Link: http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9641

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 embarassment 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.

However, since we lost a couple of hundred of our top special operations forces hunting for bin Laden after we knew he was dead, is someone going to answer for this with some jail time? Since we spent 200 million dollars on "special ops" looking for someone we knew was dead, who is going to jail for that? Since Bush, Rumsfeld and Cheney continually talked about a man they knew was dead, now known to be for reasons of POLITICAL nature, who is going to jail for that? Why were tapes brought out, now known to be forged, as legitimate intelligence to sway the disputed 2004 election in the US? This is a criminal act if there ever was one.

In 66 pages, General Stanley McChrystal never mentions Osama bin Laden. Everything is "Mullah Omar" now. In his talk at West Point, President Obama never mentioned Osama bin Laden. Col. Pappas makes it clear, Vice President Cheney let it "out of the bag" long ago. Bin Laden was killed by American troops many many years ago.

Link: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/12/10-3

President Obama accepted the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize while delivering -- to the world as it is -- a pro-war speech. The context instantly turned the speech's insights into flackery for more war. -- Eloquence in Oslo cannot change the realities of war. - As President Obama neared the close of his Nobel address, he called for "the continued expansion of our moral imagination." Yet his speech was tightly circumscribed by the policies that his oratory labored to justify. -- Lofty rationales easily tell us that warfare is striving for the noble goal of peace. But the rationales scarcely intersect with actual war. The oratory sugarcoats the poisons, helping to kill hope in the name of it. PressTV: Anger in Pakistan over Obama peace prize. Another World Is Possible: The Anti-Empire Report: Yeswecanistan. AntiWar: Peace Doesn’t Work, Obama Informs Nobel Committee Accepts Peace Prize by Defending Merits of War. Peace Doesn’t Work ??? What Obama means is that you get to laying your dirty hands on so much more when you attack some country militarily...This obviously "works" much better. CLG / Rechtenwald: The Obama Effect: The Demise of the Democratic Party and a Gift to the Country: The decision to escalate Afghanistan War should put the final nail in the coffin of "change" and "hope" that Democrats and others crawled into when they supported Obama. The evidence that Obama is every bit the representative of the corporate oligarchy and no less a corporate shill than the rest has been mounting for nearly a year-or well before the election for the cognoscenti. Only fanatics could have heard Obama's speech on Afghanistan and failed to hear the resonances of Bush. InTheNews: Palin welcomes Obama 'just war' Nobel speech.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20091208/pl_afp/usaviationmilitarydrones_20091208212912

The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the "Beast of Kandahar," a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy. The RQ-170 Sentinel is being developed by Lockheed Martin and is designed "to provide reconnaissance and surveillance support to forward deployed combat forces," the air force said in a brief statement. The "RQ" prefix for the aircraft indicates an unarmed drone, unlike the "MQ" designation used for Predator and Reaper aircraft equipped with missiles and precision-guided bombs. Aviation experts dubbed the drone the "Beast of Kandahar" after photographs emerged earlier this year showing the mysterious aircraft in southern Afghanistan in 2007. The image suggested a drone with a radar-evading stealth-like design, resembling a smaller version of a B-2 bomber. Aviation Week: U.S. Air Force Reveals Operational Stealth UAV.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/12/200912107543691306.html

Barack Obama, the US president, has arrived in Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy". [???] Obama has been seen as a controversial nominee for the award because of the United States' engagement in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan murder of thousands of people in Iraq & Afghanistan. AntiWar: The Nobel Prize for Irony -Even Obama Understands He Doesn't Deserve this Award: When he accepts the prize tomorrow, it will have come just nine days after he announced a massive escalation of the Afghan War. The irony of this was not lost on anybody, even the decidedly hawkish president. “The president understands and again will also recognize that he doesn’t belong in the same discussion as Mandela and Mother Teresa,” noted his spokesman Robert Gibbs. He will also talk about his 30,000-man escalation and its incongruous nature with a supposed Nobel laureate. NYT: Wartime US President Picks Up His Peace Prize. Aftenposten: Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world: I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120904133.html?hpid=politics

