16 Jun
United States Wars, News and Casualties
United States Wars, News and Casualties
The War Criminals
The war criminals, Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Powell who sold us the war still go on doing what they do.
How many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago? Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again.
The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in our country as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime.
Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of a mostly amnesiac citizenry. (A year ago Mr. Bush was on “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” dancing and talking about his paintings.)
We condemned children to death, some after many days of writhing in pain on bloodstained mats, without pain relievers. Some died quickly, wasted by missing arms and legs, crushed heads. As the fluids ran out of their bodies, they appeared like withered, spoiled fruits. They could have lived, certainly should have lived – and laughed and danced, and run and played- but instead they were brutally murdered. Yes, murdered!
The war ended for those children, but it has never ended for survivors who carry memories of them. Likewise, the effects of the U.S. bombings continue, immeasurably and indefensibly.
The McGlynn
War News
Yemen attack: hundreds killed as rebels’ grip on Hodeidah airport loosens
Airport push marks third day of campaign to drive out rebels from vital Red Sea port as death toll rises
The McGlynn
A March 2016 Human Rights Watch report states that U.S. participation in specific military operations, such as selecting targets and aerial refueling during Saudi air raids “may make US forces jointly responsible for laws-of-war violations by coalition forces”.[402] In September The Guardian reported that one in three bombing raids hit civilian sites.[403]
U.S. government lawyers have considered whether the United States is legally a “co-belligerent” in the conflict, but had not reached a conclusion as of September 2016. Such a finding would oblige the U.S. to investigate allegations of war crimes by the Saudi coalition, and U.S. military personnel could be subject to prosecution.[404][405]
On 13 October 2016, the USS Nitze fired Tomahawk missiles at Houthi-controlled radar sites “in the Dhubab district of Taiz province, a remote area overlooking the Bab al-Mandab Straight known for fishing and smuggling.”[406]
In January 2017, Secretary of State nominee Rex Tillerson voiced support for the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.[407] U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis asked President Donald Trump to remove restrictions on U.S. military support for Saudi Arabia.[408][409] In February 2017, Mattis wanted to intercept and board an Iranian ship in the Arabian Sea to look for contraband weapons, which would have constituted an “act of war”.[410] In April 2017, Justin Amash, Walter Jones and other members of Congress criticized U.S. involvement in Saudi Arabian military campaign in Yemen, highlighting that Al Qaeda in Yemen “has emerged as a de facto ally of the Saudi-led militaries with whom [Trump] administration aims to partner more closely”.[410]
In November 2017, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy accused the United States of complicity in Yemen’s humanitarian catastrophe.[412]
From Wikipedia
The McGlynn
Saudi-led coalition and Yemeni fighters backing the country’s government have taken control of the airport of a crucial rebel-held port, according to Yemen’s military media office.
The death toll climbed to at least 280 by the fourth day of the campaign on Saturday aimed at driving out the Iranian-backed Shiite rebels, known as Houthis, from the Red Sea port of Hodeidah. It is the entry point for food and aid supplies in a country teetering on the brink of famine.
The Saudi-led pro-government forces had “freed” the airport in the country’s main port city, the media office said.
“Army forces backed by the resistance and the Arab alliance freed Hodeidah international airport from the grip of the Houthi militia,” the military said on Twitter on Saturday.
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REU: Turkey says its air strikes kill 26 Kurdish militants in northern Iraq
ISTANBUL (Reuters) – The Turkish military said on Friday air strikes its forces carried out killed 26 Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) militants in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountain region on June 12, the state-run news agency Anadolu reported.
The PKK, which has fought a decades-old insurgency against the state in southeastern Turkey, has bases in the Qandil region. President Tayyip Erdogan recently vowed to “drain the terror swamp” in Qandil.
AP: Danish court orders ministry to compensate Iraqi civilians
COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — A Danish court on Friday ordered the country’s Defense Ministry to compensate 18 Iraqi civilians detained by Iraqi security troops during a 2014 military operation in Iraq in which Danish soldiers assisted.
The Eastern High Court in Copenhagen says the Danish soldiers did not abuse any of the Iraqi civilians but they knew the detainees were “in real danger of being exposed to inhumane treatment in terms of being hit and kicked” by the Iraqi forces.
The court said Friday it was the responsibility of the Danish troops because they didn’t intervene. The court said each civilian should get 30,000 kroner ($4,716) in compensation, adding the Iraqi security forces had rounded up the detainees “on suspicion of being armed terrorists or rebels.”
Defense Minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said his ministry would appeal.
The ruling “is problematic because it puts Denmark in a very difficult situation when we send out soldiers,” he said, adding that “in some situations it means that we cannot contribute to improving the security situation — hence the human rights situation — in conflict areas. That doesn’t benefit anyone.”
Christian Harlang, who handled the case for 23 Iraqi plaintiffs, called the ruling “an important victory” because Western countries “in the future should observe the rules of not only military engagement, but also human rights as binding standards for military operations.”
