954

http://www.iraqbodycount.org/

• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,421 U.S., 4,739 Coalition

AFGHANISTAN: 1,282 U.S., 2,086 Coalition

http://icasualties.org/oif/

S/Central Asia
Kashmir/India conflict — September 20

Three people died in India-administered Kashmir as violence continued with a police shooting at a group of protesters in a funeral procession. Police said some demonstrators were trying to set fire to the house of a pro-Indian politician. Protesters denied the claim. The deaths on Saturday bring the number of people killed in recent anti-government clashes to more than 100.

Pakistan foreign occupied, flood fallout
Political discord over Pakistan aid — September 20

The Pakistani government has been accused of ‘favoritism’ in relief efforts, six weeks after heavy rains caused devastating floods.

Pakistani Karachi-UK-Karachi, Pakistan
Targeted killings — September 20

A founding member of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (or MQM party), Imran Farooq, was found dead Thursday in the north of the London. He had sustained multiple stab wounds and head injuries. The next day as news of the killing reached Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, gas stations, schools and markets closed and public transport halted. Hundreds of targeted killings have occurred this year in Karachi.

Afghanistan in foreigners’ War votes
Violence and corruption September 19

Eleven civilians died when bombs exploded and rockets attacked during Afghanistan’s election. Observers also reported “fake voter cards and ballot stuffing.”

Middle East-Iraq
Baghdad bombings September 19

Twenty-nine people died Sunday in two near-simultaneous car bomb explosions in Baghdad, Iraq’s capital. One hundred people suffered wounds in the two explosions.

Sources and notes
“Legendary British Author John le Carré on Why He Won’t Be Reading Tony Blair’s Iraq War-Defending Memoir,” [David Cornwell writes under the name John le Carré], September 20, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/legendary_british_author_john_le_carr


“The United States of America Has Gone Mad” (John le Carré, The Times/UK, January 15, 2003), http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/America/US_Gone_Mad_leCarre.html


John le Carré: “The United States of America Has Gone Mad,”
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/9/20/john_le_carr_the_united_states


http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2010/09/20109197016442716.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/video/asia/2010/09/2010919103515596138.html http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/09/20109176850972836.html
Inside Story aired from Sunday, September 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/insidestory/2010/09/201092011590734806.html
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/09/201091982110761498.html
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Bennett's books available at New York independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Present Tense books and gifts: presenttensebooks.com [Batavia, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Talking Leaves Books-Elmwood: talking.leaves.elmwood@gmail.com [Buffalo, NY]

Lasting consequences

There is no escaping the protracted fallout of invasion and occupation. There is no cure apart from stopping invasion, ending occupation.
Re-reporting, editing, brief comment by Carolyn Bennett

DOMESTIC DESERTION

9-11, 9-11! Call to war abandons U.S. victims
House Rejects Bill to Help Sick Ground Zero Workers
Soldier suicides ignored

The U.S. government has approved and sealed legislation hemorrhaging more deficit spending including $37 billion [pushing past a $ trillion] for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the U.S. House of Representatives “failed to pass a $7.4 billion bill to provide free healthcare and compensation payments to U.S. rescue and cleanup workers who were exposed to dangerous toxic chemicals at the World Trade Center site following the 9/11 attacks.”

Soldier suicide has risen above the rate among civilians since the Vietnam War. Between October 1, 2008 and September 30, 2009, 160 active-duty Army personnel committed suicide. A third of soldiers take at least one prescription drug. Fourteen percent of them take powerful painkillers. The U.S. Army report citing the figures “faulted commanders for ignoring rising mental health, drug and crime issues among soldiers.”

INVASION, OCCUPATION
THEFT, DISRUPTION
DISEASE, DEATH
RESISTANCE, RETALIATION

Afghanistan

As the month ends, July goes on record as the deadliest (63 troop deaths) for the U. S.’s nearly nine-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. The missing bodies of Navy sailor Jarod Newlove (Renton, Washington) and sailor Justin McNeley (Wheat Ridge, Colorado) were found earlier in the week.

KABUL: A NATO vehicle crash into a civilian car killing occupants of that car has led today to rioting outside the U.S. embassy in Kabul. Witnesses reported four passengers died when one of two military vehicles moving in convoy hit the civilian car. In 2006, a similar traffic incident led to massive riots that shook the capital and left at least 14 people dead. Young Afghan men responded by throwing stones and shouting ‘death to foreigners’ and “‘death to [Afghan president Hamid] Karzai.’”

