War Glance
Saying the United States should not be spending hundred of millions to "… propagandize the Iraqi people," Senator Jim Webb (D-VA) today sent a letter asking Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to halt contracts that would pay civilian defense contractors $300 million to produce pro-American news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements inside Iraq.
Webb Urges Halt To U.S. Propaganda In Iraq
Mullen: Afghanistan military situation will worsen next year
The highest-ranking U.S. military officer warned Thursday that the situation in Afghanistan will likely get worse next year and that it will take time to turn it around because it has been headed in "the wrong direction" for the last two years.
Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the security situation in Afghanistan cannot improve until there's economic and political development in Afghanistan and the U.S. and its coalition partners have embraced a strategy that links Afghan and Pakistani issues.
TVNL Comment: How many more people will die because of the 'wrong direction' the US has taken for the past eight years? Just asking.
New U.S. intelligence report warns 'victory' not certain in Iraq
A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.
U.S. officials familiar with the new National Intelligence Estimate said they were unsure when the top-secret report would be completed and whether it would be published before the Nov. 4 presidential election.
TVNL Comment: You KNOW this will not be completed before the election. Someone, please send this to John McCain before he repeats his goal for 'victory' in Iraq again.
30 Civilians Died in Afghan Raid, U.S. Inquiry Finds
An investigation by the military has concluded that American airstrikes on Aug. 22 in a village in western Afghanistan killed far more civilians than American commanders there have acknowledged, according to two American military officials.
The military investigator’s report found that more than 30 civilians — not 5 to 7 as the military has long insisted — died in the airstrikes against a suspected Taliban compound in Azizabad.
The investigator, Brig. Gen. Michael W. Callan of the Air Force, concluded that many more civilians, including women and children, had been buried in the rubble than the military had asserted, one of the military officials said.
When is a Holocaust Not a Holocaust?
Although the "surge" has failed as policy, it appears to be succeeding as propaganda. It seems to be the only thing that supporters of the war have to point to, and so they point, and they point, and they point. Allow me to point out that while there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq -- now down to a level that virtually any other society in the world would find horrible and intolerable, including Iraqi society before the US invasion and occupation -- we must keep in mind that thanks to this lovely little war more than half the population of Iraq is either dead, crippled, traumatized, confined in overflowing American and Iraqi prisons, internally displaced, or in foreign exile.
U.S. to allies: Fight in Afghanistan or write check
The United States has asked Japan and NATO allies who have refused to send troops to Afghanistan to pay the estimated $17 billion needed to build up the Afghan army, according to U.S. defense officials.
The push to quickly increase the size of Afghanistan's army and spread the cost of the initiative underscores the financial and military strain the war has placed on the United States and NATO members, many also operating in Iraq and elsewhere.
Talks with Taliban the only way forward in Afghanistan, says UK commander
Britain is stepping up pressure for a political and diplomatic settlement to the conflict in Afghanistan, a move set in sharp relief yesterday by the commander of UK troops who warned that the war against the Taliban was not going to be won.
The message is being delivered with increasing urgency by British military commanders, diplomats and intelligence officers, to Nato allies and governments in the region, the Guardian has learned.
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