War Glance
The new head of Britain's armed forces, Gen Sir David Richards, has warned that the West cannot defeat al-Qaeda and militant Islam. He said defeating Islamist militancy was "unnecessary and would never be achieved".
However, he argued that it could be "contained" to allow Britons to lead secure lives. Gen Richards, 58, said the threat posed by "al-Qaeda and its affiliates" meant Britain's national security would be at risk for at least 30 years.
Britain's top soldier says al-Qaeda cannot be beaten
Flawed projects prove costly for Afghanistan, U.S.
For more than a year, Afghan police chief Rajab Mohammed and his men have worked out of a dark, cramped mud home in a remote corner of Afghanistan while waiting in vain for construction workers to finish building the U.S.-funded police station across the street.
With winter fast approaching, some of the men, who'd been sleeping in a dirt courtyard, recently took over the idle construction site and set up cots inside the half-built station after they learned that the U.S. government had fired the Afghan company responsible for the project.
U.S. Tweaks Message: Troops Will Still Be in Afghanistan in 2014
The Obama administration is increasingly emphasizing the idea that the United States will have forces in Afghanistan until at least the end of 2014, a change in tone aimed at persuading the Afghans and the Taliban that there will be no significant American troop withdrawals next summer.
In a move away from President Obama’s deadline of July 2011 for the start of an American drawdown from Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all cited 2014 this week as the key date for handing over the defense of Afghanistan to the Afghans themselves.
Iraqi Christians targeted in another slew of attacks
A series of bombings across Baghdad Wednesday morning targeted Christian homes, killing at least three and wounding 26.
The attacks came just 10 days after Islamist militants stormed a church during Sunday mass, eventually killing more than 50 people, mostly Christian worshipers. It was the worst attack on Iraqi Christians in recent history, and it has increased fear that more of Iraq’s already dwindling Christian community will leave Iraq and seek safer homes abroad.
Some Skeptics Questioning Rosy Reports on War Zone
At the Pentagon, the draft of a war assessment to be submitted to Congress this month cites a shift in momentum in some areas of the country away from the insurgency.
But as a new White House review of President Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan gets under way, the rosy signs have opened an intense debate at the Defense Department, the White House, the State Department and the intelligence agencies over what they really mean.
US military deliberately sent Shia and Kurdish commandoes into Sunni areas for torture
The revelation by Wikileaks of a US military order directing US forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the US military about detainee abuse.
But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger US strategy of exploiting Shia sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the US war.
British Troops in Iraq Accused of Abusing Detainees
A lawyer for 200 Iraqis demanding a public inquiry into what they have described as brutal mistreatment by British soldiers in a secret detention center near Basra told the High Court in London on Friday that the abuse amounted to “Britain’s Abu Ghraib.”
They buttressed that assertion with video recordings that appeared to show British interrogators bullying, humiliating and threatening a detainee. The opening day of the court hearing featured some of the most sensational accusations made against the British forces in years of inconclusive lawsuits and official inquiries.
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