Thousands of U.S. Marines poured from helicopters and armored
vehicles into Taliban-controlled villages in southern Afghanistan on
Thursday in the first major operation under President Barack Obama's
strategy to stabilize the country.
The offensive was launched shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday local time
(4:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday, 2030 GMT Wednesday) in Helmand province, a
Taliban stronghold and the world's largest opium poppy-producing area.
The goal is to clear insurgents from the hotly contested region before
the nation's Aug. 20 presidential election.
One day after U.S. troops officially vacated Iraqi cities, handing
control over security to the Iraqis themselves for the first time since
2003, America’s “other war” has been ramped up significantly.
According to breaking media reports, some 4,000 Marines and 650
Afghan troops are involved in a massive operation, launched early
Thursday morning, to reclaim the Helmand River Valley from Taliban
control.
The BBC News website cites “officers on the ground” who say this is the “largest Marine offensive since Vietnam.”
The Washington Post reports
that U.S. forces descended on Helmand province in helicopters and
armored convoys. The sparsely-populated, arid area lost its government
services after the Taliban evicted government officials and police
officers.
The operation, the Post reports, represents a major tactical change for forces in Afghanistan:
There is no
area in which Republicans have further strayed from our traditions
than in foreign affairs.
Generations
of conservatives followed the great advice of our Founding Fathers
and pursued a restrained foreign policy that rebuffed entangling
alliances and advised America, in the words of John Quincy Adams,
not to "go abroad looking for dragons to slay."
Sen. Robert
Taft, the stalwart of the Old Right, urged America to stay out of
NATO. Dwight Eisenhower was elected on a platform promising to get
us out of the conflict in Korea. Richard Nixon promised to end the
war in Vietnam.
National security adviser James L. Jones told U.S. military commanders
here last week that the Obama administration wants to hold troop levels
here flat for now, and focus instead on carrying out the previously
approved strategy of increased economic development, improved
governance and participation by the Afghan military and civilians in
the conflict.
The Iraqi government stumbled once again in its frequently
delayed effort to award development rights to its most valuable oil
fields. In a public auction it largely failed to attract the lucrative
offers it sought from dozens of international oil companies invited to
the bidding.
(This BBC video explains how the US Military has moved from inside the cities to just outside the cities out of sight where they'll be waiting for..... The media is being scrubed of the many new large US military bases around the country. If there is any sort of an uprising against the 'USA approved' government there will be intervention... immediately. Just as with Vietnam, this war will continue until it is no longer funded.)
Despite the pullback from cities and towns, due to be completed on Tuesday, US troops will still be embedded with Iraqi forces. ...while the pullback is significant, the actual withdrawal of US combat troops in 2010 will pose a greater challenge.(They aren't really leaving,... the troops are now populating the new US military bases instead of the cities)
Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities Tuesday
after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining
step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country. A countdown
clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the midnight deadline
passed for U.S. combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside
cities.
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has taken to calling the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq’s
cities a “great victory,” a repulsion of foreign
occupiers he compares to the rebellion against British troops in 1920.
The United States has sent a shipment of weapons and ammunition to the
government of Somalia, according to a U.S. official who said the move
signals the Obama administration's desire to thwart a takeover of the
Horn of Africa nation by Islamist rebels with alleged ties to al-Qaeda.
An airstrike believed to have been carried out by a United States drone killed at least 60 people at a funeral for a Taliban fighter in South Waziristan on Tuesday, residents of the area and local news reports said.
South Korea -- An American destroyer tailed a North Korean ship Tuesday as it sailed along China's coast, U.S. officials said, amid concerns the vessel is carrying illicit arms destined for Myanmar.
The sailing sets up the first test of a new U.N. Security Council resolution that authorizes member states to inspect North Korean vessels suspected of carrying banned weapons or materials. The sanctions are punishment for an underground nuclear test the North carried out last month in defiance of past resolutions.
A confidential record of a meeting between President Bush and Tony
Blair before the invasion of Iraq, outlining their intention to go to
war without a second United Nations resolution, will be an explosive
issue for the official inquiry into the UK’s role in toppling Saddam
Hussein.
The revelation that the former prime minister - who led Britain to war
in March 2003 - had intervened will fuel the anger of MPs, peers,
military leaders and former civil servants, who were appalled by
Brown's decision last week to order the investigation to be conducted
behind closed doors.
North Korea has warned it will conduct a military firing exercise off its eastern city of Wonsan, Japan's Coast Guard said on Monday, in a possible indication of a missile test. North Korea, in an e-mail, said the exercise would take place between June 25 and July 10 within a 110-km (68 mile) range from Wonsan, Japan Coast Guard spokesman Shinya Suzuki said.
