Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2012/2/2/headlines#10

The Obama administration has lifted a ban on military assistance to Uzbekistan in order to preserve a supply line for the war effort in Afghanistan. Uzbekistan has seen reduced U.S. military aid in recent years amid widespread human rights abuses, including torture earlier this month, allowing the United States to provide non-lethal military equipment. On Wednesday, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters the move will help Uzbekistan fight terrorism.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=SmH0PF1IiaI

The U.S. troop withdrawal leaves behind a country embittered by an occupation that's cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars. And as U.S. soldiers return home for Christmas, the mood is far from joyful among veterans struggling to deal with the personal aftermath of the war. With soaring suicide rates, it's still too early to estimate the true cost of the invasion. Our correspondent Liz Wall reports.

Link: http://www.geopoliticalmonitor.com/opinion-ieds-and-americas-afghan-war-4562/

Even though it has spent at least $60 billion to destroy them, the Pentagon is losing the battle to combat the Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), which have accounted for two out of every three U.S. casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Link: http://wsws.org/articles/2011/dec2011/afgh-d08.shtml

In the latest round of conflict between Obama and his top military commanders, the senior US general in Afghanistan is opposing the administration’s plans for the withdrawal of troops from the US-occupied country.

Link: http://oilprice.com/Geo-Politics/International/Furious-at-Latest-U.S.-Attack-Pakistan-Shuts-Down-Resupply-Routes-to-Afghanistan-Permanently.html

NATO recently literally shot itself in the foot, imperiling the resupply of International Assistance Forces (ISAF) in Afghanistan by shooting up two Pakistani border posts in a “hot pursuit’ raid. Given that roughly 100 fuel tanker trucks along with 200 other trucks loaded with NATO supplies cross into Afghanistan each day from Pakistan, Pakistan’s closure of the border has ominous long-term consequences for the logistical resupply of ISAF forces, even as Pentagon officials downplay the issue and scramble for alternative resupply routes.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29847.htm

On November 25, the New York Times reported--on page 12--that six children were killed in one attack in southern Afghanistan on November 23. This news was, as best I can tell, not reported on ABC, CBS, NBC or the PBS NewsHour. There were, on the other hand, several pieces about U.S. soldiers eating Thanksgiving dinners.

Link: http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2011\11\29\story_29-11-2011_pg7_28

KABUL: Supplies for NATO in Afghanistan have been hit by a blockade as 38 tankers out of total 145 have been sent back from Torkham border to Peshawar amid tight security. The blockade has been enforced after a cross-border strike killed 24 troops, but it remains unclear how seriously coalition forces will suffer. There are around 140,000 foreign troops in landlocked Afghanistan waging a 10-year battle against a Taliban-led insurgency who rely on fuel, food and equipment brought in from outside. Nearly half of all cargo bound for foreign troops routes through Pakistan, which closed the border to NATO traffic on Saturday. But the coalition force insists its fight against the Taliban will not be affected.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/08-4

Operation Enduring Freedom – the dreadfully misnamed ten-year US occupation of Afghanistan – has turned into Operation Enduring Misery. Obama is building the biggest embassy in the world in Kabul, an $800 million fortress with 1,000 personnel, protected by a small army of mercenary gunmen. So much for withdrawal plans. But this is just what the US has been doing in Afghanistan. After ten years of war costing at least $450 billion, 1,600 dead and 15,000 seriously wounded soldiers, the US has achieved none of its strategic or political goals.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/10/07

General who led Obama's 'surge' strategy says even now the military does not have the local knowledge to end the conflict. One of America's most celebrated generals has issued a harsh indictment of his country's campaign in Afghanistan on the 10th anniversary of the invasion to topple the Taliban.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/10/04-15

Despite ten years of occupation and untold millions of dollars spent on rebuilding Afghanistan’s broken judicial and criminal justice system, the Afghan courts are “still too weak,” the Washington Post reported on August 12, for the United States to relinquish its control over the Parwan Detention Center on Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. On September 21, the same paper reported that the U.S. military is seeking contractors to significantly increase the capacity of the prison there.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/peopleandpower/2011/09/2011915105947578551.html

A journey across Afghanistan with the US army's medical team. It has been 10 years since the 9/11 attacks, and since the US launched attacks against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Since then thousands of combatants and tens of thousands more civilians have been killed or wounded. A US army medical team travels by helicopter across the country to pick up casualties, often coming under attack themselves.