President Obama departed Wednesday night for this Scandinavian city, where he will accept the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize just over a week after announcing plans to deploy 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Obama is to receive the award Thursday during a solemn ceremony at Oslo City Hall. Afterward, aides said, the president will deliver a speech that confronts the seeming paradox of receiving the prestigious peace prize while serving as a war president.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-AaZTqIHp8&feature=sub

Kucinich has slapped Obama with a dueling glove on the issue of Afghanistan. Dandelion Salad: Dennis Kucinich Circulating Privileged Resolutions to End Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. + Kucinich: Are we in Afghanistan to fight or to fund the Taliban?

Link: http://www.examiner.com/examiner/x-30980-Afghanistan-Headlines-Examiner~y2009m12d9-Afghanistan-snapshots--war-prep-protest-and-civilian-casualties-slideshow

This weeks snapshots include the aftermath of accidental civilian casualties inflicted by the United States. Yesterday hundreds of Afghans held anti-US demonstrations against a US-led attack which took the lives of 15 non-combatants. Civilians were killed after US soldiers stormed a house on the outskirts of the provincial capital Mehtar Lam of the eastern province of Laghman, according to Press TV. Other photos include images of war planning, U.S. soldiers and young Afghan children hanging out, and other faces and scenes of Afghanistan.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=113154&sectionid=351020403

More than a dozen people have been killed in a nighttime raid by US forces on a civilian house in Afghanistan's eastern province of Laghman, witnesses say. The attack took place on Monday night when US soldiers stormed a house at Armal locality in the provincial capital Mehtar Lam, witnesses told Press TV correspondent. At least 12 people, among them a woman, were killed in the attack. A local official confirmed the incident, but failed to identify the victims, adding it was not immediately known why they were attacked and killed. The US military has not commented on the incident. PressTV: US drone strike kills three in N Waziristan. + Afghans protest after civilian deaths in US-led raid.

Link: http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/latest-news/another-mcgovern-takes-war

"What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan? Why do we need 100,000 American troops to go after less than 100 members of Al Qaeda that might be left in Afghanistan. It makes no sense to me." – Rep. Jim McGovern. AntiWar: Who Wants More War? + Best Performance in a Farce. Eric Margolis: President Barack Obama has missed two sterling opportunities to wind down the ugly Afghan morass he inherited from George W. Bush.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/17/afghanistan.terrorism11

The Taliban tried three times to open negotiations for to hand him over, but Bush refused each time. He wanted to bomb people no matter what. And so, it seems, does Obama... NWO Observer: The Great Game: U.S., NATO War In Afghanistan: Fifty or more countries in a single war theater. + Making the TransAfghanistan Pipeline Safe for Democracy: I don’t pretend to know why President Obama is so determined to escalate the war in Afghanistan. The only thing I know for certain is that the troops will not be back home until after 2014. That is when the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline is scheduled to be operational.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lqD6-fK2leE

Link: http://alethonews.wordpress.com/2009/12/05/study-elite-papers-marginalize-public-opposition-to-war/

FAIR’s study looked at all opinion columns in the New York Times and the Washington Post during the first 10 months of 2009 that addressed what the U.S. should do in the Afghanistan War. Columns were counted as antiwar if they called for withdrawal or clearly called into question the need or rationale for the war. Columns that supported continuing the war were counted as pro-war; these were divided into those that endorsed the idea of escalating the war and those that advocated some sort of alternative strategy, including reducing the number of troops. Both newspapers marginalized antiwar opinion to different degrees. Of the New York Times’ 43 columns on the Afghanistan War, 36 supported the war and only seven opposed it—five times as many columns to war supporters as to opponents. Of the paper’s pro-war columns, 14 favored some form of escalation, while 22 argued for pursuing the war differently.

