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By Steven Hill $11.01
By Susan Zakin
$35
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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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 YouTube/wearechange
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Police stopped and drew guns on a group of independent journalists who were driving home after covering the NATO protests in Chicago on Monday evening. Tim Pool and Luke Rudkowski, two of the best-known live streamers covering the Occupy movement, believe they may have been targeted.
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On Sunday, veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars led thousands of people in a march on the NATO summit in Chicago, at the end of which 50 former soldiers renounced the wars by throwing their military service medals toward the building where leaders were gathered.
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By Amy Goodman — Veterans of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan are now challenging the occupation of Chicago.
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 AP/Musadeq Sadeq
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Afghan President Hamid Karzai has branded the Taliban’s 18-hour siege of Kabul and places across eastern Afghanistan on Sunday an intelligence failure and called for an investigation into NATO security operations.
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 U.S. Air Force / Senior Airman David Carbajal
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By William Pfaff — Terminating the Afghanistan War and ending the global projection of American military power of which it is a part are indispensable steps to saving the nation.
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 AP / Rahmat Gul
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Pointing to “the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans” as one key reason for their decision, Taliban leaders in Afghanistan put the kibosh on plans to meet with U.S. envoys, releasing a statement on Thursday explaining the change of plans.
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 AP / Rafiq Maqbool
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By Eugene Robinson — It was clear before Sunday’s horrific massacre of civilians that it’s past time for the U.S. mission in Afghanistan to end.
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 mobyhill (CC-BY)
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By Ann Jones, TomDispatch —
Since May 2007, 76 NATO soldiers have been killed and an undisclosed number wounded in 46 recorded “deliberate attacks” by members of the Afghan National Security Force. These figures suggest more than a recent “trend of Afghan treachery.”
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Liberia is considering two proposals that would make consensual same-sex acts punishable with jail time; NATO refuses to get involved in the crisis in Syria; and a Jewish journalist killed by terrorists was baptized posthumously by the Mormon Church. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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 U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Andy M. Kin
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By Amy Goodman — Eight youths, tending their flock of sheep in the snowy fields of Afghanistan, were exterminated last week by a NATO airstrike.
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 U.S. Navy / MC2 Brooks B. Patton Jr.
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By William Pfaff — Stephen Hadley, a former official in ex-Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, said in Munich that Europe must spend more if it wants to be a global player. The Europeans regard the George W. Bush administration record, and now the Obama administration’s, and see the disastrous results of “global playing.”
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 bbc.co.uk
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Claims made by NATO that Pakistan is in cahoots with the Afghan Taliban are tantamount to “old wine in an even older bottle,” according to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar. However, this particular batch of wine represents thousands of mandatory conversations (read: interrogations) versus Khar’s official denial.
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On Saturday, NATO forces clashed with Pakistani troops near the Afghanistan border, and 24 Pakistani soldiers were reported killed in the airstrike. Those are the facts that both sides agree on, but as Salon’s Glenn Greenwald notes in this “Democracy Now!” interview that aired Monday ... (more)
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 NATO
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By William Pfaff — The enthusiasm that has been inspired in NATO circles by the organization’s success in overturning the Gadhafi regime in Libya provides a demonstration of how badly NATO still feels the need for a justification of its continued existence.
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 cnn.com
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On Monday, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen paid a visit to Libya to announce the end of the military campaign that began seven months ago and culminated in the death of Col. Moammar Gadhafi on Oct. 20.
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 Wikimedia Commons / Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr (CC-BY)
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Thursday’s death of Col. Moammar Gadhafi represents different things to different people—long-awaited liberation, further evidence of American meddling on the world stage, or a powerful sign that the upheaval collectively known as the Arab Spring isn’t over yet. (more)
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 Wikimedia Commons / DefenseImagery.mil
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Just as in the case of Osama bin Laden’s death last May, some major concerns have cropped up in the international community about the circumstances that led to Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s end on Thursday. Specifically, whether the killing of Gadhafi might have been carried out in ... (more)
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 Flickr / Magharebia (CC-BY)
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U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that NATO will continue launching airstrikes in Libya as long as the clashes continue between rebel fighters and forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, despite pressure from NATO allies to stop the bombing.
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 AP / Alexandre Meneghini
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By William Pfaff — If the U.S. had gone seriously into the war, and behaved characteristically, Libya’s revolution would not have succeeded this week.
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 Flickr / UNC - CFC - USFK (CC-BY)
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NATO forces announced Wednesday that they had killed the Taliban member they believe was responsible for shooting down the Chinook helicopter carrying U.S. Navy SEALs and Afghan commandos Aug. 6.
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 Flickr / isafmedia
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Less than one week after Hamid Karzai’s half brother was shot to death, Jan Mohammad Khan, a senior adviser to the Afghan president, was killed by gunmen at his home. The Taliban claimed responsibility. (more)
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 Flickr / U.S. Marine Corps Official Page
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Ahead of policy deliberations in Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued for a modest approach to the U.S. troop drawdown in Afghanistan that will begin next month. He favors the removal of support forces in a strategy that would leave as much “combat power” in place as possible until the war’s end.
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 Associated Press
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By Scott Tucker — Why is Manning’s mind the only relevant site of weakness, disability and pathology in the big media stories so far? Why not the sorry condition of our corporate state passing as a democratic republic?