Iraq

Billions of U.S. deficit dollars pumped into Iraq’s reconstruction have failed to rebuild the country’s ravaged infrastructure. “Money was just spent,” British journalist Patrick Cockburn said today on Democracy Now. “Nobody quite knew where it went. This was happening well after we knew that fraud had been occurring everywhere... Up to quite recently, there seems to have been a free-for-all with Iraqi funds.…”

Moreover, Iraq’s children are sick and dying as Japan’s children suffered and died in the fallout of World War II. “A new medical study has found dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukemia among people in the Iraqi city of Fallujah, a city bombarded by U.S. Marines in 2004.

Infant mortality is more than four times higher than in neighboring Jordan, eight times higher than in Kuwait. Cancer rates exceed those reported by survivors of the U.S. atomic bombs dropped in 1945 on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Iraqi cases are “‘similar to the Hiroshima survivors who were exposed to ionizing radiation from the bomb and uranium in the fallout.”

FALLUJAH west: One soldier died and five people suffered wounds when a bomb exploded on a parked motorcycle near an army checkpoint.

MOSUL north: One police officer died and another two suffered wounds near the convoy of a police chief

BAGHDAD north: Sixteen people died (among them nine security personnel) and 14 suffered wounds Thursday when several bombs hit Baghdad’s Sunni district of Al-Adhamiyah. Three soldiers died and 12 suffered wounds Thursday when a car bomb exploded near an army base in Al-Sharqat, north of Baghdad in Salaheddin province. On different routes to the scene of the attacks, 13 people died among them three soldiers and three police officers. Among the wounded were seven police officers and two civil members of civil defense.

Sources and links
Democracy Now headlines July 30, 2010, http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/30/headlines
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/7/29/patrick_cockburn_on_missing_billions_in
“Afghans riot in Kabul after deadly NATO crash Module body,” July 30, 2010,
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/100730/world/afghanistan_unrest_accident_riot_1
“16 dead, 14 wounded in Baghdad attacks,” AFP July 30, 2010, http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100730/twl-iraq-unrest-575b600.html

U.S. AFPAK-IRAQ bleeding SUNDAY

Clinton in Islamabad, Pakistan, full court theater heading into Tuesday’s international donors’ conference in neighboring Kabul, Afghanistan
Re-reporting, compiled and edited by Carolyn Bennett
Sunday July 18

IRAQ
Worsening in governing void
More than 40 people have died and 40 more suffered wounds when a suicide bomb exploded today in western Baghdad. The incident occurred as government-backed Sahwa fighters gathered, lined up outside a military base in the Sunni district of Radwaniya, to collect their pay. Near the Iraq’s border with Syria in the far western town Qaim, another suicide bomb exploded. Backed by the United States since 2006, Sahwa militia (or “Awakening movements”) in Iraq reportedly have been fighting al-Qaeda.

AFGHANISTAN
Worsens daily
Escalation in the war on Afghanistan has taken enormous tolls on the Afghan people ─ and (as in Iraq) the war as weighted most heavily on the children. More than a thousand civilians have died this year alone in Afghanistan. The Afghanistan Rights Monitor say recent statistics show more than 1,000 civilians died in the first six months of 2010, with over half of them dying in suicide attacks and roadside bombings. Among those killed and injured were children.


Last month was the deadliest for international troops in this nearly nine-year-old war. One hundred and three international troops including 60 Americans have died. This month (July) 54 have died of which 39 were from the United States.

• Kandahar

Taliban fighters today freed 14 inmates from a jail in western Afghanistan after staging a daring prison break. In November 2009, 13 prisoners escaped from the same prison via a tunnel. In June that year, more than 1,000 Taliban inmates escaped from Sarpoza prison in Kandahar city after an exploded suicide bomb blew open the front gates and destroyed prison walls.


Sunday’s prison break comes two days before Afghanistan is scheduled to host a major international donors’ conference to be attended by scores of foreign ministers including U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

• Kabul

Three people died and some 30 suffered wounds today when a suicide bomb exploded in central Kabul where on Tuesday more than 70 international representatives including some 40 foreign ministers are expected to meet in conference and hear the Afghan government’s plan to take over security of its country.