Link: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6945254.ece

In public he was the lean and ruthless face of American military outsourcing in Iraq. Erik Prince, as founder of the Blackwater security company, packed a mobile phone on one hip and a handgun on the other as he flew in and out of the world’s troublespots co-ordinating protection teams for American VIPs — and handling the backlash when his employees were accused of shooting dead 17 Iraqi civilians at a Baghdad crossroads in 2007. In private, he was a CIA operative, with his own file as a “vetted asset” at the agency’s headquarters, and a mission to build “a unilateral, unattributable capability” to hunt down and kill al-Qaeda militants for the US Government wherever they could be found.

Link: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/12/did-us-fail-to-provide-evidence-of-bin.html

Evidence which has come out over the last couple of years makes it clear that top Bush administration officials knew that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction and knew that Saddam had no connection with 9/11. It is now reasonably obvious that the Bush administration was looking for an excuse to oust Saddam, and - in the words of the Downing Street Memo - “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy”. History Commons: CIA’s Bin Laden Unit Asks NSA for Full Transcripts of Al-Qaeda Communications, NSA Refuses.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6ibnZJAE1E

On Monday, Riz spoke with Peter Galbraith, the former UN diplomat who was just fired from his post in the UN mission in Afghanistan. Galbraith said he could not be silent as he watched the UN downplay the fraud that took place in the Afghan elections August 20. Now the former U.S. ambassadors accusations of a UN cover up have raised questions over the state of political reconstruction in Afghanistan, and the UNs agenda in the country.

Link: http://features.csmonitor.com/economyrebuild/2009/12/03/what-obamas-afghan-war-plan-will-cost-you/

A pretty penny. President Obama said Tuesday night it would cost $30 billion this fiscal year — or about $1 million per soldier — to send 30,000 additional troops there. That’s a low estimate, budget experts say, but let’s run with it for the moment. An extra $30 billion in Afghanistan means that in 2010 alone, US military spending in Afghanistan will equal nearly half of total spending on the war since 2001, according to Travis Sharp, military policy analyst with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. The troop increase will cost $2.5 billion per month, $82 million per day, $3.4 million per hour, $57,000 per minute, and $951 per second. Foreign Policy: The hidden costs of the Afghan escalation. PTSD Combat: Afghanistan, Iraq Veteran Army Suicide Rate Continues to Climb; PTSD Timeline Update.

Link: http://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2009/12/04/rachel-maddow-erik-prince-of-blackwater-a-cia-spy-tycoon-contractor-soldier-spy-by-adam-ciralsky/

"Erik Prince, recently outed as a participant in a C.I.A. assassination program, has gained notoriety as head of the military-contracting juggernaut Blackwater, a company dogged by a grand-jury investigation, bribery accusations, and the voluntary-manslaughter trial of five ex-employees, set for next month. Lashing back at his critics, the wealthy former navy seal takes the author inside his operation in the U.S. and Afghanistan, revealing the role he’s been playing in America’s war on terror." Blackwater is in this line of work too: Several killed in Pakistan blast (BBC)

Link: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-469983/Britain-protecting-biggest-heroin-crop-time.html#ixzz0YambevQE

The key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan. But do these answers stand up to close analysis? In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not? The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium. The People's Voice: Afghan drug trafficking brings US $50 BILLION a year.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112821&sectionid=3510203

Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich has severely reprimanded US President Barack Obama for sending additional troops to Afghanistan. Kucinich said in a statement on Thursday that extending the Afghan war would destabilize the United States at home. "We are deeply in debt. Our GDP is down. Our manufacturing is down. Our savings are down. The value of the dollar is down. Our trade deficit is up. Business failures are up. Bankruptcies are up," his statement read. LA Times: Obama's folly: Rather than trying to salvage Bush's policy in Afghanistan, the president should show real courage and just pull the plug. WSWS: Obama’s speech on Afghanistan: A compendium of lies. Empire Burlesque: Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power. Online Journal: Instead of disengaging from Afghanistan, Obama escalates war.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/04/world/asia/04drones.html?_r=2&ref=world

