Tag: pakistan

The fourth round of ‘strategic –dialogue’ between the United States and Pakistan ended on March 25, 2010 in Washington, bringing a win-win situation for both sides. The US seems upbeat that its key ally in the region combating terrorism has finally intensified its efforts to root out the al-Qaida affiliated Islamist militants on its own soil and truly distancing itself from its proxy, the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan.

Normally, if two countries with powerful nuclear arsenals were openly musing about attacking a third country over mere suspicions that it might want to join the nuclear club, we’d tend to sympathize with the non-nuclear underdog as the victim of bullying and possible aggression.

KARZAI'S ATTEMPTS TO PLAY US, INDIA, PAKISTAN AND RUSSIA AGAINST EACH OTHER A CHILDISH ATTEMPT AT REVIVAL OF "COLD WAR THINKING" By Gordon Duff STAFF...

Twenty-eight nations have cooperated with the U.S. to detain in their prisons, and sometimes to interrogate and torture, suspects arrested as part of the U.S. “War on Terror.” The complicit countries have kept suspects in prisons ranging from public interior ministry buildings to “safe house” villas in downtown urban areas to obscure prisons in forests to “black” sites to which the International Committee of the Red Cross(ICRC) has been denied access.

After a year of cautious debate and costly deployments, President Obama finally launched his new Afghan war strategy at 2:40 am on February 13, 2010, in a remote market town called Marja in southern Afghanistan's Helmand Province. As a wave of helicopters descended on Marja's outskirts spitting up clouds of dust, hundreds of U.S. Marines dashed through fields sprouting opium poppies toward the town's mud-walled compounds.

RAPE, TORTURE AND MURDER, BUSH POLICIES TO MAKE AMERICA "SAFE" AN INDICTMENT OF DR. AAFIA'S ABUSERS By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor There were things Americans didn't...

A Washington think tank that bills itself as "independent and nonpartisan" actually "played a key role in selling the escalation of the...

IS THE ENEMY OUR OWN STUPIDITY? By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER, Senior Editor America's recent attack, augmented by top line Afghan army troops,  against the massive...

American forces have begun operations to push back Taliban insurgents in this most important southern province, the birthplace and spiritual home of the Taliban, and a full-scale offensive is expected in coming weeks.

According to reports from Politico, Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed “guarded optimism” yesterday, 26 March, about U.S. progress in Afghanistan but predicted “many tough...

 Demonstrators in London rally at Pakistani and US embassies in solidarity with Aafia Siddiqui on Aafia Siddiqui Day, 28 March 2010 Editors note:  This is...

A PROGRAM FOR REASSESSING AND MOVING FORWARD By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor This week an expose' in Newsweek showed us that our new Afghan police...

More than three decades ago, there were social movements in Afghanistan to improve the standard of living of its people and to provide greater equality for women. There was even a functioning, if imperfect, democracy. But the U.S. government – using subversion, weapons and money – contributed to the halt in progress in these areas of human welfare. Indeed, many gains that had been made were reversed.

THE "SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP" IS DEAD LEARN SOME OF THE "WHY" BEING KEPT FROM YOU By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State...

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has brought most American Special Operations forces under his direct control for the first time, out of concern over continued civilian casualties and disorganization among units in the field.

PRECONCEPTIONS, MISCONEPTIONS AND "NO FEEDBACK LOOP" LEADS TO AMERICAN DISASTER IN AFGHANISTAN By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor I have only recently returned from the region...

CIA drones are killing terrorists -- and civilians -- in Pakistan almost every day. The unmanned aircraft are becoming the weapon of choice in the fight against al-Qaida and its allies. But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable. SPIEGEL ONLINE has investigated Barack Obama's remote-controlled campaign against terrorism.

IS AMERICA THE VICTIM OF A WAR FROM WITHIN? By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor One day you read about a break-in at a Senator's office,...

The Buzz Word of Interfaith Dialogue                                                                                                 By Tarik Jan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz was lately in Davos. According to the implications of his own statement, he...

GORDON DUFF:  Special Forces Trained "Col. Imam" Outspoken Critic of US Policy Wrongly Accused by Time Times Reporter Victimized by "Spoof" By Gordon Duff / STAFF WRITER...

FORMER CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, PAKISTAN, WRITES HIS FRIEND AND COUNTERPART, GENERAL COLIN POWELL By Admiral Iftikhar Ahmed Sirohey (Retd) Former Chairman Joint Chiefs...

"CONSPIRACY THEORY" BECOMES REALITY IN THE NEW CIA/BLACKWATER PARTNERSHIP By Ahmed Quereshi "When these CIA agents killed a couple of Chinese engineers back in 2004,...

CORRUPTION AND MILITARY GAME PLAYING CLOUD WAR OBJECTIVES By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor www.veteranstoday.com March 3, 2010 Sandwiched in a region of gas, oil, copper and coal...