Afghan president Hamid Karzai is reportedly getting ready to announce an official timetable for foreign troops to leave his country. At the international donors’ conference on Tuesday in Kabul, the Afghan government is expected also to present a long-term development strategy in exchange for more aid pledges for Afghanistan; and more control over the spending of international aid.

“Despite the high-profile spin in Washington and Kabul about progress made in Afghanistan, the Afghan people have only witnessed and suffered an intensifying armed conflict over the past six months. Contrary to President Barrack Obama’s promise that the deployment of additional 30,000 US forces to the country would ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ Taliban insurgents and their al-Qaeda allies in the region, the insurgency has become more resilient, multi-structured and deadly. Information and figures received, verified and analyzed by Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) show about 1,074 civilian people were killed and over 1,500 were injured in armed violence and security incidents from 1 January to 30 June 2010. This shows a slight increase in the number of civilian deaths compared to the same period last year when 1,059 deaths were recorded,” writes ARM [Afghanistan Rights Monitor] Mid-Year Report Civilian Casualties of Conflict, January-June 2010 Kabul, Afghanistan, http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWFiles2010.nsf/FilesByRWDocUnidFilename/NROI-87A9PB-full_report.pdf/$File/full_report.pdf

PAKISTAN
Neighbors against neighbors
The U.S. Secretary of State is in Pakistan today and Monday reportedly promising hundreds of millions to that country and pressing its government to escalate war against [its people] armed groups in the country’s northwest ─ particularly the so-called ‘Haqqani network’ ─ supposedly the deadliest group operating in Afghanistan whose fighters often take sanctuary in Pakistan. Reports say Clinton also will press Pakistan on ‘reconciliation’ talks between anti-government fighters and the Afghan government.

Sources and notes
KABUL [Persian Kābol] is the capital and largest city of Afghanistan ─ its cultural and economic center ─ lying along the Kābul River (elevation about 5,900 feet, 1,800 meters) in the east-central part of the country. Roads connect Kabul with most other areas of Afghanistan; to the north with Uzbekistan, to the east with Pakistan [Britannica].

“Suicide bombers target Iraq militia,” July 18, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/07/20107181483330423.html
“Afghanistan violence soars” (Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reports), July 18, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010716135511780796.html
“Taliban stage daring jail break,” July 18, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/20107187115691869.html
Karzai ‘sets withdrawal timeline.’ July 18, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/2010718131825950716.html
“Clinton in Pakistan for talks,” July 18, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/07/201071842649336595.html

U.S. at COUNTER PURPOSES

Reported, Compiled, edited by Carolyn Bennett
WAR U.S. against Asia and itself
Springtime droned from America

March 20, 2010
PALESTINE
“Let us be clear, all settlement activity is illegal anywhere in occupied territory and this must stop.”

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has begun a two-day visit to the Palestinian territories. He has reaffirmed the Quartet of Middle East negotiators’ commitment to an independent Palestinian state. Ban’s next stop is the Gaza Strip, which has been for nearly three years under a crippling Israeli siege.

The Quartet on the Middle East (Diplomatic Quartet or Madrid Quartet) was established Madrid in 2002 by the Spanish Prime Minister Aznar as a result of the escalating conflict in the Middle East. The Quartet is comprised of nations and configurations involved in mediating a peace process concerning the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the European Union, the Russian Federation, the United Nations and the United States.

However, in the face of speeches and good intentions, blood continued flowing.

Muhammad Qadus had been participating in a demonstration in the occupied West Bank; demonstrators threw stones at Israeli soldiers in the West Bank city of Nablus. Israeli forces opened fire with live bullets piercing 16-year-old Muhammad Qadus in the heart. He died before reaching the hospital. According to medical staff reported by Al Jazeera, Israeli forces had delayed the Red Crescent ambulance sent to collect him. Also during the demonstration Muhammad Qadus’s cousin, identified as 16-year-old Palestinian Useid Abed an-Nasser Qadus, was seriously wounded.

An Israeli air strike targeting southern Gaza’s defunct international airport located near the town of Rafah wounded an estimated 11 people on Friday.

Palestinians fought running battles on Friday with Israeli police tear-gassing hundreds of stone-throwing Palestinians in the occupied West Bank city of Hebron. These latest clashes follow Israel’s announced construction of 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem. Hebron is home to about 160,000 Muslims; Encased in heavy Israeli security, some 500 Israelis and Jews live in a center city settlement.

