Peace and Justice Post

Pankaj Mishra, The Guardian/UK, July 28, 2010

WASHINGTON: The US Congress has overwhelmingly rejected a resolution demanding the withdrawal of US troops from Pakistan.

The measure, moved in the House of Representatives, was sponsored by two anti-war Republican congressmen — Dennis Kucinich (Ohio) and Ron Paul (Texas) — and was in reaction to reports that the US was running a secret war in Pakistan.

The lawmakers argued that any war effort not approved by Congress violated the War Powers Act. It was voted down 38-372. Thirty-two Democrats and six Republicans voted for the measure. Four congressmen voted “present”, three Democrats and one Republican.

The vote took place days after newspapers published leaked documents suggesting that Pakistani intelligence had cooperated with extremist groups while simultaneously accepting US aid to fight terror.

Congressmen Kucinich and Paul, however, used their floor time to criticise the war in Afghanistan.

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By recording failure in meticulous detail, the leaked war logs bear devastating witness to our incompetence

Simon Jenkins, The Guardian/UK, July 27, 2010

By Patrick Martin, wsws.org, July 28, 2010

Little more than 24 hours after the release of 91,000 documents detailing US military atrocities in Afghanistan, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives gave final approval to a funding bill to pay for the escalation of the war.

By a margin of 308-114, well over the two-thirds majority required under an expedited procedure known as “suspension of the rules,” the House backed a $60 billion supplemental funding bill passed by the Senate last week.

More than half the Democratic caucus joined forces with a near-unanimous Republican minority to pass the bill. The comfortable two-thirds majority was significant since 162 Democrats voted earlier this month for a resolution to require the Obama administration to begin significant troop withdrawals by July 2011. If that many Democrats had opposed the funding bill, it would have failed to win a two-thirds vote, but as always in such parliamentary maneuvering, just enough Democrats switched their votes to provide the margin required to sustain the war policies of American imperialism.

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Norman Solomon

by Norman Solomon, The Smirking Chimp, July 28, 2010

Washington’s spin machine is in overdrive to counter the massive leak of documents on Afghanistan. Much of the counterattack revolves around the theme that the documents aren’t particularly relevant to this year’s new-and-improved war effort.

The White House seized on the timeframe of the documents released by WikiLeaks. “The period of time covered in these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President announced his new strategy,” a White House email told reporters on Sunday evening. “Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.”

Unfortunately, the “change in strategy” has remained on the same basic track as the old strategy — except for escalation. On Tuesday morning, the lead story on the New York Times website noted: “As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration’s to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup.”

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Jonathan Cook, The National, July 27, 201|0

The thousands of US officer reports from Afghanistan appearing on Wikileaks yesterday show how technology can imperil a military’s secrecy and operations. But there is another side to that relationship. The technologies used by militaries to kill by remote control, which are becoming increasingly sophisticated and prevalent, are transforming warfare. A senior United Nations official recently warned of the emergence of a “PlayStation mentality to killing”, conjuring up an image of armies on the battlefield being replaced by unseen, nerdy teenagers spraying bullets and missiles with joysticks as wantonly as they already do when playing video games. Israel is one of the pioneers of these technologies. The first remote-controlled machines were surveillance aircraft built to fly over Lebanon in the early 1980s, as Israel invaded and then occupied the country for 20 years. Today Israel is the world leader in developing and selling unmanned aerial vehicles – or drones, as they have come to be called. Continues >>

uruknet.info, July 28, 2010

Middle East Monitor

Palestinian prisoners protest inhumane Israeli punishmentThe Ministry of Prisoner Affairs for the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah has warned of an ‘explosion’ of the situation within Israeli prisons, given the systemic conduct of collective punishment of detainees exercised in most Israeli jails. In a press release issued on Monday (26.07.2010), the ministry stated that the management of Israel’s Prison Service continues to enforce repressive policies against Palestinian detainees who have in turn responded by escalating their active objection. Continues >>

By John Nichols, The Nation, July 27, 2010

Wikileaks revelations regarding the extent of US operations and problems in Pakistan raise the question: Shouldn’t Congress check-and-balance the administration’s inclination to expand the Afghanistan imbroglio across the border and into Afghanistan?

Congressmen Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, and Ron Paul, R-Texas, think so.

They have proposed House Concurrent Resolution 301, “Directing the President, pursuant to section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution, to remove the United States Armed Forces from Pakistan.”

The measure, which is expected to be voted on Tuesday, is a bold response to a burgeoning crisis. Kucinich says it “aims to cause the United States to withdraw from Pakistan. Now, it’s not generally known that we have at least 124 Special Forces troops on the ground inside Pakistan. It is absolutely urgent that we take a stand to stop spreading war in Pakistan. To nip in the bud the U.S. ground presence.”

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Former US military analyst leaked documents in 1971 revealing how the American public was misled about the Vietnam war

Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian/UK, July 27, 2010

Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who compared the Afghanistan war logs with his leaking of the 1971 ‘Pentagon Papers’. Photograph: Stephen Hird/ReutersDaniel Ellsberg, a former US military analyst, has described the disclosure of the Afghan war logs as on the scale of his leaking of the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971 revealing how the US public was misled about the Vietnam war.”An outrageous escalation of the war is taking place,” he said. “Look at these cables and see if they give anybody the occasion to say the answer is ‘resources”. He added: “After $300bn and 10 years, the Taliban is stronger than they have ever been … We are recruiting for them.”

However, the equivalent of the Pentagon Papers on Afghanistan – top secret papers relating to policy – had yet to be leaked, he said.

People could read the logs to discover what they now need to ask, such as what their money was being spent on, he said. They would have an effect on public opinion, but the question, Ellsberg said, was how they would influence the US and UK governments.

He compared them to the document leaked in 2003 by the GCHQ officer, Katharine Gun, which revealed how the US asked Britain to spy on neutral countries at the UN before the invasion of Iraq. The disclosure influenced the attitude of the neutral countries who refused to vote for the invasion.

By Alex Lantier, wsws.org, July 27, 2010

On Sunday, the WikiLeaks web site posted 91,731 American military documents on the US-NATO occupation of Afghanistan, covering the period from January 2004 to December 2009. The release was timed to coincide with articles on these revelations in the New York Times, the British Guardian and the German weekly magazine Der Spiegel, all of which had received the documents several weeks ago.

The documents make clear that the occupation of Afghanistan is a filthy imperialist war. Popular resistance and protest demonstrations are drowned in blood, US death squads operate at will under a media blackout, and Washington and NATO collaborate with a narrow elite of corrupt warlords and Afghan officers.

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