Two weeks ago in Pakistan, Central Intelligence Agency sharpshooters assassins killed eight people suspected of being "militants" of the Taliban and "Al Qaeda", and wounded two others in a compound that was said to be used for "terrorist" training. Then, the job hit in North Waziristan done, the C.I.A. officers could head home from the agency’s Langley, Va., headquarters, facing only the hazards of the area’s famously snarled suburban traffic. PressTV: Obama to expand [drone strikes] assassinations in Pakistan. Uruknet: Turbulent Pakistan presents a conundrum for Barack Obama: Anti-US feeling running high as CIA drones take a civilian toll.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2i0YhrPTUDs

What is going to happen to all those Afghanistan soldiers being trained and armed by the US? The endless catastrophes of idiot imperialism. A video from Freedomain Radio.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2009/12/200912214406261763.html

[PHOTO: A mother and her two children, killed by the US.] Senior US government and military officials have appeared before the Senate armed services committee to try to sell President Barack Obama's new military strategy for Afghanistan to Congress. Jim Hightower: Obama's War: Wait, wait, wait — hold it right there. Cut the music, slow the rush, and let's all ponder what Barack Obama, Roberts Gates, Stanley McChrystal and Co. are getting us into ... and whether we really want to go there. After all, just because the White House and the Pentagon brass are waving the flag and insisting that a major escalation of America's military mission in Afghanistan is a "necessity" doesn't mean it is ... or that We the People must accept it. Dandelion Salad: This Is Absolutely Insane! Michael Moore Responds To President Obama’s Afghanistan Speech -Video. AntiWar: UN welcomes US plan for Afghanistan buildup. -UN officials apparently are selling them too... Another World Is Possible / AntiWar: Obama’s War Speech: An Unconvincing Flop. Online Journal: Obama’s reignites “war on terrorism” with massive Afghanistan surge: Clear-eyed observers warned, since his ascension to power years ago, that Obama has been a lifelong corporate “centrist” and accommodationist who will change nothing except for the style with which destruction is delivered. In fact, the manipulative Obama and his unsavory administration (of unsavory elites) has deepened every crisis, from the world war to the rape of the world economy. Christopher Bollyn: Why Afghanistan? Obama's December 1 speech at West Point about the war in Afghanistan presented a "false reading of history" about 9-11. The president's speech on Afghanistan featured a repetition of the fundamental lies about who is really responsible for the terror attacks of 9-11. The 2009 scientific paper on the discovery of super-thermite in the dust of the World Trade Center by Dr. Steven E. Jones has exposed these claims to be fabrications and revealed to the world that the Twin Towers were pulverized using an extremely sophisticated and powerful nano-composite explosive. It should be noted that President Obama and his senior staff are fully aware that the U.S. rationale for the invasion of Afghanistan is based on a pack of lies. History will not judge them lightly for such deceit. Malalai Joya: A TROOP SURGE CAN ONLY MAGNIFY THE CRIME AGAINST AFGHANISTAN [November 30, 2009].

Link: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/president-obamas-secret-100-al-qaeda-now-afghanistan/story?id=9227861

As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country. Apart from CIA's own database of 100, there probably isn't even a single "al Qaeda" there at all.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112689&sectionid=351020403

War criminal Anders Fogh Rasmussen says the alliance will send at least 5,000 more troops to fight "militancy" in Afghanistan. On Wednesday, Rasmussen told reporters in Brussels that the NATO member states were ready to throw their support behind US President Barack Obama's new Afghan "strategy".

Link: http://marcovilla.instablogs.com/entry/america-has-killed-288000-muslims/

In the last 30 years, U.S. foreign policy has directly killed at least 288,000 Muslims. And that figure is calculated if one deems the number of Iraqis killed by the U.S. war and occupation to be no more than 100,000. The figure is probably higher than that as calculated by many reputable sources. So the 288,000 figure is probably an underestimate as reported by Harvard professor Stephen Walt: I have deliberately selected "low-end" estimates for Muslim fatalities, so these figures present the "best case" for the United States. Even so, the United States has killed nearly 30 Muslims for every American lost. The real ratio is probably much higher, and a reasonable upper bound for Muslim fatalities (based mostly on higher estimates of "excess deaths" in Iraq due to the sanctions regime and the post-2003 occupation) is well over one million, equivalent to over 100 Muslim fatalities for every American lost.

