26 Aug
United States Wars, News and Casualties
United States Wars, News and Casualties
NYT: War Without End, Read Article>>
In the Vietnam era, stories like this and television reporting on the war contributed to the end of the Vietnam 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 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: Afghanistan’s Four Top Security Officials Resign-Government Sources
KABUL — Afghanistan’s ministers of defense and interior, as well as another security chief, quit on Saturday, government sources said, following the resignation of the president’s national security adviser earlier in the day.
“We have received four resignations by two ministers and two senior security officials,” an official in President Ashraf Ghani’s office told Reuters.
Government sources said the new resignations were from Defense Minister Tariq Shah Bahrami and Interior Minister Wais Barmak, as well as Masoom Stanekzai, the head of the National Directorate of Security. They followed a decision by National Security Advisor Hanif Atmar to quit………….But two senior interior ministry officials said the country’s top security officials cited differences with the government over policy amid the deteriorating security situation as the main reason for resigning.
Heavy fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan forces across the country this year, as well as repeated suicide attacks in Kabul and other major cities, have underlined the dire security situation facing Afghanistan.
Read full story »
US airstrikes pound ISIS hideouts in Kunar province
By Khaama Press on 25 Aug 2018 1:08pm .
The US forces based in Afghanistan have carried out a series of airstrikes targeting the hideouts of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) group in eastern Kunar province of Afghanistan.
The 201st Silab Corps of the Afghan Military in the East said the latest airstrikes were carried out in Manogi and Narang district.
The source further added that five militants of the terror group were killed after their hideouts were targeting by the unmanned aerial vehicles.
The security situation in eastern Kunar province has started to deteriorate sharply during the recent months amid growing insurgency activities by the Taliban and ISIS militants.
The US forces also carried out similar airstrikes in Titak area of Noor Gul district in eastern Kunar province last week targeting the hideouts of ISIS militants.
Read full story »
Afghan political coalition announces the launch of ‘civil disobedience’
By Khaama Press on 26 Aug 2018 11:28am .
The Grand National Coalition of Afghanistan has announced the launch of ‘civil disobedience’ in reaction to the silence of the government and the Independent Election Commission regarding their demands for the upcoming parliamentary elections.
The coalition issued a statement earlier today and said the two-week deadline announced regarding the demands of the political parties and movements has ended.
The statement further added that the government, the Independent Election Commission, and the international community remained reckless regarding the demands of the political parties, movements, and the people of Afghanistan regarding the upcoming elections.
The coalition also added that rigged and corruption elections and the lack of observance by the political parties could drag the country towards a major crisis, emphasizing that the coalition would take necessary steps, including civil disobedience to prevent fraud in the elections.
The political leaders demand the launch of biometric registration of the voters for the upcoming elections under the supervision of the technical teams and to be guaranteed by the relevant authorities.
President Ghani rejects resignation of top security officials
By Khaama Press on 26 Aug 2018 9:07am .
President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani has rejected the resignations tendered by the Minister of Defense Tariq Shah Bahrami, Minister of Interior Wais Ahmad Barmak, and the Afghan Intelligence (NDS) Chief Masoom Stnikzai.
The Office of the President, ARG Palace, in a statement said the three senior security officials had tendered their resignation to President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.
The statement further added that President Ghani has not approved the resignation of the three senior security officials and has asked them to continue to their work.
According to ARG Palace, President Ghani has also issued necessary instructions to the security officials for the betterment of the security of the country.
This comes as the National Security Adviser Mohammad Hanif Atmar announced his resignation late on Saturday evening which was later approved by President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani.
GUARD: Opinion US bombs are killing children in Yemen. Does anybody care?
The lack of outrage at the US’s key role in this humanitarian disaster raises troubling questions
This is not a column about Donald Trump. It’s also not about Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen or Robert Mueller, and it’s certainly not about Rudolph Giuliani and his way with words. On the contrary, this is a column about the things we are not paying attention to, and why we should.
On 9 August, the US-backed Saudi-led coalition waging war in Yemen against a Houthi-led rebellion dropped a bomb on a school bus packed with children. According to reports, the excited kids had been on a school trip marking the end of their summer classes, and as they passed a busy marketplace, the bomb directly hit their vehicle.
The results were horrific. Of the 54 people killed, 44 were children, with most between the ages of six ando 11. The pictures of the dead and injured children, some of whom can be seen wearing their blue Unicef backpacks, are beyond heartbreaking.
And the tragedy in Yemen is unrelenting. Just this past Thursday, a mere two weeks after the school bus attack, Saudi-led coalition airstrikes killed yet another 26 children and four women fleeing the fighting in the western province of Hudaydah……………..But this is also a story about the responsibility of the United States. A report by CNN indicates that the bomb used in the school bus airstrike was a 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, manufactured by Lockheed Martin, one of the largest US defense contractors. Having facilitated the sale to the Saudi-led coalition of the weapon used to kill these children, does the United States bear any responsibility for their deaths?
