http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1724665/wikileaks-revelations-deeply-embarrassing-us
So when it is abroad is ok, but when the war knocks at your door and demolishes a couple of buildings everybody is shocked. Puaffffff! Typical US hypocrisy! If it's Afghan people (women and children) they are "collateral damage" if it's US people then it is bloody murder. """ *THE RELEASE* by Wikileaks of more than 70,000 military files from the Afghanistan war has revealed alarming problems with the invasion, not least that the war is being lost. On one hand US ally Pakistan appears to be supporting the Taliban and providing them with safe havens from which to launch raids into Afghanistan, and on the other hand there is evidence hinting that US and NATO troops have been labeling civilian casualties as 'Taliban fighters'. In one incident western troops reported killing 30 Taliban fighters, but a UN investigation found 90 civilian deaths including 60 children. Generally the files are the sorts of things that the US government in particular does not want people to see. About 200,000 pages have been published by Wikileaks including reports of some key incidents that conflict with previous official statistics in what appears to be the biggest breach of military security in US history. According to Wikileaks, on 21 August 2008 a field report was filed where a task force reported receiving small arms fire from five Afghan insurgents, 13 kilometers south east of Shindand Airfield. This is the village of Azizabad. Close air support was requested by allied troops on the ground. An AC-130 close air support gunship arrived and opened fire on the insurgents. The report goes on to say that friendly forces recovered at the scene of the battle five chest rigs for ammunition, one machine gun, eight AK-47 guns, 1,000 rounds of 7.62 milimeter bullets, 3,000 rounds of 7.62 milimeter loose bullets, $3,000, one body-armour carrier with ceramic plates, two digital cameras and improvised explosive device making materials. The report adds that 30 insurgents were killed in the action and one US soldier was wounded. All fairly straight-forward, except that the UN sent an investigation team from the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), who concluded that some 90 civilians were killed during the AC-130 engagement. The military failed to mention that of the 90 civilians killed, around 60 were kids, plus 15 women and 15 men. It concluded that another 15 villagers were wounded. Another Battlefield Damage Assessment shows 181 enemies killed in action and fails to mention 31 civilians were also killed, including 20 people from the same extended family. After this action a NATO spokesman was quoted as saying, "The single thing that we have done wrong, and we are striving hard to improve on next year, is killing innocent civilians." Well, on that evidence NATO forces would be hard pressed to improve on killing innocent civilians. Other files show that that the US had formed assassination squads to kill al-Qaida operatives. These activities led to civilian casualties, including children. The Wikileaks secret files also claim that an intelligence officer from Pakistan's Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) attempted to assassinate Afghanistan's president Karzai. The US Special Forces unit tasked with carrying out assassinations was called Task Force 373 and it was supposed to kill the al-Qaida leader Abu Laith al-Libi. Al-Libi was believed to have been a training camp leader for al-Qaida and the Taliban and appeared in a number of videos with al-Qaida's second in command Ayman al-Zawahiri. The files show that the raid resulted in the deaths of seven children. Al-Zawahiri was not there, but apparently they failed to check that first. TF 373 was also responsible for another botched raid on an Afghan Village that left seven Afghan National Police (ANP) officers dead. The unit appeared to be armed with 'Himar' missiles which are hardly a stiletto dagger for an assassination squad. If the hit team that shot US President Kennedy had used a Himar to take out JFK they would have destroyed everything within a hundred yards radius of the Dallas Textbook Depository. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange also published the hit list for the TF 373 which seems to have been made up by Afghan governors, local warlords, and people who might have been unhappy with a competitor. Assange told Channel Four <http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/secret+files+wikileaks+exposes+aposunseen+afghan+warapos/3723387> that Task Force 373 got out of control with no accountablity. He also said that US forces tended to call in an air strike at the slightest hint of trouble. A soldier would see a bit of unexploded ordinance and instead of ignoring it, or shooting it, they called in an airstrike, and then a village was hit and 17 people were taken to hospital. Also alarming for the the region are Pakistan ISI links to al-Qaida. In one incident Wikileaks shows ISI agents and five al-Qaida operatives are working together on a mission, crossing into Afghanistan from Pakistan to carry out an attack. One project was an attempt by an ISI officer to assassinate Afghan president Hamid Karzai, through a Taliban contact. It does lead to the question of whether the Pakistan intelligence community uses its al-Qaida contacts to do its dirty work. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto might be a case in point. It is not surprising that the US government thinks that Wikileaks is a menace. But really the materials released by Wikileads show that the US is unable to successfully wage war in a region that rightly has been called 'the graveyard of empires', and that the Taliban are winning. """ --- StripMime Report -- processed MIME parts --- multipart/alternative text/plain (text body -- kept) text/html --- _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