Link: http://www.alternet.org/world/152146/details_of_secret_pact_emerge%3A_troops_stuck_in_afghanistan_until_2024/

If you thought President Obama was ending the war in Afghanistan, think again. Your children will be fighting it in 2024 if the Pentagon has its way. Maybe you thought we’d get out of Afghanistan this very year, the drawdown date President Obama set as he surged U.S. troops into the country in December 2009; or maybe you thought the Obama administration’s target for withdrawal might be the last day of 2014,

Link: http://www.activistpost.com/2011/08/afghanistan-and-iraq-withdrawal.html

It is strange how right after a group of Taliban fighters were allegedly able to take out a Special Forces Chinook with a shoulder-mounted rocket; support is quickly rallied to justify keeping troops in Afghanistan until “at least” 2024, according to The Daily Telegraph.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail/194456.html

A powerful explosion has rocked a US military base in eastern Afghanistan and reportedly killed at least 27 American soldiers and left dozens wounded. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility for the deadly attack, saying the huge explosion left at least 27 American troops killed and 34 others wounded, a Press TV correspondent reported.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201169142319648253.html

A growing chorus of Democrats and Republicans are pushing to have 15,000 soliders withdrawn soon, rather than 3,000. Nearly 100,000 American troops are in Afghanistan and with only three weeks left before US military forces are scheduled to begin withdrawing from Afghanistan, the debate over the size and pace of that withdrawal has become increasingly intense. On one hand, the Pentagon, backed by prominent neo-conservatives and other hawks, insists that the 18-month-old "surge" of 30,000 US troops has turned the strategic tide against the Taliban.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/23/us-soldier-admits-killing-afghans

An American soldier has pleaded guilty to being part of a "kill team" who deliberately murdered Afghan civilians for sport last year. Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock, 23, told a military court he had helped to kill three unarmed Afghans. "The plan was to kill people, sir," he told an army judge in Fort Lea, near Seattle, after his plea.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/21/us-army-kill-team-afghanistan-posed-pictures-murdered-civilians

Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed.

Link: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2011/03/18/petraeus-outlines-indefinite-afghan-occu

General Petraeus, the top US military commander in Afghanistan, told Congress that the occupation of the Central Asian country would go on indefinitely, amidst reports of sharply increased civilian casualties.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2011/03/2011391229382651.html

The UN report on civilian deaths says the toll increased by 15 per cent compared to last year. A UN spokesman confirmed that the civilian death toll was the highest since the Taliban were ousted in 2001. Civilian deaths in the Afghan conflict have risen in 2010, hitting numbers never before seen since hostilities began in 2001, according to a United Nations report. The UN, in its annual report on the civilian death toll in Afghanistan released on Wednesday, said 2,777 civilians died last year, a 15 per cent increase from 2009. Large numbers of women and children were among the dead, with their numbers being 555 and 1,175 respectively.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/03/08-4

The number of Afghan boys gathering firewood killed by a March 1 U.S./NATO helicopter attack in Kunar Province: Nine. The number of stories about the killing of the nine children on ABC, CBS or NBC morning or evening news shows (as of March 6): Two.

Link: http://www.counterpunch.org/kelly03042011.html

U.S. people, if they do read or hear of it, may be shocked at the apparent unconcern of the crews of two U.S. helicopter gunships, which attacked and killed nine children on a mountainside in Afghanistan's Kumar province, shooting them "one after another" this past Tuesday March 1st. ("The helicopters hovered over us, scanned us and we saw a green flash from the helicopters. Then they flew back high up, and in a second round they hovered over us and started shooting." (NYT 3/2/11)).