March 19, 2010
A rocket firing from Gaza on Thursday was answered by a series of Israeli air raids striking multiple targets on the Gaza Strip. The rocket firing killed a Thai farmer near Ashkhelon, the first death resulting from a missile launched from the strip since the end of Israel’s December 2008-January 2009 war on Gaza. A representative of Hamas said, “The government of the Zionist enemy, which has launched a war against the Palestinian people and against holy sites and al-Aqsa mosque, bears the responsibility for all the escalation.”

March 15, 2010
IRAQ
At rush hour, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from Baghdad, eight people died and 21 suffered wounds when a car bomb exploded in Fallujah, a city in Iraq’s western Anbar province.

Though security had improved in recent years, Fallujah was once a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency against the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Since 2006, Sunni tribesmen and former anti-U.S. fighters have joined forces with the U.S. military against al-Qaeda.

March 19, 2010
PAKISTAN/INDIA made in USA
U.S. citizen David Headley has pleaded guilty to scouting targets for the 2008 attacks in Mumbai. One hundred and sixty-six people died in those attacks. At his trial in Chicago, Headley also pleaded guilty to plotting a revenge attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper. The Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in 2005 published 12 editorial cartoons believed to be defamatory against Islam. Headley exchanged guilty pleas on 12 counts of conspiracy for life in prison and no extradition to India, Pakistan or Denmark.

March 19, 2010
ARENA of U.S. PROTEST
“Seeking real end to Iraq War” ─ Sarah Lazare quotes courageous U.S. resisters

Jeff Paterson, Gulf War resister and project director of Courage to Resist, an organization supporting U.S. military personnel who refuse to fight:

“The pursuit of war has outlasted the change in the White House. Barack Obama, the U.S. president, swept into office on an anti-Iraq War ticket and has recently been claiming that the Iraq War is winding down.” However, some critics are skeptical that the pledge to remove combat troops by September 1, 2010, leaving about 50,000 troops in non-combat roles, will end the war. “‘For nearly six years, the American people have been told by our government that the Iraq War will be coming to an end soon, always in about six months if everything goes as planned’”

ENDLESS ─ Investment goldmine turns all-out war to all-out occupation of Iraq

Ryan Harvey of the Civilian Soldier Alliance:

“‘Some believe the occupation is really just now beginning, as the drop in violence means the realization of very lucrative contracts for Western companies operating in Iraq. The big oil give-away has begun, privatization schemes of [former Coalition Provisional Authority head] Paul Bremer are now really taking effect in the economy.…

“‘Anti-war campaigners need to take their efforts to the military bases, the schools, the communities, and in the occupied-countries themselves. It is going to take organizing around [the issue] of withdrawing our consent from the power structures that created these wars to bring them to an end.’”

Summer 2010
KOREA not forgotten
This summer marks the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, a bloody three-year conflict that set Communist North Korea against a South Korea supported by a United Nations coalition headed by the United States.

The war against Korea “was the first armed confrontation of the Cold War. When a truce was signed  in 1953, “two million soldiers and two million civilians had died or suffered wounds. Now, six decades later, the conflict remains unresolved.…

“North Korea alleges that the United States used biological weapons against Korean civilians during the war – dropping ‘germ’ bombs containing insects, shellfish and feathers infected with anthrax, typhoid and bubonic plague on villages across the country. The United States has always vehemently denied these claims, dismissing them as crude and outlandish communist propaganda from a secretive and totalitarian state. Nevertheless, the accusations have refused to go away. Pyongyang continues to press for an apology for an ‘outrage’ that the Unites States insists never happened.”

March 20, 2010
AFGHANISTAN
Civilian Commander in Chief relinquishes power to Military
“U.S. commanders may send an additional 2,500 troops to fend off the Taliban in northern Afghanistan, a region that had been relatively peaceful until recently. U.S. officers were conferring with German commanders leading Regional Command North about shifting some of the forces in a U.S. troop buildup to the north instead of the south.” The chief of staff of the NATO-led International Security and Assistance Force, “General Bruno Kasdorf, told German ARD public radio Thursday the operation would be ‘similar’ to the offensive currently underway in the southern province of Helmand involving 15,000 U.S., NATO and Afghan troops.” [Agence France Presse]

March 21, 2010
PAKISTAN/AFGHANISTAN
United States at Counter purposes
The arrests in Pakistan of the Taliban’s second-in-command, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar and others in the Islamists’ hierarchy slowed down Afghan government peace initiatives, says Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai’s representative, Siamak Hirawi. Hirawi spoke to AFP.