Link: http://www.democracynow.org/2009/12/2/rep_kucinich_on_afghanistan_war_were

Rep. Kucinich on Afghanistan War: “We’re Acting Like a Latter Day Version of the Roman Empire”. As President Obama unveils his plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan, we speak with Ohio Congressmember Dennis Kucinich. “The United States is going deeper and deeper into debt,” says Kucinich. “We have money for Wall Street and money for war but we don’t have money for work…for healthcare. We have to start asking ourselves, ‘Why is it that war is a priority but the basic needs of people in this country are not?’”

Link: http://eclipptv.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=8661

In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses—a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world.

Link: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/2009/12/20091221735954248.html

The US is to deploy an extra 30,000 troops to the war in Afghanistan, Barack Obama has said unveiling his plans for turning around the eight-year long war in the country and pave the way for a US pull-out. In a speech to the US military academy in West Point on Tuesday, the US president set out what he said was a new strategy to bring the war to a "successful conclusion" and reverse the momentum of Taliban gains. The deployment, he said, was in the "vital national interest" of the US, and would create a situation allowing the US to start withdrawing its troops in mid-2011. PressTV: US to increase troops in Afghanistan by 40%. Marco Villa: Obama's Outreach to Muslims While Dropping Bombs. AntiWar: Obama Sells Escalation With Vague Pullout Promise.

Link: http://americansjourney.blogspot.com/2009/12/rush-limbaugh-admits-he-believes-osama.html

I'm almost embarrassed to admit listening to the Rush Limbaugh show because the propagandistic nature of it is so obvious to me. Rush is a divider helping maintain the Demopublican vs. Republicrat paradigm that is keeping the American public frustratingly paralyzed- but some sick curiosity within me made me listen to his drivel anyway. Today - on an AM station here in Charlottesville, Virginia at 13:29 Rush said he believes bin Laden is dead - killed at Tora Bora. ...so what is the mission in Afghanistan? I've stated in the past that Osama bin Laden has been dead since 2001. Not too long ago people like myself were laughed at for making such assertions based on the research done by David Ray Griffin in his book Osama bin Laden Dead or Alive? So - what is the mission in AFPAKistan? If bin Laden is indeed dead - we have a 'disconnect' - a disconnect with reality. Unless the mission has more to do with Opium and a purported pipeline. Once one takes into consideration more covert motives, the exercise in futility, the butcher shop that is Afghanistan, begins to take shape. And it doesn't seem to have anything to do with capturing a dead guy. The People's Voice: Osama Bin Laden Believed Dead By Pak Intel.

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/27/AR2009112703438.html

Obama this evening: "...I have prohibited torture..." Saturday news report: "Two Afghan teenagers held in U.S. detention north of Kabul this year said they were beaten by American guards, photographed naked, deprived of sleep..."

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112562&sectionid=351020403

As the US public support for the Afghan war is fading away, President Barack Obama has briefed world leaders on his new strategy for the eight-year conflict. "The commander in chief has issued the orders," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Monday. His orders to US military commanders came before making a major speech to the American people at the US Military Academy at West Point on Tuesday. [Comment by Left-I-on-the-News:] Obama's "decision" President Obama and the media want the American people to think that Obama has been agonizing over the Afghanistan "decision," considering things carefully. No doubt there are some details that were in question. But a feature on CNN today put the lie to the whole story - troops in Afghanistan have already been working overtime, preparing huge new expansions of the bases and other infrastructure necessary to support the increase in troops. The "agony" of the decision was just for the suckers in the cheap seats. Mainly the liberals still harboring illusions in Obama, and maybe the Nobel Prize Committee who could still revoke his "Peace" prize before they actually hand it to him. Salon: Obama's exceedingly familiar justifications for escalation.

