World-News

By Eric Margolis

As Canadian, American and British soldiers continue to die in Afghanistan, it is time the truth be told about this ugly little war.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15004.htm

NATO is trying to head off a full-blown crisis of credibility as allied defense chiefs failed to offer any extra troops to help hard-pressed soldiers fighting Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan. With commanders on the ground urgently demanding reinforcements, Britain and the US struggle to get their NATO partners to provide more forces to defeat the Taliban.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/091406L.shtml

Independent

09/12/06

Soldiers deployed in Helmand province five years on from the US-led invasion, and six months after the deployment of a large British force, have told The Independent that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley, and privations faced by the troops, are far worse than generally known. 'We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border,' one said. 'We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for'...

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1523144.ece


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

"Der Westen weiß erbärmlich wenig von diesem Land"
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/23/23532/1.html

THE former aide-de-camp to the commander of the British taskforce in southern Afghanistan has described the campaign in Helmand province as “a textbook case of how to screw up a counter-insurgency”.

http://snipurl.com/w7j1


From Information Clearing House

As in Iraq, the Americans and the allies have managed the opposite of what they intended. They have "recreated the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy."

http://snipurl.com/w7j7


Informant: Lew Rockwell

The victory won by President George Bush in 2001 after the 11 September al-Qa'ida attacks on America has evaporated. "The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity of the fighting is far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," the commander of British forces in Afghanistan, Brig Ed Butler said this week.

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1431080.ece


From Information Clearing House

With Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan locked down in one of this country's biggest battles in modern times, Ottawa's top military officials conceded yesterday the Taliban cannot be eliminated by force.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14891.htm

"Most people in the United States haven't given a moment's thought to the war in Afghanistan in a very long time. That war is over, we are told, and we won," writes William Rivers Pitt. "The Taliban was routed, and al Qaeda lost a safe haven. The war in Afghanistan, as it turns out, is far from over."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/090806J.shtml



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