  By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Traveling around Pakistan is a challenge for an American nowadays.  It’s not the highways.  It isn’t even that...

The Afghan human rights commission reported that 28 civilians had been killed so far in NATO's offensive on Marja, AP reports. The commission based its numbers on witness reports. NATO has confirmed at least 16 civilian deaths.

"Honor" killings are often explained as suicides.

The Daily Show's Jon Stewart in a very funny take on CPAC's "Festival of Whites" at TPM. Death panels and Marxist demons aside, Sarah Palin's Grandson gets Socialist medical care, Stephen C. Webster tells it at Raw Story. McCarthyism is back, ugly as ever and even more dangerous this time around by Aemilia Scott at AlterNet. Those stories and more in today's picks.

Dutch Prime Minister Balkenende said he expected Dutch troops to come home from Afghanistan before the end of the year, after efforts to keep them there longer caused the government to collapse, the New York Times reports. The war in Afghanistan has been increasingly unpopular among voters in in many parts of Europe, creating strains between governments trying to please the US and their own people.

The treatment of Iran’s election last June, the depictions of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the [IranMap] alarm over Iran’s nuclear program all parallel the one-sided coverage that the U.S. news media directed toward Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and Iraq’s alleged WMD program before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

    FROM THE PHONY "SURGE" IN IRAQ TO NON-EXISTENT PROJECTS     KILLING AROUND THE WORLD FOR FUN AND PROFIT By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor How do we tell...

It’s becoming apparent to the foreign policy wonks in the Obama administration that the goose in Afghanistan is cooked. Now it’s only a matter of talking themselves into sticking a fork in it. The “great dilemma of this war,” as the New York Times calls it, is “whether to reconcile with the men who sheltered Osama bin Laden and who still have close ties to al-Qaeda.” That option is considered to be “rife with political risk at home” which means the neocons and their pals in the right-wing hate chorus will flay Obama alive if he takes it.

"HOMELAND IN PALESTINE" HAS LITTLE TO DO WITH ZIONISM By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor As an editor and writer for a military, veterans and foreign...

Time to tax financial speculation? Way past time according to Institute for Policy Study's Sarah Anderson writing in Yes Magazine. Privatized health care? Ask rural Chinese how the switch from public to private is working for them, from the LA Times. Sarah Palin is smacking her jaws together over climate change using disinformation that she gets directly from big oil, from Think Progress and more in today's picks.

Posted by Nick Turse at TomDispatch Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of...

Sean Hannity seems to think that the "world" is limited to the eastern US. in Texas if you report a doctor for malpractice you may go down on a felony rap. Canada seems to have become infected with the paranoia of its southern neighbor, and from Inquisition headquarters: The "Christian Manifesto" brands liberals as Nazis. These stories and more in today's picks.

The disturbing story of a US soldier waterboarding his baby girl, A Jim Hightower tribute to Howard Zinn, "Innovation" lives on in the GOP...cut taxes on the rich, and privatize everything, casualty reports from the AfPak drone war come under fire and Bob Herbert reports on the unfair distribution of income and pain in today's picks.

The gang that paid the Dems to turn their collective backs on the harebrained gambling and outright criminal behavior of Wall Street is threatening to stop the money flow from Glen Greenwald at Salon. More on the fat cat lenders getting rich off the backs of college students in a NYT oped. The results of the recent SCOTUS decision to hand over our electoral process to corporations are already unfolding in plutocratic pow wows in a story from Raw Story via AlterNet and more in today's picks.

CIA TRANSLATION OF OSAMA BIN LADEN INTERVIEWED ON 9/11 (ENGLISH VOICE OVER WITH CIA OFFICAL TRANSCRIPT BELOW) By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor The Western media is...

WHAT OUR MILITARY LEADERS ONLY SAY BEHIND CLOSED DOORS By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor Open today's newspaper and get a map of the battle zones...

Are airlines becoming the shopping malls of our skies? Jim Hightower wants to know. Veterans will not be surprised to learn that 8 people died for a scrap of real estate "of no strategic value," many of us have seen that in the past. On the lighter side, more great editorial cartoons from McClatchy in today's picks.

A group of ex-Taliban officials have prepared a "road map" to promote a political settlement between the Taliban and the Karzai government, Gareth Porter reports for Inter Press Service. The first step would be an agreement between Karzai and the Taliban about no killing of doctors and no damage to roads by the Taliban, in return for no night raids and detention by the United States.

The way the Taliban use Pakistan’s tribal areas to launch cross-border attacks inside Afghanistan is perhaps the most contentious issue between Pakistan and the United States. But the problem is hardly contained to Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. Gaping holes in security checks along the border also remain at heavily trafficked crossings, like this one, in Baluchistan Province, where, American officials say, the Taliban’s leaders have taken refuge, out of reach of American and NATO forces.