Afghan president Hamid Karzai's 'mental stability' in doubt!

In an interview with a US cable television network, Peter Galbraith, the former UN deputy head of mission in Afghanistan described Mr. Karzai as "emotional" and "off balance", and called for President Obama to vastly limit his power until he proved himself a reliable partner to the US. "He's prone to tirades, and could act impulsively, Mr. Galbraith told MSNBC.
In a related story, Alfred W. McCoy reported that, in ways that have escaped most observers, the Obama administration is now trapped in an endless cycle of drugs and death in Afghanistan, from which there is neither an easy end nor an obvious exit. 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 village 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 US Marines dashed through fields sprouting opium poppies.
Throughout all the shooting and shouting, American commanders seemed strangely unaware that Marja might qualify as our world's heroin capital, with hundreds of laboratories, regularly processing the local poppy crop into high-grade heroin. After all, the surrounding fields produce at least 40% of the world's illicit opium supply, and much of this harvest is traded in Marja.
For the rest of this important story, please click on
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/146270

US Special Forces tried to cover up their massacres in Khataba!

Before I served as Advisory Team Leader in Vietnam, I was very impressed by the John Wayne Epic: The Green Berets, and I wanted to contribute my own strength to work for the "freedom" of Vietnam's indigenous population. As we all know, movies do not reflect reality, but are designed from the ground up, to persuade some stupid idiot to work for our "evil" government. Well, they are all evil, as far as I am concerned, but ours, especially President Obama, appears to be motivated by a decidedly evil higher power to break new records in the perfidious exploitation of the genuine patriotic sentiments of our brave soldiers.
After a night raid, our Special Forces tried to cover up their crimes, by digging bullets out of their victims' bodies in the aftermath of a botched night raid, then washed the wounds with alcohol before lying to their superiors about what happened. Two pregnant women, a teenage girl, a police officer and his brother were shot on February 12 when US and Afghan special forces stormed their home in Khataba village, just outside of Gardez in eastern Afghanistan. The precise composition of the force has never been made public, but the original claims by NATO point to a cover-up by our American government and our Afghan allies.
Please click on the title of this post to follow "the rest of the story."

Veterans Group pushes Congress to help Unemployed Vets

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America are pressing for Congress to address the staggering rate of unemployment among veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. For me, this is another illuminating experience with de-ja-vu (the illusion of having already experienced something, which is actually being experienced for the first time.). Truly, as one of my Montagnard friends told me only a few weeks after I served as Civil Affairs Officer for the 1/10 Cavalry Squadron, told me when I first arrived in Vietnam: "All wars are the same, and the only things which remain are the scars." Fortunately, our new veterans have a good friend in Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont), the chairman of the Finance Committee, who has introduced a jobs bill for new veterans. When I returned from Vietnam, there was no-one who decided to speak for us, and we were outcasts in our own country.
Another useful development is a new Army school to boost 'mental fitness'. When I first arrived in America, with a raging case of PSDT, I bought a .45 caliber army pistol, and I walked the most crime-ridden part of our city, hoping that someone would attack me, so that I could "blow him" -(or her) away. Fortunately, no-one did.

Is America Yearning for Fascism?

Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, says that we are not ruled by two parties, but by one: "It is the party of money and war, and we have to take our great nation away from those who have hijacked it."
The Democrats are so oblivious to the personal and economic despair sweeping our country that they think offering the unemployed the right to keep their unemployed children on their non -existent health care policies is a step forward.
The longer we appeal to the Democrats, who are merely servants of corporate interests, the more stupid and ineffective we become. Only 25 percent of those polled by a NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll believed that "their" government could be trusted to protect the interests of the American people, and they are right.
We are bound to a party that has betrayed every principle we claim to espouse, from universal health care to an end to our government's permanent war economy, to a concern for the jobs of the working class.
Please read the entire article, by the former war correspondent, Chris Hedges, in TruthDig, 30 March 2010!

The Human Consequences of OUR Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

The consequences of our military adventures are horrendous: Our Veterans Administration now has 508,152 Patients; 243,685 Mental Health Patients, and 143,530 PTSD Patients!
These are the precise statistics, using documents obtained from the Department of Veterans Affairs under the Freedom of Information Act by the Veterans for Common Sense.
Their address is Post Office Box 77304, Washington, DC 20013, phone number (202) 558-4553, with an alternate location at
5434 Burnet Road, Suite B, in Austin, TX 78756, Phone (512) 374-1200

Please visit them on the web!

Why would Israelis Celebrate while Americans were dying?

While Americans were "supposedly" being killed by "evil" Arabs, a Mossad surveillance team made quite a spectacle of themselves: The New York Times reported that a group of five men had set up video cameras aimed at the Twin Towers PRIOR to the attack, and were seen congratulating each other afterwards! Police received several calls from angry New Jersey residents, claiming "middle-eastern" men with a white van were videotaping the disaster with shouts of joy and mockery. Other witnesses saw Israelis jumping for joy in Liberty State Park after the initial impact. It looked as though they knew what was going to happen long before Americans died in the Twin Towers, and the nearby smaller structure. The police and FBI field agents found maps of the city and the same type of box cutters which the same type of box cutters that the hijackers supposedly used, $4700 in cash stuffed into a sock, and foreign passports: With Israelis as "friends", we don't need enemies. Please click on the heading of this post, to get the "Rest of the Story"!

General Petraeus admits that our war in Afghanistan will take years

In a recent Meet the Press interview, General Petraeus admitted that our war in Afghanistan will take years and cost high American casualties. The people of our United States are now evenly divided between those who think we can restore a modicum of stability before getting out, and those who want a rapid exit from that conflict.
Our best option is to keep civilian casualties low, while cautiously inserting our troops ever deeper into Pashtun territory.