24 Aug
United States Wars, News and Casualties
United States Wars, News and Casualties
NYT: War Without End, Read Article>>
In the Viet Nam era, stories like this and television reporting on the war contributed to the end of the Viet Nam War in a time frame of much less than 17 years.
As deployment of the last 17 years only came to a sub set of young people, and TV and news rarely covered the searing violence of war, eschewing such content for minor content (Kardashians, Tweets, outrageous behavior), the daily violence and futility went “off stage”.
One is invited to read the daily post, “United States Wars, News and Casualties” and then watch the daily news on the U.S. TV Media.
The absence of U.S. War News is atrocious.
We need this daily report of our wars in our face………..Daily.
The McGlynn
Damn The War Criminals,Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell and Blair from England.
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.
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
NYT: US Urges ‘Enduring Defeat’ of IS, Offers Force if Necessary
UNITED NATIONS — U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley urged all countries on Thursday to ensure that the Islamic State extremist group faces “an enduring defeat” and said the United States will deepen partnerships with countries fighting terrorism “when force is necessary.”
She told the Security Council that the militant group’s ideology has taken root in new corners of the world, demonstrating that it is “an enemy that adapts, and one that will seek out the world’s ungoverned spaces.”
Haley urged countries to outsmart IS which is also known as ISIL, deny its fighters and supporters “safe haven,” end conflicts in areas where the extremist group flourishes, and use sanctions “to deny funding to terrorist groups.”
“The fight against terror will take different forms, but the outcome is certain,” she said. “The United States will continue to be a force in this effort against ISIS and al-Qaida until we defeat this threat.”
Read full story »
REU: U.N. team, approved a year ago, starts work on Islamic State crimes in Iraq
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – A U.N. investigative team that will collect and preserve evidence of acts by Islamic State in Iraq that may be war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide started work this week, nearly a year after the Security Council created it.
At last September’s annual U.N. gathering of world leaders, the council unanimously adopted a British-drafted resolution – after a year of talks with Iraq – asking U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to create the team “to support domestic efforts” to hold the militants accountable.
U.N. experts had warned in June 2016 that Islamic State was committing genocide against the Yazidis in Syria and Iraq to destroy the minority religious community through killings, sexual slavery and other crimes.
Guterres notified the 15-member Security Council in a letter that the U.N. team, led by British lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, would start work on Aug. 20.
Guterres announced in May that he had appointed Khan after the Security Council approved the scope and limitations for the team in February. He said in the letter, released on Thursday, that Khan visited Iraq earlier this month.
Read full story »
NDS Special Forces storm key ISIS hideout in Nangarhar province
By Khaama Press on 24 Aug 2018 1:18pm .
The Special Forces of the Afghan Intelligence, National Directorate of Security (NDS), stormed a key hideout of the ISIS terrorist group in eastern Nangarhar province.
The provincial government media office in a statement said the hideout was used by the militants of the group as a launch pad for the attacks in Jalalabad city.
The statement further added that the operation was conducted late on Wednesday night in the vicinity of Kandi Bagha area of Chaparhar district.
At least one ISIS group member was killed during the operation and two others were arrested alive while six other suspects were also rounded up on charges of having links with the terror group, the statement added.
In the meantime, the National Directorate of Security (NDS), says the Special Forces have also confiscated and destroyed some explosives while three Ak-47 rifles were seized.
Read full story »
REU: Yemen’s Houthis say 26 killed in coalition airstrikes, UAE media blame Houthis
DUBAI (Reuters) – Yemen’s Houthis said on Thursday an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition had killed 26 civilians while state media in the UAE, a coalition member, reported a Houthi attack in the same area resulted in one death and dozens of injuries.
According to the Houthi movement’s Al Massira TV, 22 children and four women died in Ad Durayhimi, which lies about 20 km (12 miles) from the Red Sea city of Hodeidah………………Saudi Arabia, the UAE and their Sunni Muslim allies have been fighting in Yemen with Western backing for more than three years against the Iran-aligned Houthis.
The Houthis control much of north Yemen including the capital Sanaa and drove its Saudi-backed government into exile in 2014.
REU: Cancer patients: the other victims of Yemen’s war
SANAA/HODEIDAH, Yemen (Reuters) – On Yemen’s western coast, Mohammed al-Hosami receives support from the people of his village in al Mahwit to pay for his mother’s cancer treatment in a clinic in nearby Hodeidah city.