Read full story »
NYT: U.N. Says Saudi-led Airstrike Killed at Least 22 Yemeni Children
A photograph distributed by Houthi rebels purported to show Yemenis carrying the bodies of children killed in a Saudi-led airstrike near Al Hudaydah.CreditCreditEPA, via Shutterstock
The United Nations said Friday that a Saudi-led airstrike had killed at least 22 children and four women in Yemen as they fled a fighting zone — the second mass killing of Yemeni civilians by Saudi Arabia and its military partners in two weeks.
Mark Lowcock, the top United Nations relief official, asserted without qualification that the Saudi-led coalition warring with Yemen’s Houthi rebels was responsible for the attack, which happened on Thursday in a pro-Houthi district near the Red Sea port of Al Hudaydah. He said an additional airstrike in the area had killed four more children.
The assertion by Mr. Lowcock, in a statement on his office’s website, came as the Saudi coalition and the Houthis were accusing each other of the attack, which has underlined the vulnerability of civilians in a war that has lasted more than three years and become what the United Nations considers the world’s worst man-made humanitarian crisis.
Criticism of Saudi Arabia and its partners has been growing over thousands of civilian casualties, many of them caused by munitions fired from the coalition’s warplanes…………
Mr. Lowcock, the United Nations under secretary general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, did not explain in the statement how he knew the Saudi-led coalition had been responsible for the latest attack, in the Al Durayhimi district about 12 miles south of Al Hudaydah.
A spokesman for Mr. Lowcock, Russell Geekie, said by phone that “U.N. partners verified the information” on the ground in Yemen.
Read full story »
GUARD: Opinion Don’t be deluded – our Saudi ‘partners’ are masters of repression
The persecution of activists at home and war in Yemen show talk of reform is a charade
Five Saudi activists face possible execution. Their crimes? “Participating in protests”, “chanting slogans hostile to the regime” and “filming protests and publishing on social media”.
The five, including women’s rights campaigner Israa al-Ghomgham, come from the Shia-majority Eastern Province. They have spent more than two years in prison. Now the prosecution has demanded their deaths.
Their plight reveals the vacuity of claims that Saudi Arabia is “liberalising”. The death in 2015 of King Abdullah and his replacement by Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has led to much gushing in the west about the new reforming regime and, in particular, about the “vision” of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, heir apparent and driving force behind the “modernisation” moves. The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote a fawning piece about the Saudi “Arab spring”. “It’s been a long, long time,” he wrote, “since any Arab leader wore me out with a fire hose of new ideas about transforming his country.” Even the fierce critic of Islam Ayaan Hirsi Ali has suggested that if the crown prince “succeeds in his modernisation efforts, Saudis will benefit from new opportunities and freedoms”…………Few countries execute people at a higher rate. Under the current “reforming” regime, at least 154 people were executed in 2016 and 146 in 2017. Many were for political dissent, which the Saudi authorities rebrand as “terrorism”. A regime that permits women to drive but executes them for speaking out of turn is “reforming” only in a columnist’s fantasy……………
The viciousness of the Saudi regime is matched only by the cynicism of western leaders. The price is being paid by the children in that school bus and by the five activists facing possible beheading for peaceful protests; by the million of Yemenis on the verge of starvation and by thousands of Saudis imprisoned, flogged and executed for wanting basic rights. But what’s all that when set against the value of a “friendly” regime?
Read full story »
AP: HRW: At least 16 children among kidnapped by IS in Syria
BEIRUT (AP) — At least 16 children are among nearly 30 civilians kidnapped by Islamic State militants in southern Syria a month ago and are being used as a “bargaining chip” in negotiations with the Syrian government and its ally Russia, Human Rights Watch said Saturday.
The rights watchdog said that the children are aged between seven and 15 years old. It called the kidnapping a “war crime,” saying the 27 hostages held since July 25 should not be used for bargaining and called for their immediate release. The militants have beheaded a teenage hostage and a woman died in their custody. The reason for her death was not immediately clear. Witnesses told HRW two women managed to escape their abductors…………..In a multi-pronged attack, the militants raided villages in Sweida, carried out suicide bombings and kidnapped more than 30 people on July 25. The raids set off intense clashes. Witnesses told HRW that the militants had snipers on rooftops and were shooting residents as they fled or tried to drive the wounded to hospitals.
Although largely uprooted from its strongholds in Syria and Iraq, Islamic State militants remain a threat in both countries. The United Nations estimates that between 20,000 and 30,000 fighters remain in the countries, either militarily engaged or hiding among civilians.
The simultaneous attacks in Sweida evoked the dark violent days during the group’s heydays in 2014 and 2015, where abductions, beheadings and taking women as sex slaves were commonplace.
Read full story »
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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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