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/03/04

Recent polls suggest that while a majority of U.S. people disapprove of the war in Afghanistan, many on grounds of its horrible economic cost, only 3% took the war into account when voting in the 2010 midterm elections. The issue of the economy weighed heavily on voters, but the war and its cost, though clear to them and clearly related to the economy in their thinking, was a far less pressing concern.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27542.htm

The exact language Petraeus used in the closed-door session is not known, and neither is the precise message he meant to convey. But his remarks about the deadly U.S. military operation in Konar province were deemed deeply offensive by some in the room. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private discussions. They said Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, dismissed allegations by Karzai's office and the provincial governor that civilians were killed and said residents had invented stories, or even injured their children, to pin the blame on U.S. forces and force an end to the operation. "I was dizzy. My head was spinning," said one participant, referring to Petraeus's remarks. "This was shocking. Would any father do this to his children? This is really absurd." Petraeus, through a spokesman, declined to comment.

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348915/Tarok-Kolache-Afghan-village-wiped-map-25-tons-coalition-bombs.html

The impact of coalition operations in Afghanistan is often bogged down in statistics and political manoeuvring. But these photos of a devastated village in the Arghandad River Valley show the horror of war in stark reality. Tarok Kolache, a small settlement in Kandahar, has been completely erased from the map after an offensive by the U.S. army. Before and aftermath: The picture on the left shows the village of Tarok Kolache in the Arghandab River Valley. The picture on the right is the same location following allied air strikes, which completely obliterated the village. The war in Afghanistan has nothing to do with bringing democracy, freedom, and a better way of life to the people of Afghanistan, as the corporate media endlessly tells Americans. The war in Afghanistan is about oil pipelines, military industrial banking war profits, and the domination of the Middle East. The people of Afghanistan will never willingly give their country over to America. They will fight the invaders just as any country would. America is doing what it has always done throughout its genocidal 200 year history; the extermination of a population while stealing their resources. America brings to the world a democracy of looting, depleted uranium bombs, torture, and mass death.

Link: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27267.htm

January 15, 2011 "Raw Story" -- An Obama administration official said that nonviolent icon Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would "understand" and "recognize" the need for the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan if he were alive today." Johnson said. Johnson claimed US service members are helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that Dr. King spoke out in favor of acts of kindness. 500 lb. depleted uranium acts of kindness, Abu Ghraib tortur prison acts of kindness, raping, mass murdering, looting acts of kindness. Oh yea, Martin Luther King, Jr. would have approved...

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/10-7

The Obama administration is holding the door open to having combat troops in Afghanistan beyond 2014, undercutting a promise made by the Vice President. Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Afghanistan on Monday to meet with President Hamid Karzai. He also met with Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in the conflict, and plans to visit U.S. troops and an Afghan Army training center.

Link: http://www.opinion-maker.org/2011/01/obamas-reign-of-terror-in-afghanistan/

2010 was the bloodiest year of the now nine-year conflict in Afghanistan and the tribal border regions of Pakistan. Under the command of General David Petraeus, a massively expanded US and NATO force is waging a campaign of extermination against various ethnic Pashtun and Taliban-linked insurgent movements that have not accepted the foreign invasion of their country.

Link: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Issues/Budget-Impact/2010/12/27/US-Cant-Account-for-Billions-Spent-in-Afghanistan.aspx

KANDAHAR CITY -- In its bid to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s teeming population, the United States has spent more than $55 billion to rebuild and bolster the war-ravaged country. That money was meant to cover everything from the construction of government buildings and economic development projects to the salaries of U.S. government employees working closely with Afghans. Yet no one can say with any authority or precision how that money was spent and who profited from it.