A girl with cancer lies on the lap of her mother at The National Oncology Centre in Sanaa, Yemen, August 6, 2018. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
“There is no work or salary so we can’t afford transportation costs, and the village helped me with the payments for treatment and to take her there,” he said as a doctor tended to his mother, who had visible swelling in one arm.
Millions of Yemenis are at risk from hunger and cholera brought on by three years of war, an emergency that has also hit cancer patients, struggling to get treatment in a country where the economy and infrastructure have collapsed.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said around 35,000 people have cancer in Yemen, with about 11,000 cases diagnosed each year.
“It is very difficult to find medicines, and if you find them in the market, they’re too expensive and citizens cannot afford them,” said Mohammed Al-Emad, accompanying a relative going for treatment in the capital Sanaa……………..The Saudi-led alliance has imposed stringent measures on maritime trade to Yemen in an effort to choke off arms supplies to the Houthis, who still control the most populous areas of the country including Sanaa. But the measures have also slowed the flow of desperately needed aid supplies.
The National Oncology Centre in Sanaa admits around 600 new cancer patients each month. But it received only $1 million in funding last year from state entities and international aid groups, the head of the center, Ahmed al-Ashwal, told Reuters.
Read full story »
NYT: Yemen Rebels: Coalition Strikes Kill Dozens, UAE Denies It
SANAA, Yemen — Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed nearly 30 people in Yemen on Thursday, including four women and 22 children, Shiite rebel media reported. But the state media of United Arab Emirates, a key coalition member, disputed the claim and said the rebels launched the attack, killing one child and injuring dozens.
Mohammed Abdul-Salam, spokesman for the Houthi rebels, said on Twitter the coalition attack took place in the ad-Durayhimi district, 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) from the port city Hodeida in the country’s west.
Other Houthi officials provided lower initial figures saying at least nine were killed. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.
The UAE’s official news agency WAM, however, reported that the Houthis launched a ballistic missile in the area killing one child and injuring dozens.
Neither side’s claims could be independently verified.
Earlier this month, a Saudi-led coalition airstrike in the country’s north killed dozens of people. Tebel-run Al-Masirah reported at least 51 people, including 40 children, were killed and 79 others, including 56 children, were wounded in the airstrike, citing the Yemeni Health Ministry in the capital Sanaa, which is under rebel control………………..Impoverished Yemen has been embroiled in the war pitting the coalition against the Iran-aligned Houthis since March 2015. Civilians have been enmeshed over the years in the conflict which has killed over 10,000, crippled the country’s health system and pushed it to the brink of famine.
Read full story »
BBC: Ending Yemen’s never-ending war
“Some people say we are in a hurry,” says Martin Griffiths, the UN’s special envoy for Yemen. “I plead guilty to the charge.”
“The people of Yemen have suffered quite enough. It’s time.”
An air strike two weeks ago that took the lives of 44 schoolboys on a field trip, shocking even in a nation shattered by years of strife, has focused minds again on the urgent need to end a conflict that has led to the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis.
Yemen war: Boys dig friends’ graves after air strike
Mr Griffiths has now sent formal invitations to the warring parties to attend a new round of consultations in Geneva on 6 September. They will be the first talks in two years, after two failed rounds.
“The good news is, the government of Yemen wants to do this. And the Ansar Allah leadership does too,” he says, using the official name of the rebel Houthi movement that took control of the capital Sanaa in 2014 and forced President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi to flee abroad the following year.
Yemen’s government has been backed militarily since March 2015 by a coalition of Arab states assembled by neighbouring Saudi Arabia to oust the Houthis, who are aligned to its arch-rival Iran.
This punishing proxy war in the region’s poorest nation has ground on, dragging Yemen to the brink of collapse.
The deadly Saudi-led coalition air strike on the bus in the rebel-held northern village of Dahyan on 9 August has threatened to derail a fragile political process fraught with risk.
Read full story »
NYT: Opinion: Hidden Wounds of Yemen’s War
The war in Yemen has reduced the country’s people to destitution, forcing many to beg for survival.
A building in Yemen, with protest graffiti painted by the artist Thiyazen Al-Aalawi, that was destroyed allegedly by a Saudi-led airstrike.CreditYahya Arhab/Epa-Efe, via Rex and Shutterstock.