The president’s representative confirmed that the UN former envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, had held peace talks with Taliban figures and said Eide had kept the Afghan government informed. The talks were part of a UN initiated process to help the Afghan government’s peace plan; they were supplemental to Afghan government’s efforts. “‘The international community has agreed with us that those Afghans who are not linked to foreign intelligence or terrorist organizations’ can be part of the peace process.”

“Pakistan’s powerful spy agency the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is believed to have been behind the arrests, in cooperation with the United States. Many in Afghanistan see the arrests as being aimed at destabilizing any peace process. Eide said the detentions in Pakistan had a ‘negative’ impact on attempts to find a political solution to the Afghan war and suggested Pakistan had deliberately tried to undermine the negotiations. The U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke praised the arrests, telling reporters on Friday he had been aware of the UN-Taliban contact but the United States played no role.” Holbrooke is reported saying the arrests were “‘a good thing for the simplest of reasons: good for the military efforts underway in Afghanistan.’”

AFGHANISTAN’s relentless 2010
Three or four times daily explosions rumble through Marjah, Afghanistan, a former Taliban stronghold. This is “an ominous sign that the insurgents have not given up despite losing control of the town several days ago to U.S. and Afghan forces. Taliban fighters scattered but have not abandoned the fight and are using homemade bombs as their weapon of choice. New bombs are planted every night even though Marines claim to find and render safe more of them than explode. “The bombs are often placed in spots where the Marines stopped on patrol the day before, or into holes from previous explosions so the upturned earth doesn’t look suspicious.”

Casualty sites reporting
March 20, 2010 (accurate totals unknown)

• Anti-war dot com March 19, 2003 ─ [Since the Obama inauguration January 20, 2009: 157] Wounded 31,716-100,000; U.S. veterans with brain injuries 320,000; Suicides 18 a day http://www.antiwar.com/casualties/
• Iraq Body Count figures: 95,724-104,427, http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
• ICasualties IRAQ: 4,385 U.S., 4,703 Coalition; AFGHANISTAN: 1,024 U.S., 1,692 Coalition http://icasualties.org/oif/
• Just Foreign Policy: [not current] 1,366,350
http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/iraq.org/iraq

Is it not fair to ask, indeed imperative to ask why Washington officials persist in killing and otherwise harming the world's peoples including Americans? Is it enough to answer decades later from Washington as the pontiff today answers from Rome: “Sorry?”


Sources and notes
“UN chief visits West Bank,” March 20, 2010 http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010320113956764437.html
“Israeli fire kills Palestinian teen,” March 20, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010320162053153537.html
“Gazans wounded in Israeli strike,” March 20, 2010,
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/2010319215541529583.html
“Israel hits Gaza after rocket death,” March 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031821950653943.html
“Car bomb blast strikes Iraqi center city, March 15, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/03/201031571112419343.html
“U.S. man admits Mumbai terror role,” March 19, 2010, http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2010/03/2010318205118778482.html
“Seeking a 'real' end to Iraq War” in San Francisco Sarah Lazare (opinion), views expressed in this article are the author’s; do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. Sarah Lazare is an anti-militarist and GI resistance organizer with Dialogues Against Militarism and Courage to Resist. She is interested in connecting struggles for justice at home with global movements against war and empire. http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/03/201031993452512230.html
“Dirty little secrets” (Diarmuid Jeffreys), Episode of Al Jazeera’s People & Power March 10-19, 2010
http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2010/03/201031761541794128.html
“U.S. weighs more troops for north Afghanistan,” March 18-20, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100320/tap-afghanistan-unrest-us-nato-military-eea7cf4.html
“Afghanistan says Taliban arrests had ‘negative impact,’” March 20-21, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/afp/20100320/tap-afghanistan-unrest-eea7cf4.html
“Taliban adjust, wage bomb attacks against Afghan town,” AFP, March 21, 2010, http://malaysia.news.yahoo.com/ap/20100321/tap-as-afghan-bomb-ridden-town-d3b07b8.html