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 AP / Libyan state television via APTN
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Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently joined the chorus of outsiders urging Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to give up, but that suggestion isn’t hitting home with Gadhafi, according to yet another head of state, Jacob Zuma. The South African president returned from a visit to Tripoli with the news that Gadhafi isn’t planning to go anywhere anytime soon.
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.jpg) Flickr / Martijn Munneke
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British, French and Italian leaders say they will apply economic pressure against Syria if President Bashar al-Assad doesn’t end the violence against demonstrators.
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.jpg) Flickr / U.S. Navy
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Having accepted that the rebels can’t defeat Moammar Gadhafi themselves, NATO is aggressively expanding its list of targets in Libya.
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 Creative Commons / Rob Brown
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The fight in Libya is moving closer to the ground as NATO commanders admitted Tuesday that airstrikes alone cannot hold back Moammar Gadhafi’s powerful attacks on rebel-held Misrata. (more)
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 AP / Ben Curtis
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Reports are in that Moammar Gadhafi’s forces are firing into residential neighborhoods with cluster bombs and ground-to-ground rockets, weapons criticized for their indiscriminate trajectories, as loyalists vow to crush the anti-Gadhafi rebellion in the city of Misurata.
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 Wikimedia Commons / DefenseImagery.mil
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Although he’s probably gotten the hint right now, three heads of state—from the U.S., Britain and France—have signed a joint letter expressing their shared wish that tenacious Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi relinquish his power, stat.
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By Michael Kountouris, Greece —
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 AP / NATO
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Airstrikes Thursday in NATO’s campaign against Moammar Gadhafi’s forces killed at least four Libyan rebels in a “friendly fire” accident, the second in a week. After a bit of foot-dragging by the British deputy commander of the air campaign, NATO apologized to the rebels.
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 U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Greg L. Davis
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After a lull in the bombing—and some very public criticism by the rebels fighting Moammar Gadhafi—NATO is once again ramping up its airstrikes on Libya, to the tune of 137 flights Monday, 186 on Tuesday and 198 planned for Wednesday.
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 DOD / Petty Officer 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
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There’s a lot of talk coming out of Washington, but Defense Secretary Robert Gates assured Congress on Thursday that the Pentagon’s mission in Libya is “much more limited” than regime change and said American troops would not be sent to the country, even in a training capacity, “as long as I’m in this job.”
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others from the Obama administration finally dropped in on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to tell members of Congress what the deal is with the U.S.’ involvement in the Libyan uprising. Some on the receiving end ...
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 Wikimedia Commons / DefenseImagery.mil
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Wednesday was a day of mixed results for embattled Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. On the one hand, despite pesky President Obama’s ominous words from the day before, troops loyal to Gadhafi made some gains against rebel forces.
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Asked about the possibility that the U.S. would deliver weapons to Libyan rebels, President Obama said, “It’s fair to say that if we wanted to get weapons into Libya we probably could. We’re looking at all our options at this point.” Obama also said that until Moammar Gadhafi’s inner circle indicates that the dictator is ready to step down ... (more)
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By Ruth Marcus — In his speech Monday night to a public thoroughly, and understandably, befuddled about U.S. policy in Libya, President Obama began to fill in some important blanks.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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President Obama continued with his Convince America About Libya Tour on Tuesday, granting interviews to CBS, ABC and NBC to discuss U.S. intervention in the North African nation while pointing out that “each country in this region is different.”
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 CIA World Factbook
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Coalition jets appear to have given the Libyan rebels a big assist by bombing the birthplace of Moammar Gadhafi, a city called Sirte that is about halfway between Benghazi and Tripoli. Not to tell NATO its business, but how exactly does clearing a path for the rebels advancing toward Libya’s capital fit the U.N. mandate to protect civilians?
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Mary Matalin steps in as a guest panelist on this week’s “Left, Right & Center,” in which Libya and Japan are dominant conversation points, of course, as well as Rep. Michele Bachmann, who may or may not have her eye on the White House prize.
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 U.S. Navy / MC2 Mark R. Alvarez
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NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen says his organization is still debating how much of the military assault on Moammar Gadhafi’s regime to take on, but in the meantime member states have agreed to assume command of the no-fly zone.
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 Wikimedia Commons / The White House
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Come July, foreign forces will begin withdrawing from Afghanistan, coinciding with President Hamid Karzai’s plan to begin returning seven regions of his country back to local control.
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 White House / Pete Souza
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The U.S. appears to be losing a game of hot potato with respect to military action in Libya. President Obama says he will hand over control of the mission to NATO “within days,” but the BBC reports, “Turkey and Germany have been reluctant for NATO to assume control, and France is not keen.” (more)
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 AP / Jerome Delay
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wasn’t thrilled with the U.N. Security Council’s go-ahead to let U.S. and European forces fire on Moammar Gadhafi’s troops in Libya, and he said so Monday. He wasn’t alone in his criticism of what began as ...
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 Wagner Machado Carlos Lemes
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The U.K., France, various Arab states and NATO representatives are all working on plans to prevent besieged Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi from launching airstrikes against his people. Gadhafi’s forces continue to clash with rebels, who now control much of the country.
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Thursday’s edition of “Democracy Now!” featured two prominent journalists (well, three, including host Amy Goodman), Rick Rowley and Glenn Greenwald, commenting on two timely and pressing news stories. By way of a preview, here’s a quote from Rowley ...
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 Flickr.com / mindfrieze
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The Obama administration is working on cutting back defense spending to levels the U.S. hasn’t seen since before Sept. 11, 2001, but the proposed changes have more to do with economic reasons than any big strategic change from within military ranks.
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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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