ON AIR NOW
Click to Play
Bitcoin Cash: $ USD
News Link •
Global
According to international law experts, the invasion and ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is as illegal as the US presence in Iraq. The United Nations Charter mandates that military force against another country is only justified when used in self-defense or authorized by the UN Security Council.
News Link •
Global
The web is covered in stink today
because of a reporter for the Associated Press, Julie Jacobson, who photographed
the death of a Marine whose legs had just been blown off. The kid was Joshua
Bernard, a Lance Corporal of 21 years. When the photo appeared, Robert Gates,
the Secretary of Defense [sic] furiously tried to get the AP to quash the
photo.
News Link •
Global
The increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
News Link •
Global
A Swedish charity accused American troops Monday of storming through a hospital in central Afghanistan, breaking down doors and tying up staff in a search for militants.
The allegation that soldiers violated the neutrality of a medical facility follows the reported deaths of Afghan civilians in a U.S. airstrike in the country's north last week. An Afghan human rights group said Monday the strike on two hijacked fuel tankers may have killed as many as 70 civilians in Kunduz province.
News Link •
Global
A noose is tightening around the group that calls itself the last armed
resistance to Iran's Islamic republic, but the Kalashnikov-carrying
guerrillas are refusing to lay down their weapons and leave their
camouflaged outposts in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
News Link •
Global
Obama is
an enormous gift to the Empire. Just as he has silenced most of the
single-payer movement, an effort characterized by its superb
scholarship exceeded only by its timidity, Obama has shut down the
antiwar movement, completely in thrall as it is to the Democrat Party
and Identity Politics.
News Link •
Global
A portion of American taxpayer dollars slated for development projects in Afghanistan is alleged to end up in the hands of the Taliban, the GlobalPost reports. The United States Agency for International Development is investigating if its funds are being used by contractors to pay the Taliban for protection – from itself.
News Link •
Global
As Americans are gradually
discovering, the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan is about opposing the
Taliban’s attempt to regain political power, not about capturing or
killing Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda.
News Link •
Global
The U.S. patrol had a tip that Taliban fighters were lying in ambush, and a Marine had his weapon trained on the trees 70 yards away. "If you see anything move from there, light it up," Cpl. Braxton Russell told him.
Thirty seconds later, a salvo of gunfire and RPGs — rocket-propelled grenades — poured out of the grove. "Casualty! We've got a casualty!" someone shouted. A grenade had hit Lance Cpl. Joshua "Bernie" Bernard in the legs.
News Link •
Global
An American aircraft blasted two fuel tankers hijacked by the Taliban in northern Afghanistan on Friday, killing up to 90 people, including insurgents and dozens of civilians who had rushed to the scene to collect fuel, Afghan officials said.
NATO officials initially insisted that there were no civilians in the area when the attack occurred about 2:30 a.m., but alliance chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen later acknowledged some civilians may have died.
News Link •
Global
The White House is facing mounting pressure from lawmakers to work harder to rally flagging public support for the war in Afghanistan.With casualties rising, the administration is struggling to persuade voters that the war can be won or is worth the human and financial costs.
News Link •
Global
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates indicated Thursday that he is open to increasing the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, voicing a shift in his position as the administration ponders a military assessment expected to lead to a formal request for additional forces.
Gates, in a briefing at the Pentagon, also defended the U.S. mission in Afghanistan, rebutting suggestions that it is time to pull out. His remarks came just hours before the Army announced that it will extend the tours of about 3,000 soldiers in Afghanistan for between two weeks and two months amid an intensifying Taliban insurgency.
News Link •
Global
The report exposed that the Taliban takes a percentage of the billions of dollars in aid that goes to large organizations
and their subcontractors for development projects, in exchange for
protection in remote areas controlled by the insurgency.
News Link •
Global
On Sept. 2, 2008, U.S. and Iraqi troops smashed in the doors of Iraqi
journalist Ibrahim Jassam's home, shouting "freeze" and holding back
snarling dogs before they hauled him off into the night in his
underwear.
