Peace and Justice Post

Following up on reports emerging over the weekend, Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s office is confirming that a NATO attack in Sangin District of the Helmand Province struck a houseload of civilians hiding from a nearby battle, and that at least 52 civilians were killed.

The Karzai government has promised an investigation into the killings of the civilians, which were said to have included a large number of women and children, a number of wounded civilians were also reported in the tiny village.

NATO had previously denied that any such incident had occurred, claiming their own preliminary investigation turned up no indication of any civilian casualties in Sangin. This is largely in keeping with other cases of large scale civilian deaths, however, as NATO generally has denied them when the details first come to light, and only claims then later, if at all.

The civilian deaths will likely draw renewed attention to new commander Gen. David Petraeus’ plans to significantly tone down restrictions on the rules of engagement designed to prevent large scale killings of civilians. It will be difficult, havng just killed 52 civilians, for NATO to argue that the rules are too strict for them.

Bill Van Auken, wsws.com, July 27, 2010

The tens of thousands of documents posted online by WikiLeaks Sunday have provided a detailed and searing indictment of a criminal colonial war that the Obama administration has made its own.

In its sheer volume—92,000 documents, 200,000 pages—the so-called Afghan War Diary makes an incontrovertible case that for nearly nine years the US military has conducted a campaign of terror and deadly violence against the Afghan people.

Consisting of battlefield reports written by US soldiers and officers, the documents record the deaths of civilians resulting from air strikes on their homes and the killing of Afghans on motorcycles and in cars and buses by trigger-happy troops manning roadblocks.

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Declan Walsh, The Guardian/UK, July 26, 2010

The site of a suicide bomb which was followed by civilian deaths as US marines escaped. Photograph: Noorullah/EPA

Brevity is the hallmark of military reporting, but even by those standards the description of one disastrous event is remarkably short: “The patrol returned to base.”

It started with a suicide bomb. On 4 March 2007 a convoy of US marines, who arrived in Afghanistan three weeks earlier, were hit by an explosives-rigged minivan outside the city of Jalalabad.

The marines made a frenzied escape, opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded.

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Thousands of leaked U.S. military papers from Afghanistan contain evidence of possible war crimes that must be urgently investigated, the founder of the whistle-blowing website that published the papers said.

Julian Assange, who set up Wikileaks to expose perceived unethical behaviour by government and business, accused U.S. forces of covering up civilian deaths and said sections of the vast collection of secret papers supported such accusations.

His website has published 76,000 military reports covering the Afghan conflict between 2004 and 2010, and has promised to release thousands more in the coming weeks.

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Republicans in the House of Representatives have introduced a measure that would green-light an Israeli bombing campaign against Iran. The resolution, H.Res. 1553 (in full below), provides explicit support for military strikes against Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of “all means necessary” against Iran “including the use of military force”. US military leaders have warned that strikes could be catastrophic to US national security interests and could engulf the Middle East in a “calamitous” regional war.

Nearly a third of House Republicans have signed onto the resolution, which has been publicly discussed and circulated by its lead sponsor, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), for months. The National Iranian American Council is leading calls to oppose the measure, urging those concerned to demand that House Republican Leader John Boehner denounce the resolution.

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The shocking rates of infant mortality and cancer in Iraqi city raise new questions about battle

By Patrick Cockburn, The Independent/UK, July 24, 2010

Getty Images

Children in Fallujah who suffer from birth defects which are thought to be linked to weapons used in attacks on the city by US Marines

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Afghan war documents on WikiLeaks

(CNN) — The Afghan government said Monday it was “shocked” as it sifted through tens of thousands of leaked U.S. military and diplomatic reports on the war in Afghanistan that a whistle-blower website posted a day earlier.

“The Afghan government is shocked with the report that has opened the reality of the Afghan war,” said Siamak Herawi, a government spokesman.

WikiLeaks.org — a whistle-blower website — published on Sunday what it says are more than 90,000 United States military and diplomatic reports about Afghanistan filed between 2004 and January of this year.

The first-hand accounts are the military’s own raw data on the war, including numbers killed, casualties, threat reports and the like, according to Julian Assange, the founder of the website.

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Chilcot inquiry witness claims government is trying to suppress embarrassing testimony about case for Iraq invasion

Jamie Doward, The Observer/UK, July 25, 2010

Carne Ross, former diplomat and Chilcot inquiry witness. Photograph: Sarah LeeA key witness to the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war has accused Whitehall of trying to silence embarrassing testimony undermining the case for the invasion.

In today’s Observer, Carne Ross, the UK’s Iraq expert at the UN between 1997 and 2002, writes that the inquiry is being prevented by “deep state” forces from establishing the government’s true motivation for invading Iraq.

Ross, who appeared before the inquiry this month, says he was not provided with key documents relevant to his testimony and was warned by officials not to refer to an internal Foreign Office memo that contradicted the government’s public case for war.

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