Link: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=53900

The Barack Obama administration's claim of "progress" in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/17-10

The Barack Obama administration's claim of "progress" in its war strategy is based on the military seizure of three rural districts outside Kandahar City in October. But those tactical gains have come at the price of further exacerbating the basic U.S. strategic weakness in Afghanistan - the antagonism toward the foreign presence shared throughout the Pashtun south.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2010/12/2010121603245143305.html

As Barack Obama, the US president, prepares to release a review of military strategy in Afghanistan, two classified US intelligence reports on the region have offered a pessimistic view of the chances of success. The intelligence assessments, the New York Times newspaper reported on Wednesday, would seem at odds with claims from the defence department and White officials that US and NATO troops are making progress against the Taliban.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/07-0

You have to wonder what it might take to get the man in the White House to acknowledge just how absurd the current U.S. military effort in Afghanistan has become. Would the president of Afghanistan himself telling us to start getting our troops out do it? Nah. How about the leader of the last country to send its army there telling us "Victory is impossible in Afghanistan"? Nope. Finding out that some of the guards who protect NATO bases were Taliban -- but the top Taliban guy we'd been negotiating with actually wasn't? Neither. A Hollywood agent might push this story as farce. But it's real life and that qualifies it as tragedy.

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20360

WikiLeaks has been closed down world-wide and its heroic founder Julian Assange is facing arrest. Yet the WikiLeaks saga obscures an even more appalling reality that Mainstream media, politicians and academics are remorselessly lying about past and present genocidal realities from the Iraqi, Palestinjan, Tamil and Afghan Genocides to the worsening Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust and looming Climate Genocide that is set to kill 10 billion people this century.

Link: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20353

The first U.S. soldier court-martialed in the prosecution of 12 infantrymen accused of terrorizing unarmed Afghan civilians pleaded guilty on Wednesday to assault and other charges and agreed to testify against his co-defendants. Staff Sergeant Robert Stevens, 25, an Army medic from Portland, Oregon, admitted to opening fire on two Afghan farmers for no apparent reason. He and other troops were acting on orders from a squad leader during a patrol in March.

Link: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m72234&hd=&size=1&l=e

Nine years, 50 days. We've now been stationed in Afghanistan for just as long as the Soviets in the '70s and '80s. But where Russia eventually recognized the futility of the situation, the US is fresh off an injection of 30,000 troops and a projected withdrawal date of 2018.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/programmes/2010/11/2010112210943134542.html

A look at the doomed military adventure dubbed the 'Soviet Vietnam" and its aftermath. Watch part two. More than 600,000 troops participated in the Soviet Union's decade-long war in Afghanistan, the USSR's largest military operation since the Second World War.

Link: http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2010/11/19/pentagon-blows-up-thousands-of-homes-in-afghanistan/

Borrowing a page from its infamous “pacification” effort in South Vietnam, where peasant villages were napalmed and burned to the ground to “save them from the communists,” the Obama-ordered surge in Afghanistan has been secretly blowing up thousands of homes and leveling portions of the Afghan countryside.

Link: http://www.a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2010/11/04/years-of-deceit-us-openly-accepts-bin-la

Conservative commentator, former Marine Colonel Bob Pappas has been saying for years that bin Laden died at Tora Bora and that Senator Kerry’s claim that bin Laden escaped with Bush help was a lie. Now we know that Pappas was correct. The embarrassment of having Secretary of State Clinton talk about bin Laden in Pakistan was horrific. He has been dead since December 13, 2001 and now, finally, everyone, Obama, McChrystal, Cheney, everyone who isn’t nuts is finally saying what they have known for years.

Link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hmuDhk6gDGOjUtRZAT866kfUXV8g?docId=CNG.a84306ebdc147800f85911b77a52d16b.1e1

The United States is bolstering its presence in Afghanistan with a 500 million dollar expansion of its Kabul embassy and the construction of two consulates, it announced Wednesday. Washington's Kabul embassy is already its biggest in the world, with about 1,100 employees, projected to rise to 1,200 by the end of the year, officials said.

Link: http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=13629

THE Taliban have ''overwhelmed'' foreign troops and cannot be defeated by military means, one of Australia's top combat soldiers has warned. Brigadier Mark Smethurst says securing Afghanistan could take decades, but success is uncertain without a fundamental change in strategy.