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By Tom Watson and Martin Hickman
$26.95
By Molly Ivins
$9.72
$22
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U.S. Navy/Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
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By Amy Goodman — Gen. John Allen, commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan, spoke Wednesday at the Pentagon, four stars on each shoulder, his chest bedecked with medals.
Posted on May 23, 2012
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The Guardian's Data Blog
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Editors at The Guardian’s Data Blog have assembled an interactive report that maps the number of U.S. military members killed and wounded in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. (more)
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AP / Drew Angerer
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Despite the reduced number of U.S. troops in Iraq, the monthly death toll among Americans there has risen to a two-year high, reached when three soldiers were killed Wednesday in a rocket attack.
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By Amy Goodman — President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law and was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” amid a flurry of fawning press reports. In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Efren Lopez
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A White House review of the mess in Afghanistan will reportedly declare that some modest progress has been made toward the administration’s goals (vague and illogical though they may be), despite widespread skepticism and the most allied casualties since the start of the war in 2001.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Francisco V. Govea II
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By Richard Reeves — I had to pull over to the side of La Cienega Boulevard last Tuesday evening as I drove home from work. I was crying.
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Interrogation footage obtained by CNN
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Five U.S. soldiers are accused of getting high and murdering Afghan civilians without cause. In leaked interrogation tapes, at least two appear to confess to as much. (Video and more after the jump.)
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Why you should always do a test run before a presentation, what America’s war dead say about the class divide, and how air travel in coach could get a whole lot worse.
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Courtesy of the Arredondo family.
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By Chris Hedges — Crazed and distraught with grief, the father went into his garage and took out five gallons of gasoline and a propane torch. He walked past the three Marines in their dress blues and began to smash the windows of the government van with a hammer.
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Wikimedia Commons
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At the same time that Afghan President Hamid Karzai organizes a nationwide council to try to broker peace with Taliban insurgents, the U.K.‘s senior military commander forecasts that violence in Afghanistan will get worse before it gets better.
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The final weekend of August was a costly one for U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with seven Americans killed. Also, five campaign workers for a candidate in upcoming parliamentary elections were found slain, and a candidate for parliament was shot to death.
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AP / Brennan Linsley
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At a point when news from the Afghanistan war seems to be at its worst ever—low public support in the U.S., record-level casualties and falling confidence in NATO’s mission—new bad news tells of at least 21 people being killed, including U.S. troops, children and Afghan security force members, in a span of only 48 hours.
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AP / Rahmat Gul
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Afghanistan’s human rights commission announced Sunday that civilian deaths so far in 2010 had risen by 6 percent, a fact construed as negative unless you’re The Associated Press, which seems to think “the modest increase suggested that U.S. and NATO efforts to hold down civilian casualties were having some success.”
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White House / Lawrence Jackson
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With 66 deaths so far in July, the month will go down as the deadliest yet for U.S. troops in the nine-year-old war in Afghanistan. The July toll brings the 2010 total so far to at least 265 American military personnel killed.
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AP / Stefan Rousseau
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Britain’s prime minister popped over to Afghanistan on Thursday to declare that this year will be vital in the military campaign against the Taliban, but he ruled out any increase in British forces there.
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Activists trying to bring humanitarian aid to the blockaded Gaza Strip ran afoul of the Israeli military on Sunday. Shots were fired after masked Israeli gunmen descended from helicopters hovering over the flotilla as it made its way through international waters.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Nathan Gallahan
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There are now more civilian contractors in Afghanistan than U.S. soldiers. Using civilian contractors to haul food, prepare meals and act as bodyguards has kept the Pentagon’s official casualty figures lower than they would have been in past conflicts, where contractors were not as heavily used.
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AP / Rahmat Gul
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The bad news: Over the last several weeks, a total of 17 suicide bombers have attacked coalition forces in Afghanistan. The good news: Not one coalition member died in the attacks, a fact credited to increased training and awareness of how to deal with potential bombers.
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Flickr / UK in Afghanistan
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According to NATO’s newly appointed chief civilian representative, 2010 in Afghanistan will see more violence and casualties, but will also mark a turning point in the fight against the Taliban.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Scott T. Sturkol
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A U.S. soldier killed in Afghanistan on Sunday raised the American death toll in 2009 to exactly twice the number of those soldiers killed there in that country in 2008. After eight years in Afghanistan, 940 U.S.—and 613 coalition—soldiers have died.
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By Eugene Robinson — It is wrong to sacrifice troops without military goals that are clear, achievable and worthwhile. And what goals in Afghanistan remotely satisfy those criteria?