Link: http://news.antiwar.com/2009/11/30/us-looks-to-bypass-karzai-in-running-afghanistan/

Holbrooke Advocates 'High Representative' Initiative. In a move being forwarded primarily by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, the United States is seeking to have an international “high representative” appointed to control day-to-day operations of the Afghan government.

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY4iHNI99Nk&feature=player_embedded#

Kucinich cuts through the bullshit once again on Fox: "The fight isn't in Afghanistan, it's right here in our own country."

Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/an-open-letter-to-preside_b_373457.html

“Mr. President, with just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics.” Do you really want to be the new "war president"? If you go to West Point tomorrow night (Tuesday, 8pm) and announce that you are increasing, rather than withdrawing, the troops in Afghanistan, you are the new war president. Pure and simple. And with that you will do the worst possible thing you could do -- destroy the hopes and dreams so many millions have placed in you. With just one speech tomorrow night you will turn a multitude of young people who were the backbone of your campaign into disillusioned cynics. You will teach them what they've always heard is true -- that all politicians are alike. I simply can't believe you're about to do what they say you are going to do. Please say it isn't so. The Nation: Obama Isn't Listening to Voices of Reason on Afghanistan. Black Agenda Report: Americans Are Deeply Involved In Afghan Drug Trade.

Link: http://uruknet.com/index.php?p=m60590&hd=&size=1&l=e

"U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists." If you’re looking for the chief kingpin in the Afghanistan heroin trade, it’s the United States. The American mission has devolved to a Mafiosi-style arrangement that poisons every military and political alliance entered into by the U.S. and its puppet government in Kabul. It is a gangster occupation, in which U.S.-allied drug dealers are put in charge of the police and border patrol, while their rivals are placed on American hit lists, marked for death or capture. As a result, Afghanistan has been transformed into an opium plantation that supplies 90 percent of the world’s heroin.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/27/germany-afghanistan

The future of Germany's mission in Afghanistan was thrown into doubt today after a government minister resigned under growing pressure to admit his involvement in a campaign of misinformation over an air raid in which civilians were killed. Franz Josef Jung, defence minister at the time, quit as labour minister a day after the army's chief of staff, Wolfgang Schneiderhan, resigned over the incident with the deputy defence minister, Peter Wichert.

Link: http://ikramuddin.instablogs.com/entry/malalai-joya-a-woman-among-warlords/

Malalai Joya has authored a book about her life titled “A Woman Among Warlords”. She elaborated that in this book she has strongly disagreed with the presence of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan and has called Afghanistan ‘an invaded country’. She says, “We have a proud history that never accepts invasion. I strongly believe that the oppressed people of my nation will stand hard against invasions in the future as well and will teach the occupiers like Americans and NATO a very good lesson like they had done to the English and the Russians”.

Link: http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=112220&sectionid=351020403

As President Barack Obama plans to announce his Afghan war strategy on Tuesday, the White House says the US does not intend to stay in Afghanistan for a long time. "We are not going to be there another eight or nine years," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday. AntiWar: White House Eyes Afghan Exit by 2017. War Not Going to Last Forever, Spokesman Assures. Who does Obama think he's fooling? Nobody. -Nobody except the American people and the Norwegian Nobel Committee. AntiWar: Who Will Protest Obama’s War?

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a6rWQ2lUsIg

Two brothers and former prisoners at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan give their testimony about the harsh abuse they witnessed while being captured. Their tale is an example of just how difficult and complex the situation in Afghanistan is. To watch other videos or to sign the petition urging President Obama to Rethink Afghanistan policy go to: rethinkafghanistan.com

Link: http://www.boston.com/news/politics/politicalintelligence/2009/11/report_calls_fo.html

"Impending decisions about military strategies, troop levels, and state-building concepts may mean little if we do not cauterize the damage these fraudulent elections inflicted on Afghanistan," said Samina Ahmed, the well-known international conflict resolution organization's South Asia project director. "Only thorough reform can do that." The report (read it here) said that UN Special Representative Kai Eide inability to handle the corruption issue effectively had led to a decline in morale, and distrust on the part of Afghans.