Tuesday, Mar 31st
Last update08:30:33 AM GMT
War Glance
The U.S. military in eastern Afghanistan recently changed its media embed rules to ban pictures of troops killed in the war.
Just over 85,000 Iraqis were killed in Iraq between 2004 and 2008, according to the first estimate from the Iraqi government since the war began.It counts violent deaths of military, police and civilians, but does not include foreigners or insurgents.
It does not include the first months of the war after the 2003 US-led invasion, as there was no functioning Iraqi government at that time to keep track.
TVNL Comment: This number does not include deaths caused by 16 minutes of non-stop bombardment that Bush called SHOCK AND AWE. It does not include cancer deaths caused by depleted uranium. Nor does it include deaths ignored by the Health Ministry after it was ordered to stop counting civilian deaths.
Doctors in Iraq are recording a sharp rise in the number of cancer victims south of Baghdad. Sufferers in the province of Babil have risen almost tenfold in just three years.
British soldiers in Iraq were involved in hundreds of incidents in which civilians died or were seriously injured but which were covered up or inadequately investigated, a former military police officer claimed today.
"If you were to look back at all the serious allegations arising out of operations in Iraq, there's a catalogue of blunders, mistakes, ineptitude and the course of investigations being bent to serve the real or perceived interests of the chain of command of the army," the ex-officer said.
An Afghan wearing a police uniform shot and killed two American soldiers and wounded two others during a joint patrol in eastern Afghanistan on Friday, Afghan officials said. The man later escaped.
The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August. "Like Vietnam without the napalm," said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas.
The CIA is deploying teams of spies, analysts and paramilitary operatives to Afghanistan, part of a broad intelligence "surge" that will make its station there among the largest in the agency's history, U.S. officials say.
When complete, the CIA's presence in the country is expected to rival the size of its massive stations in Iraq and Vietnam at the height of those wars. Precise numbers are classified, but one U.S. official said the agency already has nearly 700 employees in Afghanistan.
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