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AP / Susan Walsh
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has thrown a high-level wrench into President Obama’s plans to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Pelosi said Thursday that she sees little support in Congress for new deployments, an observation that comes at a time of rising casualties and strife in Afghanistan.
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guim.co.uk
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As President Obama continues to push more U.S. troops into Afghanistan, the U.N. is reporting that civilian casualties in the war-torn country have spiked, increasing almost 25 percent above 2008 figures. In the first six months of this year, 1,013 civilians were killed.
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defenseimagery.mil / Staff Sgt. William Greeson
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Gen. David Petraeus announced Thursday that violence in Afghanistan has spiked 59 percent in recent months, hitting its highest level since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. American troops in the country now number 56,000 and will increase to 68,000 in the second half of this year. Petraeus said a coming increase in U.S. military activity signals that the trend of rising violence and casualties will continue.
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Flickr / trokilinochchi
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The London Times reports that the final weeks of fighting in Sri Lanka’s civil war claimed more than 20,000 civilian lives, mostly at the hands of government forces. A U.N. official tells the paper the actual figure is “Higher. ... Keep going.” The government kept aid workers and reporters away during a three-week bombardment that ultimately ended the 26-year war.
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By Amy Goodman — President Barack Obama met recently with the prime ministers of Canada and Britain, two NATO allies looking for a way out of Afghanistan even as the U.S. is talking escalation.
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abcnews.com
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The toll in the recent spate of clashes in the decades-long battle between Tamil Tiger rebels and the Sri Lankan government has been officially estimated: 40 civilians are being killed every day, with more than 100 wounded, as artillery shells and gun battles between the two sides devastate the Sri Lankan northeast.
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Maan Images / Mohamed Al-Zanon
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About 1,300 Palestinians dead, $2 billion in damage and thousands of devastated families later, Israel claims it has officially pulled its troops from the Gaza Strip after its three-week assault—with no formal deal between Israel and Hamas and thus no real change in relations between the two sides.
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Theatrum Belli
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By Robert Fisk — So once again, Israel has opened the gates of hell to the Palestinians. Forty civilian refugees dead in a United Nations school, three more in another. Not bad for a night’s work in Gaza by the army that believes in “purity of arms”. But why should we be surprised?
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The New York Times
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Following a three-hour pause in its aerial bombardment to allow those in the Gaza Strip to “get medical attention, get supplies ... whatever they need,” Israel has resumed its attack, although it promised additional halts amid reports that Hamas and Israel are working out details of a cease-fire. Overall, 660 Palestinians have been reported killed, including more than 200 children.
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USAF / Michael B. Keller
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By Scott Ritter — Iraq is not Vietnam, yet there are parallels between the two wars. The American military dominated the battlefield in both conflicts, and yet America the nation emerged the loser in each. A “decent interval” is now needed for American troops to withdraw.
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One of JFK’s “best and brightest” died wondering how the Vietnam War could have gone so wrong. Now, in an important new book, we have some answers.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Nine American soldiers are dead after a Taliban raid on a small combat outpost in the Afghan province of Kunar, near Pakistan. Coalition forces rarely experience such losses. The attack took place close to where the U.S. allegedly killed 47 civilians, a charge the military denies.
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voanews.com
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For the second month in a row, the number of American and NATO troops killed in Afghanistan—45—was higher than in Iraq. In fact, the so-called forgotten war was deadlier last month than at any time since the United States invaded in 2001, according to an AP tally.
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By Joe Conason — Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, is more candid than his publicity agents. Unlike the senators and editorial writers who claim that the glorious “surge” should be hailed as one of the most successful military campaigns in history, he warns that the escalation’s achievements are mixed at best.
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The New York Times / James Hill
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By Patrick Cockburn — All governments lie in wartime, but American and British propaganda in Iraq over the past five years has been more untruthful than in any other conflict since the First World War.
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The Iraq occupation has once again taken a violent turn. Dozens of Iraqis were killed on Tuesday as the average number of Iraqis killed or found dead each day continues to rise. Eight U.S. soldiers died on Monday, the most in one day since last September. U.S. military officials, however, have been anxious to downplay any talk of a trend.
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By Joe Conason — Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady. It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.
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849 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq this year, the deadliest for U.S. troops so far. While it’s true that the last couple of months have seen lower casualties than has been typical this year, those numbers cannot satisfactorily be explained by a more stable Iraq or some newfound love for Americans, and it would be grotesque to call the deaths of only 38 troops in October “good news.”
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Benghazi: Dissecting Congressional Follies, Media Coverage and ‘Cover-Up’ Charges
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