North Koreans participate in celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of North Korea in Pyongyang in this September 9, 2008 file photo. (REUTERS/Kyodo/Files) The warning comes after the Coast Guard received two warnings earlier this month for ships to stay away from waters in a smaller area.
The top U.S. general in Afghanistan will order U.S.
and NATO forces to break away from fights with militants hiding in
Afghan houses so the battles do not kill civilians. Civilian casualties are a huge source of friction between Afghan
President Hamid Karzai and the United States. The U.N. has reported
that U.S., NATO and Afghan forces killed 829 civilians in the Afghan
war last year.
Some pilots have been sent to
Afghanistan under duress or as punishment for bucking their superiors.
Such
complaints, so far mostly arising from the DEA's Aviation Division,
could complicate the Obama administration's efforts to send dozens of
additional DEA agents to Afghanistan as part of a civilian and military
personnel "surge" that aims to stabilize the country.
"The inability to discern the presence of civilians and assess the
potential collateral damage of those strikes is inconsistent with the
US government's objective of providing security and safety for the
Afghan people," the report prepared by US Central Command said.
Hitler's sexual dysfunction was
responsible for war and his persecution of the Jews, according to Kurt
Kreuger M.D. who claims he was Hitler's psychiatrist from 1919 to 1934.
I stumbled on his 1941 book, "I was Hitler's Doctor" not
suspecting he was a psychiatrist. I wasn't prepared for the intimate
revelations, including one that Hitler hated Jews because a grocer
named Sachs had "desecrated" his mother.
Professor Robert Waite
says the book is a hoax. There was no Jewish grocer in Leonding and
Kreuger couldn't possibly have remembered pages of intimate
conversations verbatim. ("The Psychopathic God," p. 434)
I
don't know about the grocer but it seems to me that after treating a
very special patient for 15 years, a gifted man like Kreuger could
reproduce his words. Hitler's problem with women is widely known. Also,
the Introduction was written by Ot
Navy Positions Destroyer For Possible Intercept of North Korean Ship Suspected of Proliferating Missiles, Nukes
The U.S. military is preparing for a possible intercept of a North Korean flagged ship suspected of proliferating weapons
material in violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution passed last Friday, FOX News has learned.
The
USS John McCain, a Navy destroyer, is positioning itself in case it
gets orders to intercept the ship Kang Nam as soon as it leaves the
vicinity off the coast of China, according to a senior U.S. defense
official. The order to inderdict has not been given yet, but the ship
is moving into the area.
"Permission has not been requested. Nor is it clear it will be," a military source told
FOX News. "This is a very delicate situation and no one is interested in precipitating a confrontation."
The
ship left a port in North Korea Wednesday and appears to be heading
toward Singapore, according to a seni
North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.
The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.
Intelligence analysts do not believe the device would be capable of hitting Hawaii's main islands, which are 4,500 miles from North Korea.
Details of the launch came from the Japan's best-selling newspaper, Yomiuri Shimbun.
1 person died in an initial double missile strike on the compound.
When people rushed to the scene to rescue the wounded, 2 more
missiles struck. 8 more people were killed in the second strike,
the residents said. The intelligence official said 4 additional
people had died.
Cindy Sheehan came to the Valley of the sun to let John McWar and the peace community know that she is not going away and we will not stop demanding an end to this illegal occupation!
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com
Support Cindy Sheehan and
Defense Department officials are debating whether to ignore an
earlier promise and squelch the release of an investigation into a U.S.
airstrike last month, out of fear that its findings would further
enrage the Afghan public, Pentagon officials told McClatchy.
The military promised to release the report shortly after the May 4 air
attack, which killed dozens of Afghans, and the Pentagon reiterated
that last week. U.S. officials also said they'd release a video that
military officials said shows Taliban fighters attacking Afghan and
U.S. forces and then running into a building. Shortly afterward, a U.S.
aircraft dropped a bomb that destroyed the building.
"I understand that even paper and crayons are treated as a security
hazard," he told Gazans at a local United Nations office. "I sought an
explanation of this when I met with Israeli officials and I received
none, because there is no explanation."
The NYC Police Department (NYPD) in unison with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) carried out a massive almost-covert anti-nuclear exercise codenamed 'New York,
Seoul, South Korea - North Korea pledged Saturday to "weaponize" its plutonium by enriching uranium, just a day after the United Nations Security Council imposed tougher sanctions on the communist state following last month's second nuclear test. Video:
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