Of the 23, only 18 were granted compensation.
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REU: Big hugs and selfies as Afghan soldiers, Taliban celebrate Eid ceasefire
KABUL (Reuters) – Afghan soldiers and Taliban militants celebrated an unprecedented ceasefire marking the end of the Ramadan fasting season with Eid greetings, handshakes, big hugs and selfies.
The Taliban announced a surprise three-day ceasefire over the Eid holiday, which began on Friday, except against foreign forces. It overlaps with an Afghan government ceasefire which lasts until Wednesday.
Video and pictures on social media showed cheerful soldiers and Taliban hugging one another and exchanging Eid greetings in Logar province, south of Kabul, and Zabul in the south and central Maidan Wardak.
Afghan Deputy Interior Minister Masood Azizi said the ceasefire was being monitored throughout the country.
“Luckily there have been no attacks,” he told Reuters.
Governors in Helmand, Kandahar and Zabul said both sides had adhered to the ceasefire and that there had been no reports of violence for 24 hours.
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REU: Pakistani Taliban leader killed in air strike in Afghanistan near border
KABUL/PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) – Pakistani Taliban leader Mullah Fazlullah has been killed in a U.S.-Afghan air strike in Afghanistan, a senior Afghan Defence Ministry official said on Friday, a killing likely to ease tension between the United States and Pakistan.
An official at the NATO-led Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan confirmed Fazlullah was killed on Thursday.
The U.S. military said earlier in Washington it had carried out a strike aimed at a senior militant figure in the eastern Afghan province of Kunar, which is on the Pakistani border, and one U.S. official said the target was believed to have been Fazlullah.
Fazlullah was Pakistan’s most-wanted militant, notorious for attacks including a 2014 school massacre that killed 132 children and the 2012 shooting of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, who was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
“I confirm that Mullah Fazlullah, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, has been killed in an joint air operation in the border area of Marawera district of Kunar province,” Mohammad Radmanish, spokesman for Afghan defense ministry, told Reuters, adding the air strike was carried out at about 9 a.m. on Thursday………….He was reviled in Pakistan for the 2014 assault on an army-run school in the city of Peshawar in which Pakistani Taliban gunmen killed at least 132 children.
He is also believed to have ordered the 2012 shooting of then-15-year-old Malala Yousafzai over her advocacy of girls’ education.
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NYT: Court Rejects New Hearing for Ex-Russian Military Officer
RICHMOND, Va. — A federal appeals court has rejected a request for a new hearing for a former Russian military officer convicted of leading a 2009 Taliban attack on U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
In April, a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of Irek Hamidullin.
Hamidullin’s attorney sought a rehearing before the full court, but that request was denied Friday.
Hamidullin led the attack on behalf of the Taliban and an allied terrorist organization, the Haqqani Network.
The court found he wasn’t entitled to lawful-combatant status because the attack took place when the war in Afghanistan was no longer classified as an international armed conflict and had shifted to a conflict against unlawful Taliban insurgents.
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NYT: A Grass-Roots Afghan Peace Movement Grows, Step by Step
Members of the peace march walking to Wardak, Afghanistan, from Ghazni on Tuesday. Among them are day laborers, farmers, retired army officers and even a bodybuilding champion.CreditJim Huylebroek for The New York Times
GHAZNI, Afghanistan — As they march for peace through Afghan villages laced with roadside bombs and bottomless heartache, their numbers keep growing.
They come from all walks of life, ages 17 to 65. Among them is a high school student who went home to complete his final exams before rejoining the others; a poet who still carries in his chest one of the four bullets he was shot with; a bodybuilding champion who abandoned his gym and has lost 20 pounds of muscle on the journey. They are day laborers, farmers, retired army officers, a polio victim on crutches, a mechanic who was robbed of his sight by war.
Afghanistan’s most striking grass-roots movement for peace in recent years started with just eight people. I started watching their movement then, when it was a hunger strike born out of pain and outrage at a suicide bombing that killed and wounded dozens in Helmand Province. A group of young men pitched a protest tent next to the carnage. Their blood had become cheap — too cheap, they said. For too long, they had been dying in silence.
Then they began marching north toward the capital through some of the most devastated parts of southern Afghanistan. We joined them this past Sunday, 30 days and 300 miles into their journey, as they rested their blistered feet in the cool of a small mosque near the city of Ghazni.
By that point, their numbers had grown to 65, and they kept walking through the Ramadan fast, taking no food or water through the 100-plus-degree daytime heat.
They are marching to say this: that the war has turned into a monster with a life of its own, feeding on the poor at the rate of more than 50 a day. The longer it drags on, the more difficult it becomes to reach a settlement. Killings turn into blood feuds that lead to more killings.
They want it to end, to give them a chance to live. At every stop, hundreds gather to hear their stories of loss and share their own.