SANA, Yemen — On a recent evening, Ali al-Hajori, a man in his 60s, was begging on 70th Square in the western part of Sana, the capital of Yemen. Mr. Hajori, whose lips were parched, would stop by each car pulling over at a public park and raise his right hand in an appeal for help. As the sun set over the war-torn country, Mr. Hajori walked back to a rented room, where he lived with his family, who have been starving.
About three years earlier, after intense bombing by Saudi Arabia, Mr. Hajori fled his home in Mahwit province, 75 miles northwest of Sana. He used to work as a farmer and picked up jobs in construction with his son to supplement their income.
He was also the beneficiary of a government-run program, which offered about $32 every three months to the poor, the unemployed, the people with disabilities. The war disrupted that source of support too.
More than three years of a military campaign — accompanied by naval and aerial blockades — by Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates backed by the United States has yet to defeat the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, but it has reduced the people of Yemen to destitution and created the world’s largest humanitarian crisis.
Read full story »
GUARD: Hunt rejects request for inquiry into UK non-intervention in Syria
Foreign secretary says MPs’ rejection of military action ‘may have emboldened regime’
Jeremy Hunt has rejected a call from the foreign affairs select committee to set up an independent inquiry into the consequences and reasons for the British government’s refusal to intervene in the Syrian war.
In a letter to the committee, the foreign secretary – who voted for UK military intervention in 2013 – said no purpose could be served by holding an inquiry, adding that the circumstances that led MPs to vote to reject military action were well understood.
But he said “we may have emboldened the regime and encouraged other countries to intervene more forcefully on the side of the Syrian regime” by not intervening.
Hunt said he also agreed that decisions not to intervene militarily warranted discussion, since they can have as serious consequences as a decision to become involved.
Some MPs on the committee are frustrated by the lack of debate about the British approach to Syria, and the extent to which the UK approach to foreign policy, and the legality of military interventions, remains dominated by the experience of Iraq………………The US has insisted it will not withdraw its 2,000-strong force in Syria in the foreseeable future, and the US national security adviser, John Bolton, claimed this week that Russia is stuck inside the country, unable to persuade Iranian forces to leave. The EU is refusing to offer reconstruction funds until there is greater clarity about the future of Assad, and a new constitution.
Read full story »
REU: Illusory to think Syrian refugees can return now, France says
PARIS (Reuters) – France dismissed on Thursday any suggestion that millions of Syrian refugees could start returning home, as urged by Russia, which backs President Bashar al-Assad.
Foreign ministry spokeswoman Agnes von der Muhll said the conditions for a return have not been met, given Assad’s treatment of those who have already gone home and a possible offensive on rebel territory in northern Syria.
In recent weeks Russia has called on Western powers opposed to the Syrian government to help refugees return home and aid reconstruction of areas under his control.
However, Von der Muhll cited a decree depriving refugees and internally displaced people of their properties, the instability of the country and cases of arrest and forced conscription of Syrians returning from Lebanon.
“To consider a return of the refugees is illusory, in the current conditions,” she said.
The seven-year civil war has killed an estimated half a million people, driven 5.6 million out of Syria and displaced around 6.6 million within the country.
Read full story »
REU: U.N. invites Iran, Russia, Turkey to talks on Syria next month
GENEVA (Reuters) – U.N. Special Envoy Staffan de Mistura has invited Iran, Russia and Turkey to talks on Syria’s Constitutional Committee, to be held in Geneva on Sept. 11-12, a U.N. spokeswoman said on Friday.
The talks on forming a committee to draw up a new constitution for Syria are expected to be followed by parallel U.N. talks involving countries including the United States, but she had no date for those.
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Color Denotes Today’s Confirmation
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Inherent Resolve.
Chief Warrant Officer 3 Taylor J. Galvin, 34, from Spokane, Washington, died Aug. 20, 2018, in Baghdad, Iraq, as a result of injuries sustained when his helicopter crashed in Sinjar, Ninevah Province, Iraq. The incident is under investigation.
Galvin was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (SOAR), Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.
Staff Sgt. Reymund Rarogal Transfiguracion, 36, from Waikoloa, Hawaii, died Aug. 12, 2018, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near him while he was conducting combat patrol operations in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. The incident is under investigation.
Transfiguracion was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, 1st Special Forces Group (Airborne), Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington.
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