A year later, neither Jassam and his family nor
global news agency Reuters, which employed him as a freelance TV
cameraman and photographer, have been told exactly why he has been
detained for all this time by U.S. military forces in Iraq.
News Link •
Global
The Taliban has become a much more potent adversary in Afghanistan
by improving its own tactics and finding gaps in the U.S. military
playbook, according to senior American military officials who
acknowledged that the enemy's resurgence this year has taken them by
surprise.
News Link •
Global
The prospect that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal may ask for as many as 45,000 additional American troops in Afghanistan is fueling growing tension within President Barack Obama's administration over the U.S. commitment to the war there.
On Monday, McChrystal sent his assessment of the situation in Afghanistan to the Pentagon, the U.S. Central Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NATO. Although the assessment didn't include any request for more troops, senior military officials said they expect McChrystal later in September to seek between 21,000 and 45,000 more troops. There currently are 62,000 American troops in Afghanistan.
News Link •
Global
With the deaths of 4 U.S. soldiers Tuesday, the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan now has lost more troops this year than in all of 2008, and August is on track to be the deadliest month for American troops there since U.S. operations began 8 years ago.
Just as Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is considering asking for more U.S. troops even as opinion polls show that a majority of Americans think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth the cost.
News Link •
Global
The growing use of private armies not only subjects target populations to savage warfare but makes it easier for the White House to subvert domestic public opinion and wage wars.
News Link •
Global
The situation in Afghanistan is grave, but victory can be achieved with
a change in strategy, the commander of Western forces in the country
said.
No indication whether U.S. Army General
Stanley McChrystal, who commands more than 100,000 U.S. and NATO
troops, would ask for still more reinforcements to carry out his new
strategy.
News Link •
Global
U.S. military authorities in Afghanistan
have terminated a contract with a company that was
producing background profiles of reporters covering a war that's
becoming increasingly unpopular with the American public.
News Link •
Global
Taliban's top two successors kill each other in an argument over who should be the next in line to succeed their dead leader.
News Link •
Global
With the deaths of four U.S. soldiers Tuesday, the U.S.-led NATO coalition in Afghanistan now has lost more troops this year than in all of 2008, and August is on track to be the deadliest month for American troops there since U.S. operations began nearly eight years ago.
The numbers reflect the rising pace of combat in Afghanistan and come at a difficult time, just as Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is considering asking for more U.S. troops even as opinion polls show that a majority of Americans think the war in Afghanistan isn't worth the cost.
News Link •
Global
The International Federation of Journalists complained that news people covering the war in Afghanistan are being monitored by the U.S. military to see if they are sympathetic to the American cause.
News Link •
Global
In fact, this fatalistic view is wrong empirically and morally. Empirically, because war clearly stems less from some hard-wired "instinct" than from mutable cultural and environmental conditions; much can be done, and has been done, to reduce the risks it poses. Morally, because the belief that war will never end helps perpetuate it.
News Link •
Global
The situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating along with U.S. public
support for the war, Washington's top military officer said as he left open the possibility of another increase in troops.
"I think it is serious and it is deteriorating, and I've said that over
the past couple of years -- that the Taliban insurgency has gotten
better, more sophisticated," said Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff.
News Link •
Global
To discern the truth about any conflict requires examination of the whole matter not merely the picture one’s government paints for them.
News Link •
Global
American military commanders with the NATO mission in Afghanistan told President Obama’s chief envoy to the region this weekend that they did not have enough troops to do their job, pushed past their limit by Taliban rebels who operate across borders.
Letters to the Editor •
Global
The theory is: expanded by the American ideal of government, that the "PEOPLE" of a nation can, threw elections, run a country. This ideal is flawed in countries where the government in that country have been destroyed by outsid
Read Letter
News Link •
Global
Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. That was then.
News Link •
Global
A series of explosions targeting government and commercial buildings struck Baghdad today, killing at least 75 people and wounding more than 300, Iraqi police and medical officials said. The blasts in the capital followed a string of attacks in Iraq this month that have claimed hundreds of lives and raised concerns about the ability of Iraqi security forces to keep the lid on violence in advance of an American withdrawal.
